For this issue of Pulse we have a very special segment for
our readers: an interview with Cloud Imperium Games
Community Manager Ben Lesnick!
I’d like to thank Ben, both for doing this interview with
us and for helping Pulse in so many other ways. He has
worked hard to find higher-resolution copies of concept
art for us so our readers can enjoy the universe of Star
Citizen like never before, and without the Most Valuable
Post award for the first issue of Pulse we wouldn’t be
where we are today.
We asked Ben about the time leading up to his joining
Cloud Imperium, his work on Star Citizen, and some of his
plans for the game.
PULSE: To start things off, could you tell us a little about
what attracted you to the Wing Commander series? I know
you’ve been a fan for quite some time. For those who
haven’t played the early games before, why is that?
Ben Lesnick, Age 14
BEN: In all honesty, I’m
not sure what drove me
to become such a Wing
Commander fan! It’s an
incredible game and it’s an
immersive universe. I was
raised a huge geek and was
never far from Star Trek
or Star Wars or anything
of the sort… maybe Wing
Commander just seemed
like it could be my thing. I
was also a huge World War II
aviation buff as a kid and at
its core Wing Commander is
the Pacific War in space.
For those that haven’t played,
do! It’s $5.99 for Wing Commander I and II on GOG and
that is a steal. If you can get past the dated graphics
resolution, everything in there is what we want to achieve
with Star Citizen. For the first time, you were living a Star
Wars style space opera where your successes and defeats
really mattered. Hard to imagine an easier pitch!
CIG TALK:
BEN LESNICK
BY FEYLAN
game they released that year, Secret Ops. We built an
incredible community over the years of truly hardcore
Wing Commander fans, or “Wingnuts”… and as Electronic
Arts lost interest in the series, I had the opportunity to start
looking at the history of how the games were developed,
preserving old design notes and concept art and in the
process meeting a lot of the people I work with today.
WCNews is still around today and I occasionally write
articles for it… and the friends I made working on the site
are the people I’m closest to today.
PULSE: In the interview you had with Sandi, you
mentioned that you’ve done quite a bit of work on various
Wing Commander projects,
including a Game Boy
Advance version of
Wing Commander
Prophecy as well as the
Xbox Live Arcade version of
Wing Commander Arena.
How did that come about?
BEN: That all came from
being the biggest fan!
Whenever anyone had a
Wing Commander project
they were trying to release
(and this happened on
average maybe twice a
Ben Lesnick, AgE ?
year between 2000 and
2012) they would come to
us for advice… and generally be very impressed with our
enthusiasm. For every game H[ Y