We recently got a chance to interview Craig Zinkievich the Executive Producer behind Star Trek Online where he tells us about the season one update and what we can expect from the game in the future.
GamesRelay: Can you tell us a bit about yourself? What has been your role in the creation of Star Trek Online?
Craig Zinkievich: Sure! My name is Craig Zinkievich and I am the Executive Producer for Star Trek Online. My role is to oversee the entire production of the game. I work with design, art, programming, QA... basically everyone. I make sure we're working as a team and communicating effectively and then ultimately I have to make hard decisions about what goes into the game and what will not or what will come at a later time.
GamesRelay: Can you give us a synopsis of what has been included in this update?
Craig Zinkievich: Wow, we've added quite a lot. We released two Special Task Force missions – those are our five-man raids. We also added a new ship to the Klingon fleet, created some new Fleet Actions, a new ground PvP map, new Captain skills, a respec system and so on. If you'd like to see an even fuller list of updates, check it out here.
GamesRelay: How much has community feedback shaped what has been included in this release?
Craig Zinkievich: They helped a lot and their feedback will continue to help shape the game. In this update we added more Klingon ships and new fleet actions that Klingons can participate in. We added a Respec based on community feedback. These are just some of the things we have added and we will continue to add more player feedback into the game.
GamesRelay: Will there be an over-arching plot throughout subsequent seasons, or will each have self-contained stories?
Craig Zinkievich: A little of both. Our Episode missions tend to connect a large story together over the course of play, but some Episodes are intended to be one-offs, just like the TV series. Sometimes, though, even one-offs can lend new information to an emerging story.
The idea, though, is to continue telling Star Trek Online's story over the course of a player's progression.
GamesRelay: Is there a long-term plan for future offerings? Any hints as to what will be included in future content releases?
Craig Zinkievich: Right now, we're looking at releasing at least two more major content updates this year. We just released Season One, and plan on getting Seasons Two and Three out the door before 2011. The Seasons all have pretty major updates in them, including updates to the game's story, more support for PvP, additional Klingon PvP options and maybe even some new game systems. Not everything is set in stone right now, though. We're looking to our community for guidance on where they'd like to see the game go.
GamesRelay: What were the greatest challenges you all faced in transforming the Star Trek universe into an MMO?
Craig Zinkievich: We had quite a few challenges. How do you really capture a franchise that's been evolving for 40 years, spans thousands of hours of TV time, and has 11 feature-length films and a litany of written fiction to comprise its universe? That's the conceptual problem; we were thinking about that before we could begin worrying about how space combat should feel.
Ultimately, we found the best way to answer both the conceptual and the design challenges was to attack them both with the same approach. By making sure everything we did felt like Star Trek, we were able to tackle that conceptual problem, and more often than not, it felt fun, too. That's not to say we didn't run into situations where we had to make a tough decision in the name of fun gameplay, but it happened less often than we expected.
GamesRelay: The project was originally in development for many years by Perpetual Entertainment. How much of that original work eventually found its way into the final product?
Craig Zinkievich: Not much actually. We started pretty much from the ground up. We looked at a lot of their concept work, but decided in the end it would be a much better project if we went in our own direction.
GamesRelay: The game contains a lot of loading screens, some are understandable given the vast areas of the game, but some are not needed such as where you first visit the Admiral. Is this something which could, or even can be changed in the future to give the game a more streamlined approach?
Craig Zinkievich: We're looking at ways to improve the loading screen process. We realize there are some areas where we can probably just get rid of the loading screen and then were also exploring ways to give you something to do while the game is loading.
