TC: One of the criticisms for how it doesn’t feel like Star Trek is that combat is so constant. You have a few non-combat missions, but most of the missions are basically centered around your combat model. To some fans of Star Trek, this might be a problem. Star Trek is traditionally about a different style of conflict resolution and yet an MMO tends to be about defeating things, killing them, blowing them up. Is this something you guys were aware was going to be a potential problem? Do you just see it as a necessary evil for an MMO?
CZ: I don’t want it say it’s a necessary evil for an MMO, and it’s definitely something we were aware of along the way. When you make a game like this, you can attempt to satisfy everybody’s desire. Some people just want to be the guy in the engineering room, some people just want to do diplomacy. There are all sorts of roles and all sorts of gameplay the Star Trek universe provides, and we could have taken a shot at providing something for everybody at launch. What we would have ended up with is a really broad experience, but probably not that focused and probably not that fun in the grand scheme of things, or in any of those roles. So we focused on the idea that you’re the captain of this ship and it’s during war time and this is what happens.
That being said, we did start putting down the seeds of non-combat. We did start putting down the seeds of diplomacy and exploration. And the great thing about MMOs is that you start off with these seeds and this focused experience, but what you get to do as game developers is keep adding to it, keep building all the things you dreamed of along the way. I don’t want to call it a necessary evil, but that’s the focus we chose. And it is kind of obvious. It’s like, okay, look, we need some more of that exploration, we need some more of that non-combat, we need that diplomatic feel to the game. Those are things we definitely plan on adding as time goes on.
Read the entire interview here.
There is a new interview out with the executive producer of Star Trek Online, Craig Zinkievich. I found the interview not simply entertaining, but thought provoking because of Mr. Zinkievich’s answers. It’s simply a shame that the “unsilent minority” (as is so prevalent on the official forums) simply refuses to give credit where credit is due. This interview tells of some the challenges faced by the Star Trek Online team, and some of the risks they took in the way the game was created – risks which seem to be paying off.
One of the quotes I found incredibly interesting discussed the challenge of designing a game where the conflict is resolved in ways that do not involve combat. After all, that is usually how game design resolves conflict – at the end of a gun, or the tip of a sword. It is that non-combat resolution that I found so enthralling in one of my favorite Star Trek series – Star Trek Voyager.
Non-Combat resolution and Star Trek…
One episode is called “Death wish” where a member of the Q Continum is simply bored to tears with eternity. It put me immediately in mind of the character in a Douglas Adams book – Wowbagger, the infinitely prolonged. Wowbagger is a character that accidentally becomes immortal as the result of an accident involving a particle accelerator, a pair of rubber bands and a liquid lunch. The problem is Wowbagger simply doesn’t know how to cope with being immortal – and that is the problem discussed in “Death Wish”.
Not knowing what to do with himself (or perhaps having done it all) a Q simply wishes to die. Beyond the quandary debated in the show of the right or wrong aspect of assisted suicide, are the interrelationships of the people, and the resolution of the matter. In the story Captain Janeway and Mr. Tuvok are taken to a representation of the Q-Continuum. There we see members of the Q Continuum who have literally not spoken to each other in millennium as they too have “done it all” and said everything to one another there is to be said. The conflict represented is literally a struggle with life and death, and one that we all face today. In what seems to be so prevalent in the Voyager series, the conflict is resolve through debate and interpersonal relationships instead of at the point of a phaser. Along the way the “Q” that we have come to know as one the princple nemis of Star Trek the Next Generation, learns something about himself that even he denied.
In a show called “Unity” Chakotay discovers a planet that is inhabited entirely by “liberated borg”. Coming as they do from entirely different backgrounds, they try and co-exist and find they cannot – there old grievances and inbred hatreds get in the way. In the end they re-establish a link and become one mind as the only way to co-exist.
In an episode called “Alter Ego” Ensign Harry Kim falls in love with what he thinks is a hologram. He comes to Tuvok for training in purging emotion. In attempting to assist him, Tuvok himself finds himself interested in the object of Harry Kims affections; a hologram that seems to understand Tuvok better than himself. Tuvok meets the hologram for the first time at a luau on the holodeck. Tuvok, in attendance against his wishes refuses to wear the lei that is presented to him – and it is the “hologram” that points out the Vulcan sience officer is emotionally distancing himself from the rest of his crew at the party by being the only person at the party not wearing a lei. When it is discovered that the hologram is really someone outside the ship controlling the holodeck, the resolution is, once again, through inter-relationships of the characters.
It is the non-combat solution to problems that makes Star Trek Voyager so revolutionary. The entire No Prisoners, No Mercy team hopes to seem the seeds that are already apparent in the development of Star Trek Online grown. It’s a big challenge but one I am sure that Cryptic is up to addressing.
The No Prisoners, No Mercy Team.
Side Notes
From the Eve Online forums:
A community is of course not one single entity, and consists of many different people. Reading all the media hype about Hulkaggeddon gives me a lot of laughs as well, but there is a very sinister side to it as well, that unfortunately brings out much darker aspects in some people. I wonder when enough is enough – is public threats about sexual abusing nuns enough? (Even though I know those are not meant serious, they can easily be taken serious by outsiders)
What scares me the most about Hulkageddon and similar events, is the unchallenged mass movement it often creates. Not in terms of spaceships, but in terms of the armies of seemingly ghoulish followers that chant the holy sacrament of “Nom nom nom, carebear tears”. While an army like that does not have any real physical impact, its so damn close to real life examples that it scares the **** out of me. And this is where comparisons to fascist movements are relevant.
- Ben Harrigan, Eve Online forums
The subject of today’s article, some of the non-combat ways conflict is resolved in Star Trek Online, reminded me of the quote I found a while ago on the Eve Online forums. What amazes me not merely about the attitude espoused by many of the participants in the event, but that they in turn, seemed not merely surprised at the outrage that followed but revel in it. After all it is easy when you are safely in your room to say “nom, nom, nom carebear tears.” However, as Sister Julie has often pointed out “Karma is Karma”.
How easy it is to imagine that the sisters should not be entitled to outrage at the treatment of other players by griefers, not merely in Eve Online, but in any game. Even more amazing are those players who then go through life with the attitude espoused by the chant until they encounter the situation in real life. Tables have a way of turning.
The Webmaster