Impressions and Interview with Executive Producer Craig Zinkievich: Star Trek Online

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Cryptic Studios announced their acquisition of Star Trek Online from CBS last winter, and just premiered their first gameplay video just this month at the annual Star Trek convention in Las Vegas, NV…

It was Sunday, the last day of the convention, and there was a faint sampling of Star Trek bridge noises trickling through the loudspeakers at the Hilton’s Gene Roddenberry Theater.

The room was slowly filling up when Leonard Nimoy came on stage to introduce the game’s Chief Creative Officer, Jack Emmert. Some of the fans in the front row left their seats as soon as they realized this Jack guy hadn’t even been in one single episode of Star Trek.

The rest of the audience, however, reacted well to both Emmert’s claims to Star Trek as the reason he loves sci-fi, and apparent serious devotion to all things Star Trek when making a massively multi-player online game based on it. He expressed a sincere desire to have the community get involved and have the fans make the game.

Many things have been decided, such as using all available Star Trek lore as Canon, and that although the game will have two opposing factions, Player vs. Player combat will not be the central focus of the game. Beyond that, the team has put nothing in stone and is looking for feedback.

Who should you send that feedback to? Craig Zinkievich, the Executive Producer. After watching the gameplay video, I got the chance to sit down with Craig for a few moments. My first question was how and why Cryptic came to acquire Star Trek Online.

“Perpetual told us what was happening,” Craig explains. “We saw great potential in the IP.”

It was a smooth transition, he said, because CBS was excited about the opportunity to keep the project alive. Cryptic had the technology and experience, and produced a playable demo within six weeks.

Their existing platform and next-gen engine allowed them to immediately put new ideas into testing without any extraneous bugs slowing them down. The evolving technology and all of the art assets were created in-house, meaning 100% of the game development was done at Cryptic Studios. Did Cryptic get anything from Perpetual’s team?

“We did get a variety of concept art,” dismisses Craig.

Cryptic also offered one of their producers a job, and he is now working on Champions. Craig tells me that he and Jack did not really want to be familiar with Perpetual’s design or investigate their vision for the scope of the game. One of the most fundamental decisions was how many factions there would be. Craig preferred Star Fleet, and Jack wanted to be Klingon. It seems they compromised.

“There needs to be a conflict in the universe,” suggests Craig. “We wanted to make a Star Trek game, not just another MMO.”

Players can choose from just about any Star Trek race that has ever been seen on screen, or they can take the time to create their own custom race.

They will either fight for the Klingon Empire or as a member of the United Federation of Planets. When players start the game they will have a small ship and a small crew, but over time they can qualify to pilot more powerful ships with larger crew capacities, and more customization options.

So far, it is possible to upgrade the nacelles, saucer section, and engines as well as add color and decals to the hull. Players will mostly customize their ship by outfitting their character and bridge crew with equipment, and by what combination of races the general crew is made up of.

In ship combat the Cryptic team hopes to give the captain a visceral experience. While the game will operate like other MMOs, Craig wants the player to feel like they’re piloting a starship.