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Star Trek Online screenshot

2010 is shaping up into a stellar year for science fiction MMO fans. Not only do we have BioWare's Star Wars: The Old Republic to salivate over, but Cryptic's Star Trek Online, too. Following up from our extensive gamescom preview, we nabbed executive producer Craig Zinkievich on the phone for a massive interview on all things Starfleet, Federation and Klingon. Here, in the second part of our massive interview, we talk the Borg, lessons learned from the launch of Champions Online, and what he really thinks of Star Wars: The Old Republic. Missed part one? Don't fret. Aim your phasers here.

VideoGamer.com: We recently ran a competition to win one of three closed beta keys, and it proved to be one of the most popular competitions we've ever run. By all accounts, the Star Trek brand is a strong one! What was your relationship with Star Trek before you started working on the game and how has your opinion of it changed as a result of making a game based on it?

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Craig Zinkievich: I was a fan of Star Trek beforehand. I had watched Next Gen, I had watched all of the TV shows, I considered myself a fan of it. At the same time, when I came to Cryptic Studios seven years ago, I thought I was a fan of comic books. Then we started making City of Heroes and I was like, 'Wow! I guess I'm not a fan of comic books. Those guys are fans of comic books'. So in coming on board I thought I was a fan. I thought I was into it, but then I realised how much I still needed to know, and how crazy fanatic but so passionate and so cool the fanbase for this game is. What have I learned? I've learned a whole lot of little details I didn't know, a whole bunch of lore out of the IP, the universe. Fundamentally though, it's loved because it's accessible. There's just something about it - whether or not it's that it's character driven, whether or not it's the idea of, you know we can achieve these things that they do, we can achieve this ideal future because of technology and not some sort of magic, that it's in our control to make the world better and to explore the universe - there's something about Star Trek that makes it accessible and that people get into it quickly. I don't think it was me coming on board and getting into it more that shined the light on that aspect, but some of the people on the team who had either never watched Star Trek, really young guys who didn't watch it in syndication, or had kind of seen it, or people who weren't really fans, how quickly they got into it, how quickly they were sucked into it. Knowing that, 'oh yeah, I guess I know what Star Trek is', and then a couple of months later them telling you, 'no, no, no, no, nacelles can't be like that, they have to be parallel, they have to have visibility'. It's amazing how some of these guys who had no knowledge before hand are turning into real hardcore Star Trek nerds. There's just something about the license and the universe that makes that so easy for people to do.

VideoGamer.com: Are you a Trekkie now?

CZ: I considered myself one before, definitely.

VideoGamer.com: Maybe you're a super Trekkie now then?

CZ: I have a lot more street cred now!

VideoGamer.com: What role does the Borg play in the game? How do they fit in from a story perspective?

CZ: The Borg at the end of Voyager were a little sad, because they kind of made them pansies. They did! They got them to the point where they weren't that powerful. They were pushovers. It was something a lot of the fanbase, including some of the hardcore guys here, weren't happy about. So we took advantage of what we could do. The Borg stepped back for a little bit. They left the Alpha Quadrant after Voyager, and now they've come back even stronger. They've come back more advanced, with new technology, and new ways and means of assimilating individuals as well as entire planets. They end up being one of the big bads within the game. You encounter the Borg towards the Admiral end of the scale. You see them right off the bat. There's a story for what's going on there that I'm not going to spoil right now, but you end up dealing with them and trying to figure out what's going on with them towards the higher end and within some of the raids towards the endgame - that's where the Borg end up lying within our game.

VideoGamer.com: Champions Online recently launched. Have you taken anything on board from that launch that you might do differently with Star Trek Online?

CZ: Oh man, tonnes! It's awesome. The core technology that both products are built upon is shared. Any stability and performance improvements that have been done to our database CS tools, maps, servers, website, for Champions Online, automatically come across to Star Trek. It's awesome to have such a proven engine behind the game. From a design point, I mean the Champions guys are right over there! I can point to them! So constantly whenever they run into a problem, we hear about it. Or if they're having issues and the fans are screaming about something, or if the fans like something, we hear about that. Communication is extremely tight. There have been times where they've run into issues and they're like, 'Oh my god! Do we have a solution? We've got to figure out how to fix this problem!' and then we huddle over in our corner and say, 'did we figure out what to do with that? Oh my god! We've got to figure out what to do with that!'. But there have also been times where they've come up with a solution and it's been like, 'That's awesome! We're just going to use it'. Or, they've run into a problem, we hear about it and we said, 'This is how we solved this, why don't you take that and use it?'. So it's cool to have another team right there who is also figuring out things and going through the live process right now - so lots of sharing and lots of learning.

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