Thirteen1

I know you were working closely with CBS to keep the game close to the series during development. Is the partnership still as close and do they still get involved in the content patches?

Yeah, we were working closely with CBS and we will continue to keep the relations that way.  Any new idea, from storyline to ship designs, is something that we work with them on to ensure it’s in the spirit of Star Trek and is something we’re both happy with.

How hard is it keeping up the pace you currently are with content patches? You seem to be pushing them out at quite an impressive rate.

We’re definitely working as hard as we can to provide more content to our players. Having our own engine and core team really works to our advantage.  Also, the Genesis system allows us to make maps at a pretty quick rate.  So, those two things give us the ability to make content fairly quickly.  We’d always like to move faster, but we want to make sure what we’re releasing is fun – that’s the most important thing.

In a recent State of the Game update, you mentioned that the developers would make more of an appearance in the forums, in order to let players know what they’re doing and get player input. Do they also get time to jump into the game and get ‘in the field’ experience as well?

Yes!  We encourage the team to get into the game and play with the community.  Sometimes, we announce that we are doing a “play with the devs event,” and other times we’ll just hop into the game and team up with other players.  It’s always interesting to hear what people are saying about the game when they don’t know you work for Cryptic J.

Looking forward now, which of the upcoming content patches are you most looking forward to seeing the players give opinion on?

Honestly, all of them.  Anytime we release a new update I like to hear the players’ opinion.  With each new update you can always learn from it.  What did the players like?  What did they not like?  Was something too easy or hard?  Do they want more missions like that?  All of these are things that you can look for in community feedback.   So the next upcoming patch will be the one I look forward to the most, and then the one after that will be the one I look forward to most.

If time & resources were not an object, what one thing would you add to the game right now?

I think if money and resources weren’t an option I would poll our players and see what the number one thing they wanted in the game right now was.  Then I’d snap my fingers and put that in the game.  Unfortunately, these things do take time and money.  We want to get as many of the players requests into the game, but it takes time to make it, test it, then implement it into the game.  We know what a lot of the big requests from players are and we’re working hard to get those into the game.

Finally, as is normal with MMO’s there were a lot of players that jumped in at launch and will have stopped playing as they did not find it to their liking. Is there anything you would like to point out to them that makes the game worth giving a second chance?

MMOs only get better as they get older.  They get more polished, they get new content, they get different types of gameplay.  So, whether you want to give it another try now or down the road, I think it’s definitely worth a shot.

Oh..also, where is Sulu? I’m not sure there are enough hints at the Earth space dock :p

Maybe we should just move him around and turn it into a treasure hunt?  Where’s Sulu this week?