Zinkievich On Future Star Trek: Online
2 min readStar Trek: Online Executive Producer Craig Zinkievich talks about the success of the Star Trek: Online release and explains what is in store for its future.
Other than some server issues, the release of Star Trek: Online went well, according to Zinkievich. “We were just blown away,” he said. “Aside from some server stuff, and I think we handled that extremely well, launch was just great. The amount of people interested in the game was staggering and humbling, and we’re really dedicated to keeping those people happy for the long-term.”
The server issue was a problem though, that had to be addressed right away, and was a result of the popularity of the MMORPG. “A big [hurdle] was improving our server infrastructure after the large influx of players that came to the game,” said Zinkievich. “That required a lot of coordination between not just the STO team, but the network operations and production teams to get everything working quickly and securely.”
Regarding the future, expect improvements and new additions. “We’ll have more Special Task Force missions available soon, and our major content update, Season One: Common Ground, is due to release this month.
As we get more feedback from players, we can definitely work on different ways to add variety to missions. If you look at the latest Special Task Forces, which are our most challenging endgame encounters, the gameplay is much more varied. That’s just stuff we’ve been working on at the end of the development cycle. As we add more missions into all areas of the game, I’d expect some more surprises along the way.”
Other possible future addition might be ship interiors. “We’ve already got bridges available in-game,” said Zinkievich. “We want to get those perfect, and then look into expanding beyond them. Ship interiors themselves are something that will take a lot of time to create, just due to the size of the ships we’re talking about. Some of the larger ones are the size of small cities. There’s a lot to consider there, but it is something we want to accomplish if we can make it interesting and worth the player’s time.”
Community input is important when it comes to tweaking the game, fixing problems or adding new features. “We’ve been keeping an open dialogue with our community, both those that are happy with how things are and those that aren’t,” said Zinkievich. “It’s shaping the decisions we make in a very positive way.”
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