Audio Interview with Daron Stinnett
From STOwiki
Below is a transcript of Episode 15 of Hailing Frequency which includes an interview with Daron Stinnett from Perpetual Entertainment. Please do not copy in whole or in part any of this article, link directly to this page.
Contents |
Introduction
Man: Computer, show me all popular media outlets of the twenty-first century.
Computer: Searching.
Man: Hold it, this looks interesting, Hailing Frequencies. Computer, do we have this on file?
Computer: That program is available.
Man: All right, let's hear it.
Zach: Hi everybody and welcome to the possibly most anticipated episode of Hailing Frequencies ever.
Kinneas: We've only done fifteen shows, Zach. What makes this one so special?
Zach: Well Kinneas, it's special because we've been granted an exclusive interview with Daron Stinnett, who's the executive producer of Star Trek Online.
Kinneas: Wow! Well Zach, we'd better hurry and rustle up some community audio questions and emails to read to Daron then.
Zach: Already taken care of Kinneas, relax. If that wasn't enough, people, we also have details of Hailing Frequencies' first ever-sponsored competition.
Kinneas: Who's sponsoring it?
Zach: Don't you worry; we'll get to that. And, we have another hilarious episode of Fleet Gossip from Faxxer.
Kinneas: Oh, oh. I'd better go get my bulletproof jacket on in case he starts taking pot shots at me again, Zach.
Zach: Indeed. We're also launching the new Hailing Frequencies web site, woo hoo! And on top of all that Kinneas, I know your itching to play another Arthur Yoria song for Fleet Radio, so let's slip that in too. Ready Kinneas?
Kinneas: Oh yeah, I'm ready. Let's go get Victor.
Zach: Ladies and gentlemen, we proudly present episode fifteen of Hailing Frequencies.
[Music]
Interview with Daron Stinnett - Part 1
Zach: Hey there everybody, this is an interview with Daron Stinnett, from Perpetual Entertainment about Star Trek Online. We've got Daron here as well as Kinneas from startrekonline.net and Victor, representing startrek-gamers.com, and myself from Star Trek Gaming Universe. First of all, I'd just like to say hi everybody, and hi to Daron.
Daron: Thank you very much.
Victor: Evening Zach, evening all.
Kinneas: Good evening. So first thing, obviously, thank you all for taking time to do this interview, I understand this is the first audio interview that you are doing regarding Star Trek Online.
Daron: That's right. You guys have been asking me to do this for a while and I didn't feel like we were ready, but I think we are getting to a point where we can start doing these kind of things. I definitely wanted to start with you guys because you have been so supportive of us and just thought it was the right thing to do, to start here.
Kinneas: It's been a lot of fun in the community, that's for sure.
Zach: Yeah, definitely. So, the first thing that we really wanted to talk about, you are at the point now where you've been in pre-production for couple months and you just released some screen shots the other day, which were absolutely breathtaking.
Daron: Thanks.
Zach: So what's been involved in that, getting to the point where you've got everything so polished and looking so beautiful because everybody's just gob smacked, it's absolutely beautiful.
Daron: Well, it's a normal part of pre-production, as you saw in Ian's article. We call it look development. We're doing look development in a number of areas and this is the first area we did. We actually did this look development back in December. It really is just a rapid exploration of what we might make a particular environment look like, and I think it's more than an exploration, it's definitely right in line with what we expect to deliver, but it's a normal part of pre-production. We'll be moving on to do space combat or space environments and ships net and then, of course, we also need to do ground environments. We really just want to, we picked that forum, gamasutra.com, because it's where a lot of very talented software engineers and artists hangout and look at it and we wanted to get some of our images in front of them. We knew, of course, it would get copied around, and you guys would see it in no time, but we wanted to get our images out in front of them because we wanted to let the development community know just how cutting-edge we are and raise our profile because we are still recruiting and we want to get the very best and brightest.
Victor: So Daron, the screen shots presented to the site, is this the kind of the texturing and graphical wizardry that people might expect to see in Star Trek Online when it's released?
Daron: Yeah. We're fairly confident that it's representative; I think it's only going to look better than that when we actually release. We have a lot of work to do to continue to improve graphics above and beyond what you saw and a lot of time to do that. So, it's certainly a baseline for us.
Victor: So, one last thing on the subject about the screen shots. Now, the screen shots themselves, I've got to admit myself, they look fantastic. They are top notch. The texturing is absolutely perfect. There is one question I know that is on quite a few people's minds, will the graphics be so high class on the release of Star Trek Online that people with older systems, let's say for arguments sake, if you've got a Geforce 5900 or a Geforce 6600, will of those people still be able to play this game?
Daron: We're not going to set the requirements too high, for sure. You made the point Victor, about the need to have a game running on systems that people actually have and we agree with that. In fact, what you see there doesn't have high requirements. Our expectation is if you were to buy a middle of the road gaming PC today, that when we launch, it still will be a very viable platform to run Star Trek Online. Now, we have a lot of exploration yet to do, for instance, what you saw runs at a very good frame rate and looks even better when you see it live. It runs at ninety to one hundred frames per second. When we get characters in there and all the customization is going on and stuff like that, we have a lot of testing left to do. Because, of course, when you get a lot of customized characters in a scene, as you guys probably know, that has a real impact on performance. So, we have a lot of testing to do, but at this moment, I really confident that we're not over shooting by any means and it certainly does not take a high-end system today to run what you see.
Kinneas: Are you guys having a lot of fun working on that?
Daron: Yeah, it was great; it really gave the team a big boost. Actually, just next week we're going to get started on the space iteration of that, so everybody's really looking forward to that too.
Zach: Okay. A lot of your team, how shall we put it, are big fans of Star Trek. So how do they feel, getting the chance to make something as massive as an online role playing game for Star Trek? I mean it's the first time anything like this has been done for Star Trek, how do they feel about that?
Daron: It's really exciting for all of us. It's obviously a high-profile project, it's a lot of fun for us to be interacting with the community and have people who, the day we walked in, are already excited about what we're doing. That gives us a lot of motivation. We have a lot of fun reading you guys' comments, especially when we post something you guys like, like the screen shots. So it's really enjoyable and for some people it's just a dream come true because they've been immersed in Star Trek for so long and are such big fans. Mike Stemmle is one that comes to mind, whenever I hear someone ask him how things are going, he'll just deadpan back, "Well, I get paid to think about Star Trek all day." He just loves it, and a lot of us are like that. You know, we pinch ourselves; it's a lot of fun.
Kinneas: It's got to be a great pick-up line at Star Trek conventions, "I'm working on Star Trek Online."
Daron: Yeah. Well, it's also exciting to be doing a MMO. I've been doing console games for the last few years, I've done PC games before and MMOs are just at a scale and complexity and have a social dynamic that is just unlike any other kind of game that you could build. I think that, in and of itself, even Star Trek aside, is really exciting.
Kinneas: Speaking of games that go back a long time, you were involved with Donkey Kong Junior, correct?
Daron: I did a port of Donkey Kong Junior. I didn't actually work on the original; of course that was an arcade game. But, I did a port of it to, I think it was the Commodore 64, so yeah, that was back in the early eighties.
Kinneas: Did you ever think games would get to this point?
Daron: No, if only I had known. It just happened. It's funny because now we have ten million dollar budgets, twenty million dollar budgets; even thirty million dollar budgets are not unheard of these days. It wasn't too long ago that I heard people predicting that we would have a five hundred thousand dollar game budget and I just thought that was ridiculous. Back when it used to be when games were thirty - forty thousand.
Kinneas: Speaking of, the last that we had heard, that there was a twelve million dollar budget, I might be stepping into forbidden question territory here, but has the budget been up since then?
Daron: I don't think that we ever announced any budget that we were operating under and I don't think we will. It's just not typical that we go into that figure, but its substantial.
Victor: So, one question that will probably stem off from the whole budget thing. The change over from Paramount to CBS, has it been easy for Perpetual or has Perpetual basically been sitting in a dark corner ignoring the rest of the world and saying, "Right, don't worry about CBS, we'll just get the game out"?
Daron: Well, we've been in contact with CBS, and Harry, of course was very helpful in orchestrating that handover. I think he will continue to keep his eye on the whole thing. It's not his job anymore, but I think he's going to at least keep a corner of his eye on it. But yeah, we've been in touch with them and they have been fantastic. As far as we are concerned, it's business as usual; we just have some new people that we are in touch with.
[music]
Zach: Let's move on now. One subject that has been somewhat of a controversy in the past couple of years was the decision to only have a single faction at launch with the Federation, including the Klignons, the Trill, the Vulcans, the Andorians and the Tellarites. A lot of people are just wondering why the decision was made to only include one faction at launch and what led to the decision being made and just generally, why?
Daron: Yeah, that's a good question and it's something that, I'll tell you, when I came on the Star Trek Online, it was the first question I asked as well. Believe me, I've actually asked it since then a number of times and talked to the development team, "Is there something we can do?" Here's the answer, if you look at a lot of MMOs with multiple factions, there's really not any significant difference between the mechanics of the factions. They're just really coats of paint on the same basic mechanics.
With Star Trek, it's a little bit more complicated because the Federation works differently than, say, the Klingon Empire or the Romulan Empire. If we were really going to go and do those empires, we would be developing sort of very different sets of mechanics to support those factions and that makes for an extremely complex game and that's on top of just doing the Federation, which is, in and of itself, a very complex game because it has so many facets to it. So, I think it's combination of we'd spread ourselves really thin and not be able to do as good a job as we want to with the Federation. I think we would end up homogenizing all the factions and turning them into more generic factions and we don't want to do that.
The other thing we thought about too is, we're unsure how the split would turn out with multiple factions. What you don't want to end up with is one faction that is substantially larger than another and make it difficult for the people in the smaller factions to do as much trading and do as much grouping and things like that the other faction enjoys. We are concerned about that, I'd say balance is a more minor concern; the larger concern is just the sheer scope of what we are trying to accomplish.
Victor: The problem you may have, just going on about the faction subject a little way along, the problem you may have, you did mention the problems of balancing if you had two major factions at least on the game launch. Let's say, somewhere down the line, I don't know how long this would take, maybe a year after Star Trek Online is launched and every one is in there playing their favorite person. Let's say you release a big expansion, which adds the Romulans. Won't the idea of having a balance issue still come up if you do actually release an expansion with another race? Because what you'll have, is everyone playing everyone, literally everyone playing in one single race and this new faction will launch with no one in it at the start, which means all the players in there have got to level up and do all this stuff to catch up with the Federation. Have you given it any thought to what kind of help or assistance you would give any new faction opening up?
Daron: We've given some cursory thought to that and I don't know if we've spent enough time to solve the problem, but you're absolutely right. I do believe that's a significant obstacle to overcome. If we do build up the Federation with players, and like you said, bring on the Romulans or something like that, of course you'd have the same imbalance. The other thing is we could go and head into other territories. We haven't talked a lot about what kind of expansions we are going to do, but we could head on over to the DS9 section of the galaxy or something like that and do something totally different. So, there's a lot of options and we actually have talked about some ideas on how we would balance out even if we were to stay over in the beta quadrant and what kinds of things we did do to balance out new factions. Honestly, I don't think we've talked about it enough to figure it out.
There's no doubt that we're making some tradeoffs to do this, but we feel that in the long run, we're making the better choice, that we'd rather do one faction really well. We do have some ideas, just in their infancy, on how to incorporate PVP into the game, outside the holodeck even within our initial single faction game. We have been talking about those ideas to help us sustain the game at the higher level. But, at the end of the day, we feel that it's a better choice than to short change the Federation or short change any of the factions.
Zach: I'm actually glad that you did mention PVP because it was something that I was going to bring up. Obviously, only having one faction does limit the PVP somewhat. A lot of people were disgruntled about that because PVP does play a rather large part in MMOs these days. In terms of it being limited to the holodeck for example, do you think that's going to have any adverse effects on how the game will play out? Will it put people off?
Daron: Perhaps there will be some that would choose to play it if it were a multi faction game with a robust PVP who wouldn't if it's a single faction game. I think there is a lot we can do to bring PVP into the game even if it is single faction. The key requirement is that there be some impact on the actual game itself as a result of PVP. For instance, PVP in the holodeck, if all it does is just a match, like playing Battlefield or a first shooter game where there is no persistence. If it was a case where you stepped into the holodeck, you did your match, and came out and there was no consequence on the actual game because of what happened in the holodeck, it would just be a half step towards delivering on PVP. But, if there is some sort of actual tangible benefit you get out of winning in the holodeck, we actually have some other scenarios that we have in mind that could take place outside the holodeck, that I am not ready to go into right now, but that could also happen in the actual game. I think that it helps to even the playing field in that respect. I think that is what people really want is, they want an option to play PVP and have that be a part of the persistence of their character.
Kinneas: I think that's really neat, to kind of change subjects here, that you got Michael Okuda and Andrew Probert on board.
Daron: Yeah. We're really excited about that too. Those guys are great to work with. It's something we only dreamed about when we first started. We contacted them and they were very willing to help us out and it's been a lot of fun, so it's worked out great.
Kinneas: The community is just thrilled that Mr. Probert is involved in designing the galaxy class ship for you.
Daron: Yes we've seen that, that's been a great response. It's certainly helped a lot because we really, as you guys have seen, there are lot of things we need to do in order to turn the Star Trek world into a world that is going to work well for an MMO. It's really helpful to have those guys on board because it makes our changes feel more purposeful, I guess.
Kinneas: You've got a really good art director too, Ken Henderson.
Daron: Thank you very much. He's very talented.
Kinneas: He's been around awhile too. His work, his resume is pretty neat.
Daron: Yeah, we're really excited have him on the team. He and I worked together at LucasArts as well.
[break]
Kinneas: So, how long we taking a break for, Zach?
Zach: Just a minute or two, enough for a bathroom break.
Kinneas: Alright then, why we go ahead and roll the next Fleet Gossip while we're for taking a bit of a break here then?
Zach: Okey-dokey.
[Music]
Fleet Gossip
Faxxer: Just when you thought everything made sense. Just when you felt you can share what you really feel on the boards and just when you thought humanity had finally evolved into that true civilized culture, think again. It's time for Fleet Gossip exploring the lighter side of humanity in our little corner of STOnet life.
Hello friends, I hope all are well today. I bet you wonder who my next victim is, after all it's my way.
Female Voice: Input algorithm not accepted
Faxxer: Could it be Ollie?
Could it be Tyschel?
Could it be you this time,
Or could it be Azarkel?
No matter who I pick,
Oh, my poetic justice will be swift.
This thread was started by tears,
He knew I'd catch his drift.
So, Mister Tears, or should I call you Wesley?
Did you think your words were up there with Elvis Presley?
Not a chance,
Not even close I say,
For after I'm done,
You'll all go away.
Well, here I am, king of this rhyme,
Yeah baby, I win this time.
But, now that I'm the winner,
I feel like I'm just a beginner.
'Cause now, I can't stop,
Can anyone please call me a doc?
Dang it, Tears, you caused this to happen.
My mind is stuck in gear, I can't stop from rappin'.
I just want to get back to normal
And have my usual gig.
But now, I'm feeling really informal,
I feel like a stuck pig!
Oh, the agony of this never ending rant,
I have got to stop, but alas, I can't.
Fine, okay, now I'm begging,
Please stop me, my face is starting to get an egging.
This isn't fair,
This isn't supposed to happen.
If ever I find you Tears,
People, I'm serious,
I'm going to slap him!
So how do I end this horrible rap?
Lanara, Loiusa, anyone please give me a slap!
I swear, I'm going to pull the plug,
This is the act of some evil thug.
Make it stop please,
Anyone there?
This is so bad,
It's messing up my hair.
I'm serious, I'm breaking into a sweat,
This is worse than losing the most horrible bet.
To think,
I'm getting stuck in this rut,
I mean it man,
I'll kick all your butts.
Aha! I think I've figured it out,
Perhaps I'll just end the show now with a pout.
No, that won't do because I have to look cool,
But soon my mouth is going to make me a fool.
Where is Scottie when I need him most?
To beam me away, so I can then boast.
Oh, now dang it, it's hopeless I can tell,
The entire Fleet Gossip is going to smell.
That's it,
Now I have decided
To declare this show over,
Even though I am derided.
So, consider yourself the victor this time Tears,
Next time I'll win by sneaking you beers.
LaBatts it will be,
'Cause that's my choice drink.
Who knows,
Maybe we'll end up in the clink.
But for now, I yield this battle to you,
I need to get out of here, I'm feeling quite blue.
So, there you have it,
I'm my own victim today.
Don't get any ideas people,
I'm still here to stay.
Next time I'll be back with plenty of words,
Man, this poetic justice is for the birds.
You have been initiated into Fleet Gossip. Everything you say can and will be used against you.
[Music]
Interview with Daron Stinnett - Part 2
Kinneas: Okay. We are going to do some community questions now. These are questions we have had submitted from the community over the past two or three weeks, basically since you agreed to do the interview.
The first one is from a guy called opdday2001, and he asks the following, "Considering the near daily visits to multiple forums by the other members of the development team, I assume that you too have been around, or least been kept up to date on the community happenings thus far. My question is, what do you think of the communities so far and what topics, if any, are important to the developers?"
Daron: It's been an interesting ride. We announced this product early and the community coalesced right away around this game. At first it was a little daunting, here we are just coming off of securing the license and already we had a fan community going before we even had the design under way and things like that. What we decided to do was to embrace it and to try to involve the community as much as possible into what we were doing and get their feedback on our ideas and also use as an opportunity to hear other ideas, in this input and the process.
What we tried to do was be as open as possible. I think we've been successful at being more open about what we're doing, both in terms of what process is and what decisions we are making than any other major MMO in development or that has been development. It's been very satisfying for us.
It's a bit of a trick for us at the same time because what we want to do is we want to stay under the radar. We want to expose what we're doing to the fan community that we have. We don't want to make that grow too large because if we start to build too much expectation then it just starts to consume a lot of our time away from developments and so on and so forth. We are trying to scale our audience and the people that we are interacting with to match where we are in development. And that's why, for instance when I say that we did this look development back in December and we are only letting the screen shots out today is that we are conscious when we go and release something like screen shots, it just starts to build more expectation, which of course leads to more interview requests, more media requests and things like that. These things can be a distraction for the team; we're trying to stay very focused on building a really good game at the moment. That's just a little background with the community.
With the community that we do have, it has been wonderful. They've been a constant source of great ideas. We actually have a mailing list we call STO Community Ideas, that circulate within the team where people forward interesting threads where you guys have come up with excellent thoughts, ideas, features, things like that that we think are really valuable. Of course, we also like to hear what you think about our ideas, so that's why we set up the blog so that we could post our ideas out there and get feedback.
One of things that I enjoy most about the community is its diversity. What's most helpful to us is when we get ideas from all kinds of different points of view and that's exactly what we're getting.
Kinneas: Where there any topics that were important to developers? I'm sure they all are, but -
Daron: Yeah, I don't think that there is one any particular category of topics. One of the things in the development updates that I have been doing, one of the things I want to start doing with the very next update, which I'm overdue to do now, is sending back out to the community what kind of topics we have been forwarding around and looking at, we read a lot of them. Everybody on the team reads a lot of the topics. I want to send out some of the ones that we found to be particularly interesting or informative.
Just looking here at some of the stuff that we have looked at over the last month or two, there was a topic on which items is loot, we found that very interesting. There were a lot of great ideas in there. There was a long topic on diplomacy, with some different ideas on out to make diplomacy work in the game, that was forwarded around. A thread on first and last character names. Another good one was called "Wildlife in STO", it was talking about all kinds of different creatures you might run into, a very good list of creatures that people had come up with that might make an appearance in the game. We just love to get that kind of information.
Another one that was very useful was one particular article from a guy who came in, I don't remember his name, but he came onto the board and posted a long article on what he thought Star Trek Online might be like before he had read anything, he hadn't read the FAQ, hadn't read the forums, he just put out this sort of a blank slate, here's what I think it was going to be like. He was very articulate and he had some really interesting ideas and wasn't far off from what I think we had in mind in a lot of ways, but it is very enjoyable reading. It's helpful to get that kind of perspective, a fresh perspective on what Star Trek Online might be about.
Zach: Just to follow up on that question slightly, the fact that you go around reading all these topics. Do you think any of the opinions, any of the ideas that people do state in these threads; do you think that any of those will affect the development of the game? Do they steer the direction that you might go in, in some aspect?
Daron: Yeah, absolutely. That's why we're doing it, that's why we're involved with the community now and why we have been involved in the community is so we can utilize your participation as a sounding board for our ideas and also so we can hear your own ideas, it's helped enormously. Like I said, it's a tradeoff because it's certainly an effort, and when we are a very small team, it does take a lot of effort to continue to make posts and to write blogs and get materials ready to send out and screen shots and things like that. But, on balance we think it is worth it. The tradeoff will be the people that are on there now, they've been very dedicated to Star Trek Online, and been patient, I think, relative to most MMOs, when they start getting their communities going, it's going to be a long wait until the game comes out, but we felt that people would appreciate the opportunity to get involved early and those people interested in that kind of opportunity would be willing to wait until we finally ship.
Zach: Okay. Victor, next question please.
Victor: Oops, sorry! This one is from DAB, "Has Perpetual looked at design elements of other MMOs, like City of Heroes or World of Warcraft and thought about possibly adding some elements of those MMOs into Star Trek Online?"
Daron: Oh, sure. I think that's a normal part of any development cycle. I don't think anybody creates a game and walls themselves off from the competition and other ideas. Every game that comes out, builds upon on the ideas of other games that have come before it, and certainly we are no exception. We make a point of playing a competitive MMO at least once a week, just as a team. We all get into it and play it as a team. I think right now we have been playing City of Villains, but we will move on to some other games soon. But, we also all individually play various MMOs and certainly take into account what they have done. Not only try to find the best ideas in various MMOs, but also figure out how we can improve upon the existing ideas that we see.
Star Trek itself does demand some really innovative and new solutions to problems. We have plenty of work to do to solve some of the problems that Star Trek presents, some of the challenges, I think, Star Trek presents for a MMO world, so it's nice to be able to look to other MMOs and see what they have done in order to allow us to focus on those things that make Star Trek Star Trek.
Kinneas: Folks like Gaming Steve have said there are a lot of inherent flaws in sci-fi MMOs; do you find that to be the case?
Daron: I think sci-fi certainly is a challenge. I think he does make good points about space and the inherent emptiness of it, the difficulty of being off on exploration and things like that. But, I think what we found is that Star Trek gives us a lot to work with in the space environment. The fact that it is both a space and a ground property, it's sort of demands to be both, and, of course the game will be both, I think helps us enormously as well. I think we're fairly confident that we are going to prove Gaming Steve wrong on this point. I think we have some extremely innovative ideas for how to make the experience of being in space much more warm, much more human and much more interesting to explore than you might naturally expect.
Kinneas: The next question I have is from 68th, and he says, "Hi there, this is 68th. I think we really need to get some info on the combat systems because nobody really knows what PE's position is. Is it going to be similar to first or third person shooter?" and then he goes on to say, "Is going to the traditional RPG combat or is the game going to determine your aim, movement and fire?"
Daron: Well, it is RPG combat, we are a MMORPG. There are some mechanics that work well for RPGs, they're inherently stat based and ultimately they're about your character more then they are about the player. It's about building up a character, so the game is determining how well your character is going to do in any particular battle based on upon how you built up your character. That's fundamentally the way we're building this game. We feel like it's important that we stay with that combat paradigm in order to remain a MMORPG versus becoming something like Battlefield Two or something like that where it is only marginally persistent.
Victor: I've got one question. I think it was last year, Perpetual did say that their special site and forum for Star Trek Online would be opened up some time in 2006. Any word on how the progress is going on with that?
Daron: It's something that I'm thinking about, when we want to do that. Again, coming back to my earlier point, we are trying to be careful to make our presence in the gaming community at large to reflect our state of development. We don't want to get ahead of ourselves, we don't want to set expectations too high, draw a lot of people into the fold and then make them wait a long time. We really like the low-key nature that it is right now and if the people who really are strongly interested in while we're doing find the way to us, through your guys' sites primarily, are the people that are very dedicated. I'm sensitive about, again, creating too big of a presence, drawing in too large of an audience and, of course when we go out and launch an official site, that will be a big deal, get a lot of press and set a lot high expectations and grow the community, so, I'm careful about that. I think what we had in there was Q1 of 2006, so that means according to that, I have until March 31st, 2006 to get it up and running. Honestly, I don't know whether I'll get it up that soon or not, it may be more towards summer before we get it up and launched.
Kinneas: Anyway, this next question is from Jean Marciniak, I hope I pronounced that right Jean, he's from STGU, and this questions stood out from all three. "When in the game will you be given a map of the universe to set course for stars, planets etc.?"
Daron: Well, I think that will happen fairly early in the game. The players will get the opportunity, at least in a small shuttle, to range out. I think they'll be limited on their range and as they grow in rank, they'll get access to larger and larger ships, which will essentially let them go deeper and deeper into space. We are not going to be limiting the player in a big way at all at the time you start the game. There maybe some limitations when you first start, but we don't expect it to be more than a rank before you might be setting out on your own into space.
Zach: So, in effect, you can just hop into a shuttle from the planet and just pick a direction and just go?
Daron: Yeah, but you're not gonna be able to hop into even a medium or large ship until higher ranks in the game.
Zach: Cool, Kinneas the interview is going real well; but I'll tell you, I'm getting a bit peckish, so I'm just going to run down to the ship mess hall and grab a bite to eat.
Kinneas: Alright, well, grab me a coffee while you're down there. I'm gonna go ahead and throw this weeks Fleet Radio. I've been wanting to play that Arthur Yoria song for everybody.
Zach: Okey-Dokey. We'll be back right after Fleet Radio.
Fleet Radio
[song]
Interview with Daron Stinnett - Part 3
Zach: Okay, Kinneas, can we have the next community question, please?
Kinneas: Sure. This one comes from Maziwrath, "Maziwrath"? Hope I'm saying that right: 'One thing I have been wondering about is which ships they are definitely planning to include in the game, or at least wanting to include at this point'? That's a pretty big question!
Daron: Yeah, it is a big question. I'm sure there'll be a long, long list. And honestly, we haven't even started that list. We know some basic ones, some of the prominent TNG-era ships
Kinneas: Oh, I forgot to put in my two cents from Warchild over at CUGS. He wants his peregrine. There's so many people out there that want fighters
Daron: Yeah, I don't know that we'll end up getting fighters. It's not really the focus of this game, at this point, you know, individuals out in ships doing fighter combat type of thing. It's more about larger ships, though we will have some smaller ships, more sort of runabout types of things, shuttles. But there'll be a long list; we just haven't developed it yet, and I think it's, obviously we have an enormous number of ships to draw from in all eras, plus we'll be designing our own ships, and, I think, Chris Smith's sent me an email about, could we design one and name it after Harry Lang, and we thought that was a very good idea so we'll see the U.S.S. Harry Lang in there, whatever that ends up looking like. But yeah, it's gonna be a fun thing. I think you can do a lot with that; I think there could be a lot of great opportunities to do promotions or contests and things like that, where people get to submit their ship designs and name a ship or something like that; so it's gonna be a lot of fun, it's gonna be a big part of the game, I'm sure.
Zach: Okay, the next community question I've got here is actually an audio one, so I'm just going to attempt to play the audio question for you, if you just bear with me for two seconds.
Daron: Sure.
Ztrike: Hi, Daron, this is Ztrike, and thanks for taking my question. My question, actually, is a two part question, both related to types of players playing Star Trek Online. Part of the question is regarding the role player characters who like to role play'and specifically to do with servers. MMOs in the past have had servers for North American players or European players and such. I was wondering if Perpetual had any thought into creating role playing servers specifically for the players who really like to get into character and role play with others?
And my second part of the question is regarding the casual to the more long-term player. There are players who will log on for simply 15-20 minutes, and there are players who will log on for hours and hours, and I was wondering how Perpetual planned to tackle those types of players? Will there be access to quick, simple missions that the short-term player would like to enjoy for 15-20 minutes? But I'm talking, not something as simple as a trading mission or a delivery mission. I'd like to see some simple, short-term missions that will really play into characters' development. Obviously it will not have such an impact as a player that spends an hour to two hours, but my concern is, there are players who obviously have more time than others to sit down and log on and play Star Trek Online. So I was wondering how Perpetual would tackle that sort of problem, where players will have more time than others to spend on developing their characters? So thanks for taking my question, Daron, and I'm really looking forward to playing Star Trek Online.
Daron: Good question. So on the role-playing servers, yes, it's something that we certainly have considered. I can't say that we have firm plans, 'cause we just haven't even gotten to the point where we've started to break down what servers and what territories and that kind of thing; we'll be doing that, probably, later in development. But certainly it makes sense to me to have role-play servers set aside for people who really want to get into character. We'd even thought about certain kinds of restrictions that we can put on those worlds to reinforce role playing of one type or another, and help people feel like their world is more uniform with the role-playing expectations.
So yeah, we've certainly thought about things like that. And then on the second question, about play time, yeah, this is something that we're also very sensitive to. We want this to be a game people can quickly get in and out of or choose to spend a lot of time there; so I think that, we'll be addressing that by making sure that there are plenty of smaller, bite-size missions that people can do and not, saving sort of the long, epic missions for higher-level content. We also have some great ideas for some offline advancement opportunities, things to help people when they're not able to play as much as other players. This is something that's sort of a pet peeve of mine. Since I'm so busy making the game, I can't always play as often as my friends play when I play MMO's so I personally have given a lot of thought to how to help players that can't play as often keep up with their buddies.
[radio break]
Zach: Okay, back when Star Trek Online was first announced, and you got out an FAQ fairly quickly, and obviously it was one of the early versions of the FAQ, in there you did actually state that a beta for Star Trek Online would be, I think it was end of 2006, beginning of '07, and that was later on removed from the FAQs. I was just wondering what the official position was on that?
Daron: Well I think that our beta will probably be in, we're anticipating that it will be in the Summer of 2007 right now. We still have quite a bit of work to do to flesh out the design; although the design is very far along at this point. We have a lot of work to do to, you know, part of pre-production is in testing things, prototyping things, trying out methods and techniques to figure out how long it's going to take us to build the design that we have. So we're still in that process. So the reason, that date that was in there, was pulled out about the time I started because frankly it was just too early to be announcing when it would be coming out, when we didn't have a solid plan for the game. So we're getting closer to that solid plan, and that Summer of '07 for a beta date I think is reasonable, it's a good guess from my point of view right now. So I think that within another, certainly within another six months we'll have all the data and plans in place to know exactly when we think we're gonna get it out on the street.
Victor: Will the beta be open to worldwide or will it just be North America and Canada like most betas are?
Daron: Well, I think that because it's the, of course because it's the Internet, people can log into the beta anywhere. But honestly, we haven't made any specific plans for our beta, so I can't really answer that question, whether we would have specific servers set up for, you know, different territories in beta or not.
Kinneas: Glenn had said early on that Star Trek Online was not in a position to be canon-defining, and since the announcement that Andrew Prober has come online, in his press release it said that he was creating new things that would be considered canon-defining and that you would, possibly, be able to break into that territory with Star Trek Online. Is that the position?
Daron: You know, canon, I think, is the
Victor: A headache?
Daron: Certainly that. No, certainly it's the shows, and the movies, and it's the history that's there from those two sources; and it's a word that most, you know, I think, we think about it in the terms of what Andrew is saying, and what it really comes down to is for CBS now: what do they see as the rule set, the bible, for the Star Trek series?
And I think, I have to imagine that if they see something interesting that's been defined in a game like ours, that they would not hesitate to use it if they thought that it was useful to them in a new series or something like that. But at the same time, I think, to say that we are defining canon would be to say that we are somehow defining Star Trek for CBS, and I don't think that's the case. I think that if they saw something that they didn't like that we did they certainly would go the other way. And I don't think we want to be in a position where what we're doing is defining canon, because that would only serve to restrict us, because then everybody would be looking at it with a much more wary eye about what are we doing that would potentially affect other media down the road.
Kinneas: As CBS plans its other Star Trek series' down the road, will Star Trek Online be in a position to work with those storylines and evolve with what they put out there?
Daron: Certainly I think we would look into that. We don't know anything about their plans right now, down the road, but it's certainly, we see it as a great opportunity to get involved in that. I think that CBS would see that as an opportunity as well. So, certainly.
Zach: Another important topic that I feel should be brought up, just before the interview comes to a close, is non-combat professions, the subject of non-enlisted positions, just basically jobs and professions in the game that are outside of Starfleet. I mean, are there any plans for anything like that at the moment?
Daron: There are no plans outside of Starfleet; everything that we're doing happens inside of Starfleet. I think that there will end up being plenty of non-combat things to do within Starfleet. I think it's just a natural part of Star Trek that you have that. That said, we're not gonna make a game where you can, say, be an engineer and all you do is fix things, you know, you never have to go out and get into combat. It would just, for us to head down that path would a) we'd be inventing all new modes of playing, which is extremely difficult to do, and b) we'd find ourselves in a position where we'd be developing multiple games simultaneously and that would distribute our focus unacceptably. So yeah, every class in play is gonna involve combat, but like I said, there's gonna be a lot of opportunities for non-combat advancement and non-combat activities.
Kinneas: Starship battles themselves, are they gonna be fairly canon, or are they gonna be a little bit more like the Starfleet battles rule sets?
Daron: Well I think, we look to canon to influence everything that we planned for space combat. I think, everything is somehow grounded, you know, grounded somewhere, somehow; and Star Trek's really great in this way because they've done so many different things, there's a lot of material to draw from. And at the end of the day we're focused on making a fun game-playing experience; we will look anywhere and everywhere to find what we need in order to deliver that fun game-playing experience. And, you know, we recognize that, for instance, most of the battles, space battles you see in the show are phasers and photon torpedoes, with a little diplomacy mixed in. We're certain that if our balance was weighted in the same way, people would get quickly tired of that kind of mechanics, so we'll be adding a lot into the mix, but like I said, it's always going to be somehow, somewhere, rooted in canon or in something that we've seen before.
Victor: Let's say, when the game launches, right, you say the RM is generally based on, along the line of the clan mold, even though the clan mold of Star Trek gaming is frankly falling apart, which should hopefully be reversed when Star Trek Legacy gets released, but a lot of the fleets are thinking to themselves, 'Well, you know, there's basically going to be no all, out-and-out ship type battles for a little while.' What kind of incentives will player groups, the clans, and even to a certain extent single players have when they actually nip into the game? What's going to be the driving force that makes people say, 'This is the game I want to spend all my waking life in!'
Daron: Well, I think the things that will propel the player forward are, of course, achieving rank, and the privileges that will go with rank; and exploration.
We're very excited about exploration in this game. It's not only fundamental to Star Trek, it's something we have to deliver on. But I think the very nature, because we're doing the galaxy, you know, it's not a continent, like in most MMOs, that's somewhat landlocked. It's a wide-open place; it's easy for us to continue to add content to the universe and for people to go out and discover it, and I think that's gonna be a huge draw. And, of course, I think the other thing that's gonna be, maybe even foremost in all of this, is just the ability to acquire some new and some not-so-new, some well-known and some brand new ships and upgrades and things like that, and build up your ship; and ultimately, build up your ship and take out your friends in that ship and go out on missions. I mean, how can it get any more exciting than that? It seems like a good deal to me.
Kinneas: That sounds very exciting to me. Yeah, I know where I'm spending the next ten years of my life!
Zach: Okay, one other question. Voice-over-IP has been making an appearance in a lot of more recent games lately as a form of communication. Are there any plans for it in Star Trek Online at the moment?
Daron: Well, of course, people can certainly already play in just about any game with voice-over-IP, with things like xFire, without the game supporting it directly, so one way or the other, people are going to be able to do it with Star Trek Online, but I guess the question is are we gonna support it natively within the game, and it's something that I would like to do. Like I said, until we get done doing all our planning I can't say for sure, but I agree with you that it's a natural in Star Trek, and it's one of the features that I expect will rise to the top as something we expect to do.
Zach: It would just add so much to the game play, just to be sitting on the bridge and instead of having to type out your orders to all your little crewmen, just saying to them what you want done; it would just add so much to the experience if, you know what I mean.
Victor: I can just imagine myself sitting on the bridge of a Galaxy Class, bawling down the microphone and telling people how to up and go and do something. That would be fun!
Daron: I don't, I haven't looked into it very much other than to think about, 'Yeah, that would be a great idea.' ... I could end up eating my words. We'll see.
Kinneas: Is the holodeck still proceeding? Are folks still working on that?
Daron: Well, the holodeck exists right now in the design; so no one's actually building it, we're focused on building the main experience, which of course is space combat and ground combat and all of the activities that the player does to traverse around the world and deal with other players and whatnot. But the holodeck, at the very least, becomes a gateway of different kinds of content; and so, beyond that there are some interesting plans, but those things are probably further down the road. We'll see how what kind of progress we've made in other areas that are more critical.
Kinneas: Somebody wanted to know if Star Trek Online was going to be endorsed by NASA?
Daron: I certainly hope so. I know Mike Okuda has a lot of good contacts at NASA, so maybe he can work something out for us.
Kinneas: Yeah, a lot of folks believe that, you know, with Star Trek being so'again there's that word'canon, you know, with space being so canon, it's something that, even the technical systems on the ships being downright scientifically canon, a lot of folks see it as a way to, even though Star Trek was never meant to really teach people anything, it was supposed to be entertainment, that there's something to be learned from it.
Daron: Certainly. You know, what we, what I'm most excited about is the hopeful, idealistic vision of the future and the idea of people getting along. I think it's so great, because to me that's what MMOs are all about: people come from all walks of life, and all backgrounds, and all countries, and get together in an MMO, and they go out and have shared experiences together and get to be friends. And, you know, a lot of people end up, of course, getting to know each other in an environment that allows them to do that, where they might not get to know each other in real life, and that's what I love about MMOs, and I think it's very consistent with Star Trek. So that's, I feel like, from my point of view, that the biggest payoff that we can make is to deliver on that aspect of Star Trek.
[Start non-interview Segment]
daNo's Commentary
Zach: Last break Kineas, but man I can't believe that subspace interference.
Kinneas: Yeah it's pretty bad Zach. I hope the listeners aren't wanting to kill us at this point. Folks, boy we're sorry about that. We're getting solar flares or something.
Ensign: Captain- Incoming message from Chief Engineer Dano.
Kinneas: Acknowledged ensign. Put it on loud speaker.
Dano: Hey everyone this is Dano, the STGU web master . Isn't Zach doing a great job? I think so. Now if you know the beginnings of HF, you know it started out as an interesting idea by ChessNess, the STGU founder. He produced the first couple of episodes, but then the Zach, a member of the forums said "Hey. I want to get involved, what can I do?" So after a few meetings of the two people, Zach became the Hailing Frequency producer. Now recently Kinneas of the STO.net forums a has been added to the team, and they've produced a few episodes of their own and additionally, just very recently Faxxer of the STO.net forums was added to the teams as well.
Now these guys got off their butts and said "Hey we want to do some thing for the community". Now if you can see how big of a success Hailing Frequency is you can get a glimpse of what I'm requesting of the community. What Star Trek Gaming Universe is looking for is we are looking for site directors. What these people would be doing is gathering news, information, screenshots, and files for a whole bunch of Star Trek games, especially the new ones such as Star Trek Online, Star Trek Tactical Assault and Star Trek: Legacy.
So if you are interested - in any means possible - it doesn't matter if you have experience using PHP, HTML or photoshop. What you should do is contact us at stgu.team@gmail.com or alternatively you can just private message myself Dano or Trickster in the forums.
All it takes is you take the initiative, contact us , and you could be the next site director for Star Trek Online, or Star Trek legacy. If you are interested again - give us a shout and we'll hook you up
Until then "Live long and Frag often"
[End Segment]
Interview with Daron Stinnett - Part 4
Zach: Okay, I think we're getting to the point now where we're obviously getting to the end of the interview; we've taken up quite a lot of your time, Daron. So if there's any last questions that either of you'd like to ask?
Kinneas: Where to begin? Where to begin? A whole year's worth of questions! You know, I think I would be letting a lot of people down if I didn't ask this question: I know this is way looking forward considering where you guys are at, but, there's a lot of talk about going towards 2009, as everybody goes all-digital, that we're going to see an MMO tie into a television show, and a lot of folks think that Star Trek Online needs to be the MMO that ties into a television show, and so I think that they would get mad at me if I didn't ask that. Is that the big goal for Star Trek Online down the road? Has anybody mentioned it at all?
Daron: I just wrote that down, it's a great idea. I can't say that's on the drawing board; but it's very exciting and I think you're right, it's a natural.
Kinneas: Yeah, a lot of folks would like to see the writers, or at least, our actions, in some way affect the overall storyline of what we're seeing on TV as well, so at the end-of-the-season hanger, if the Romulans come storming in at the border, we as the subscribers have to go deal with that situation, and based on how we deal with the situation, that will affect how the writers proceed with the next season.
Daron: Yeah, that's very cool, and it's possibilities like that that get me very excited about what we're doing, and to get to that level means we've made a game that appeals at a very wide level, that would feel like it would be a match with a television show, which of course has very broad appeal, and if we do that, then how wonderful is that for everybody?
Victor: A question just popped into my head, it's based on an MMO which I'm actually playing just now, made by a Swedish company called Project Utopia. Has Perpetual ever considered the idea of maybe allowing real-life companies in the real world actually advertise in the game itself? Now, there's a reason I'm asking that question. If that could happen, and if enough businesses were interested in advertising inside the actual game itself, the possibility could arise of maybe, instead of having Star Trek Online, as a game, be subscriber-based, you could give out Star Trek Online free. Now, wait a minute! I know you're having a heart attack right now! You could give out Star Trek Online free, but if the player wants to progress in any way, then they would have to get a subscription, they would actually have to pay for it; but at the same time, the real-life businesses, advertising inside the game, would cover the costs - have you thought about that.
Daron: Well, we are looking at different models, for, you know, different kinds of subscription models, pay-to-play type models, pay-as-you-go type models. We are thinking about this, different kinds of models. We don't have any firm plans for anything outside the traditional subscription base; but it certainly has been on our mind, it's something we will look into, and I would think it's likely that we'll end up experimenting with those different kinds of models. As for advertising explicitly, you know, personally, I don't want to see advertisements from the real world in my fantasy world. Not in Star Trek. It might work in some MMOs, but not in Star Trek.
Kinneas: What about as a nostalgia?
Daron: Yeah, some product placement.
Kinneas: Well, somebody mentioned that, yeah, exactly, that in certain environments within the United Federational of Planets, like a bar, that you could see a 'Remember Pepsi?', that it could be done, that in certain locations it could be done in a meaningful way, without, you know, hey, you're flying by a McDonalds.
Daron: That is a very good idea. You're right. There's probably good ways to put it in there. You know, obviously, you don't want to open up the floodgates with that stuff.
Kinneas: No, of course not. Yeah, and that's the first thing people think right away, you know, 'I don't want to see it!' And again, if we think about the far-flung future as it really may be, I can't see humans giving up their nostalgia; we just love too many things that are old.
Daron: No, yeah, it's a very interesting idea. I appreciate that.
Kinneas: And I'd also hate to see Star Trek Online lose millions of dollars, potentially, in revenue from advertisements. Especially if you get the Brookings Institute to approve the list of people that might be around in a thousand years, a hundred years.
Zach: Okay, guys, I think we've probably taken enough of Daron's time now. So, unless there's anything else you'd like to add, Daron, in conclusion?
Daron: Well, I think, nothing springs to mind about the game. You guys have asked great questions and given me a chance to, I hope, give some new answers and firm up some things in certain areas. I do want to thank you guys for this opportunity, and even more so, thank you guys for what you've done for the community and supporting the fans out there, creating the forums and moderating the forums, and it's really been helpful to us, and it's been a very enjoyable experience.
Kinneas: It's a pleasure; and we hope you consider us for future episodes as things release.
Daron: Absolutely.
Zach: Yeah, thank you very much for your time, Daron, we definitely appreciate it.
Victor: Yup, cheers Daron!
Daron: Alright, thank you.
[End Interview]
Competition
Kinneas: Dang, Zach that went really well. It wasn't even as scary as I thought it was going to be . Daron turned out to be a really great guy. I hope we continue to get more interviews like you said. Oh, hey, before we go we'd better tell everyone about the competition.
Zach: Sure thing Kinneas! As I said earlier on this is the first ever Hailing Frequency competition. Now I'm hoping we can make these competitions a regular thing, however it's going to be largely funded by sponsors and donations. No money, no Comps
I got the idea for this weeks competition from a a radio station that I listen to when I drive in to work in the morning, Essex FM. The competition this week is called "Hailing Frequency Secret Sound".
Here's how it works: In a moment I'm going to play an audio clip or sequence from a famous Star Trek moment. Listeners have to correctly guess what show or movie the clip is from, and what moment in the show or movie it is from.
You can send in your answers message a number of ways. By email: send an email to competitions@HailingFrequency.co.uk include in you answer, your name, and be sure to include the words "Hailing Frequency Secret Sound" in the subject line.
You can also send in your message by phone, but only if you are ion the United States, you can call 206.222.2324 and leave a voice mail with you message. Again be sure to include your answer, your name and a email address or telephone number we can contact you by if you win.
If we receive more than one correct answer all answers will be put into a randomization program and a winner will be chosen at random. The winner of this competition brand new factory sealed copy Star Trek Away Team, and Star Trek Hidden Evil
Ok folks here's this weeks Secret Sound, listen carefully
[Secret Sound]
Zach: There you have it folks that's this week's Secret Sound. Now you can find all the information for this weeks competition on the Hailing Frequency website at: www.HailingFrequency.co.uk
Speaking of the website we are launching a brand new Hailing Frequency website to coincide with this episode you are listening to. Chances are the new web site's up now that you are listening. That address again: HailingFrequency.co.uk
Kinneas: All right folk that pretty much wraps up the show. Remember to get you answers in for the Secret Sound. Time is running out. Speaking of times is that the game clock ?
Zach: What game clock?
Kinneas: Do you not hear that noise - that ticking noise ?
Zach: Oh, Yeah, what is that. It's a bomb!
Kinneas: You don't think it was....
[explosion]
[radio break]
