What's up with Star Trek Online?

MMORPG.com has a piece talking with Daron Stinnett, producer for the preproduction-phase MMOG Star Trek Online. They discuss the decision to only include the Federation in the game's launch, the gameplay both on starships and planetside, and the many ideas still being nailed down for the title. From the article: "The uniforms are a good example of an area where we've needed to evolve the look of Star Trek to support the game. Star Trek uniforms from the shows tend to be very subtle in their variation, which of course works when you're filming close enough to make the actors themselves the stars of the show. But for an MMO, It's well understood that giving players the ability to customize their look as their character evolves is an important part of any MMO as is the ability to recognize player rank and specialty from a distance. So we have created new uniforms that are still very recognizable as Star Trek, but with recognition and customization features that will work well in our game world."

Comments

Re:Tragic result of having no ideas at all

[cgenman]

Everyone making an MMORPG has NO ideas and is copying the people who went before them, its really very sad. Why not get some people who
a) Have some ideas on how to do an original and fresh MMORPG and
b) are die hard trekkies who would laugh customisable uniforms out the room

Because when a financer sees a 30 million dollar MMORPG development price tag, they want to ensure that the game will be a financial success by copying everyone else's financial successes (doesn't work, sadly). They want lots of control over who gets into positions of power in the game development team, and largely put in other toothbrush salesmen who also don't know the industry. These people generally hire the kinds of people who will do their bidding like a good employee, and listen too much to the marketing department.

With so much money riding on the line, the project generally changes direction in a major way a few times over its life, depending upon the nervous whims of the leader or financers. Workflow and cost considerations ensure that the moment-to-moment content for the game is created by interns with no shipped titles under their belts. Employees get quickly burned out like some resource to be expended.

On the other hand, you really do need some degree of visual customization of your avatar in a mmporpg, much more so than in a regular game. Otherwise the world quickly becomes a creepy endeavor of bumping into your long lost twins.