TenTonHammer’s Q&A with Amy Skopik and Craig Zinkievich about the User Interface for Star Trek Online

Nero — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 22:41:34 +0000

TenTonHammer recently sat down with Amy Skopik, UI Designer for Star Trek Online and Craig Zinkievich Executive Producer and got there thoughts on how the games was going.

This Q&A is all about UI for Star Trek Online:

” A fundamental key to making a good MMOG is its User Interface. A poorly fashioned interface will make it hard to enjoy a game, no matter what its other assets, and a good UI will be almost transparent as users start up the game for the first time and begin taking control, almost without thinking about it. We spoke this week to Amy Skopik, UI Designer for Star Trek Online and Craig Zinkievich, Executive Producer to unveil some of the challenges and innovation of STO’s interface. ”

That sounds like a pretty good statement, nothing kills the mood faster than a poor UI. The best games I played started with my Avatar doing what it was supposed to without me thinking to hard about it and for me the best solution would be a PC using a 360 gamepad and there is encouraging news on that front:

In a Q&A with Strategy Informer Craig was asked: ” You’ve mentioned before that you might like to take STO onto the Home Console – provided you do, it would be the most serious attempt since FFXI – what are your thoughts about this genre and consoles “

Craig Zinkievich:” We definitely would like to see Star Trek Online on the console. We think that games being on multiple platforms including MMO’s are the future of gaming”

Champions also made this claim and it still has not happened but the good news is that Champions seems to work quit well with the 360 gamepad on a PC according articles I have reed. Forums seem to agree It’s as if the game was designed for a later release on the Xbox 360. Check out Tobold’s MMORPG Blog he has an interesting article on it. Star Trek Online will use the same engine as Champions and if you go by Craig’s statement to strategy Informer then one has reason for hope. Just to put things in prospective no MMO of Star Trek’s scope has actually made it to the console since FFXI, and many have tried non have succeeded. Square Enix has recently announced a release date for FFXIII of March 9, 2010 and it will be PS3 exclusive, but it’s FFXIV the will be Sony’s MMO contender on the PS3 that I’m waiting to see. To Read the Full interview go to TenTonHammer.

FFXIV Casts its Second Trailer Spell

Nero — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 20:54:50 +0000

Having played FFXI for many years I was interested when FFXIV was hinted at in Sony’s E3 presentation as almost an after thought to FFXIIV. The problem with 13 was it looked dull, when compared to say Guild Wars were your Flaming Sword actually flamed and soloing past Level 10 was a death sentence, not all of us what to spend all of our time fighting in a party and that’s after the BS of finding a party to begin with. Then along came WOW and the Wii and game makers seen that there is a market for a more casual gaming experience and lo and behold we will play just ask the 11 million WOW players. lets hope the guys at Square Enix have listened and learned and you never know I my be giving the mobs a beat down in a FF game again. Nothing comes close to An MMO for a true gaming experience yes parties and all. Oh yes the Trailer which looks great but we have all be fooled by those before what I find interesting is that the characters are the same the names have changed and the world is more technically advanced opening the way for a wider veriety of more powerful Items Source: Massively

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TenTonHammer’s Q&A with Amy Skopik and Craig Zinkievich about the User Interface for Star Trek Online

FFXIV Casts its Second Trailer Spell