Jonathan S. Harbour

I’ve had a little more free time on my hands this summer than I have had in the last ten or so years, which has given me time to read a lot more and to think about the world a bit. A hectic life of rushing to work, rushing through work, rushing home, taking the kids to their various activities, and so on, tends to isolate one from the goings-on in the world at large, something I’ve gotten back in touch with in recent months. One trend I’ve gotten caught up with again, after a long hiaitus, is the video game press.

[Holy crap, it was 118 degrees in Phoenix today!]

Back in the old days of computing, progress was slow enough for there to be magazines dedicated to just one computer–not one brand, but one model! There was once a magazine devoted to just Commodore PET (it evolved into COMPUTE! magazine) , and many others which either took on new identities over the years or folded as the computers became obsolete.

Today, most of the modern video game magazines have gone under, and for good reason–they abandoned good writing for good advertising, let go of creativity and embraced game reviews, and in so doing, became robotic repeaters of “someone else’s” information like today’s ZDNet.com (formerly the great PC Magazine which I had read for over a decade until around 2005). PC Gamer and Computer Gaming World survived for a time, but it was difficult to survive the review-oriented junk mags like Game Informer.

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Game design theorists call the study of gameplay “funativity”, and this is becoming known as the field of ludology–what makes games fun, why do we play them, and how does one create a fun game that will (most likely) be worth some money for a studio? These are questions that not even the masters of this new academic field can answer yet, so young is the field. Game theory, however, has far-reaching and widespread adoption in many other fields, so there is something to our desire to play (as adults).

Star Trek Online is one game that tries very, very hard to be a game, while forgetting that it is a popular universe–and gamers want the universe, not the game. Developed by Cryptic Studios under license from Paramount, published by Atari–a nameplate for Vivendi–by today’s standards, STO is a pretty good game. Touted as a massively multiplayer online game (MMOG), it is really just a session-based online game with more in common with Diablo and Starcraft than World of Warcraft–a true non-session MMOG. What this means is that, despite your ability to see many other players in the game, you will never actually play with more than about 32 players at a time–maximum. Gameplay, in practice, is rather more like playing solo alongside a few others, to whom you’ll give a wave in passing.

Here’s the problem with STO: It tries too hard to be World of Warcraft, when it should be Star Trek. No one who goes to the trouble of buying STO and creating an account is going in expecting to go on a 40-player raid in a high-end raid dungeon. The STO version of which is an enemy starbase or basically just an area of space into which random Klingon ships appear, somewhat endlessly (to get around server load, Cryptic will only allow players to engage server-controlled enemy ships in waves–sorry Trek fans, there’s no Wolf 359 available here, although it makes me wonder why not? The battles are meaningless because it’s every bit like players circle-strafing each other–in starships. There is no fleet action, because there’s no commander, which is idiotic. Even in a real MMOG like WoW, there is a raid leader who directs the team.

The first problem with STO is, it doesn’t feel at all like the Star Trek universe, which is made up of hierarchical military organizations with Grand Admirals and such at the top and various levels of officers who go up in rank and earn commands with more and more responsibility. On a typical starship, like a U.S. Navy vessel, there really are only a handful of officers–perhaps a few dozen among thousands of enlisted crew members. All officers must attend Starfleet Academy, while enlisted crew simply show up at a recruiting center and go through basic training. None of this is simulated in the game; instead, there is random chaos as thousands of players work in tandem to complete missions in order to gain influence points to buy new starships, crew, and more advanced gear–with no upper command structure and no real cooperation. A starship captain does not receive orders–you’ll receive suggestions, with pretty please on top.

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