With the new Star Trek game hitting shelves in little over a week, TrekCore caught up with Paramount’s Creative Executive Brian Miller to discuss the relaunch of Star Trek into the gaming world. We talked about everything from the new Shatner trailer to Paramount’s future plans for the franchise.
Brian Miller: Star Trek Game Interview
Interviewed by Chris Wales for TrekCore.com
TrekCore: Good morning Brian! I wanted to chat about this fantastic game that you guys have got going. And just to pick up from what you said when you came to see us in London, and just talk about the whole process of creating it, and a little bit about what it’s been like to produce a game like that. And, I mean really the first thing I wanted to ask you about was – it’s been what, three years, is that right?
Brian Miller: Yeah, it’s been about three – at least three years of active development, you know, actually not doing a lot of the coding and programming, but, you know we started talking about this game when we were making the last movie, so that was well over four years ago, and just sort of trying to figure out what we should do and how to do it, and who the best people were to work with and collaborate with. But active development on the game has been about three years.
TrekCore: Wow, I mean that sounds, from my understanding of the gaming industry, quite unprecedented. Was that intentional, or did it just evolve that way?
Brian Miller: Well yeah, you know it was intentional – I don’t know if it was intentional to – we certainly didn’t have a time limit on what we wanted to do, and we certainly weren’t – you know the good thing was we weren’t trying to hit a date, per se, because when we started working on the game we didn’t know when the next movie was going to come. But we knew that there were a lot of pitfalls in sort of the, license or movie-based game world, and one of those pitfalls was rushing a product just to make a street date; or, you know, you start working on a movie and you’re lucky to get nine to twelve months to get a game out there. So it really becomes a game that’s just been reskinned and, of another product and you just slap a movie title and you get it out there, and with this one we knew how great the film was that we were working on, and that JJ was delivering back in 2009, that we said “if we’re gonna do this, let’s do it the right way, and let’s really make the game that is worthy of this new reboot”.
TrekCore: I mean that’s quite incredible that you’ve got that scope there in terms of, the studio appears to be saying “we’ll take our time, we’ll do the best game that we can; and there is no commercial pressure behind this, either to promote a film or to hit a certain deadline”. So it must be something that you’ve had a lot of support for, from day one, to get it out and put it out. Is that right?
Brian Miller: Yeah, you know it’s funny, because it’s just sort of all worked out and I’m sure people will question the great circumstances of having a game coming right before the film; but I mean really when we started on this game there was “well let’s just work on the game until it’s right and it’s ready to go”. And it just happened to be that we were going to finish the game very close to the time that the movie was going to come, because we didn’t know when the movie was going to go into production and when we first put our development schedule in line, and once things started lining up and once we started to see what the movie was shaping up to be, the sequel, and when we were with the game – they just naturally sort of evolved together. So now you have something that’s coming out a good three weeks before the film, and it’s a great promotion for our game, it’s a great promotion for the movie, and it’s a game that we’re very proud of.
TrekCore: That’s excellent. And just in terms of that protracted development – what impact did that have on the budget of the game, and the way that it was developed? How was that three-year period fed into how it’s turned out in the end?
Brian Miller: Well if you want to talk budget – I think the important thing for us was to make sure again that we didn’t fall into that movie-based trap which is: now, let’s not only rush a game into production to try to make a movie date, but also let’s not fund it the way a triple-A game should. We have a lot of fun that’s for a lot of the games that everybody plays, but also all of the Star Trek games, and we thought what better way that to really get behind this one the right way, to make game that was truly worthy of being a triple-A game in this new Star Trek game. But you know, when you look at that prolonged – and I don’t say prolonged, I mention it just because you do – development period where you have really a great amount of time to get it done, you could only do that if you have really the full support of everybody – both creatively, financially just to be able to pull that together.
So I’d say it’s a game that we are truly proud of just the way the process was right; where the great collaboration came through, and really the great support that we’ve had from the studio here and our amazing creative teams both on the film and those who work here at the studio who’ve really given everything they can to not only create the game but to help support it.
TrekCore: And that’s great. And in terms of that creative process – let’s talk a little bit about that. The Star Trek film – the 2009 one – hit on the 8th of May 2009, so shortly thereafter I imagine you and a couple of other guys were sat in a room and there’s a suggestion that you make this game. What kinds of ideas were floating around back then? Was it always certain that it wouldn’t be a copy of the movie plot; were there other ideas; how did you get from there to the idea that ultimately became the backbone of the game?
Brian Miller: It’s funny because that first conversation was really just a brainstorming – it was a brainstorm between anybody who was going to be running a game, looking at a game, working on this game. It started with “well, what kind of game do we want to make?” And that sort of started with “well, what kind of games do we like to play?”. And we’re all gamers; not only are we gamers, but our film-makers are big gamers, and we’re inspired by a lot of the same games that everybody is. And we really started to break down Star Trek as to, into its core elements and when you look at it that way, and you look at Star Trek through the eyes of “it’s a story of Kirk and Spock”, which really represent who we are as people. There’s two different halves to our own personality, whether it’s very logical or very sort of impulsive, and when you start there – which is always for me – I like to think of things in just the simplest terms because I think that really gets to the core of what everything is – Star Trek has always been a co-op thing, it’s been about Kirk and Spock. It doesn’t work without that great combination.
And when you do that, you instantly went to a co-op game. And then you start to extrapolate from there “well, who do want in the game?” And we knew we weren’t going to make the game unless we had everybody in the cast come back. So that was sort of our next step – “how do we get everybody involved?” And it was a great process, I mean our cast is amazing and really all wanted to be a part of this. And then, when you get an amazing cast and you’re dealing with the game it’s then, well now, we’ve got to figure out what kind of perspective the game should be in. And because we have an amazing cast and because we’re setting it around Kirk and Spock, I want to see those characters. So, instead of making a standard first-person kind of game, you go right to third-person.So everything sort of evolved from these little dominoes that started to fall; once you figured out – gotta make a co-op game, and it’s gotta be about Kirk and Spock, and we’ve got to get the actors…
So your point about the story – we also recognised that probably one of the biggest things that plagues movie games is they’re just a rehash of what you’ve paid to see on screen. So when you’re home and you’re playing, we could have done, you know, and frankly very easily could have done, we could have had something out, a game like this with the last film if we would have just decided to rush it and just put something on the market. Where – hey now! We go to the skydive from the last movies and we go to the drilling platform! Here we go, now we’re gonna go up against Nero! We’re gonna go to the ice planet! And oh, there’s a digital version of Leonard Nimoy! To us that wasn’t exciting because we’ve seen that already, and I think a lot of the “see the movies, play the game” – there’s no, there’s no opportunity for you to twist and turn the player; the player knows exactly where everything’s going, and it takes a little bit of that great, you know, interactive ability to really engage in a plot.
So we knew we wanted to make a brand new story. And we discussed “Well is this an offshoot? Is this canon?” And everybody immediately went to – “why would we do this if it wasn’t really going to happen in our new timeline?” So this absolutely is canon. And then we you do that again it just keeps going. Once you start doing that again, you can just sort of see how that first initial meeting, and then that the ones that quickly followed after that just sort of snowballed, where “now we know what kind of game, well who are they going to fight?” So what kind of villains do we want? And you know, the great thing about the fact that Paramount is so deeply involved in this game, is because there are very few people who know really what the long-term plans are with Star Trek. And one of those, obviously are film makers, the other, obviously are people here at the studio, myself included. So we knew which villains to avoid, because we may have plans for them later on, but also we wanted to make sure we gave the best villain we possibly could for this game, and we were all huge fans of the Gorn. And that instantly went into “let’s make it the Gorn!” And make it canon, and really give an original story, and away we went.
TrekCore: It sounds like a, as Spock would say, very logical progression from A to B to C, that it’s just kind of snowballed in that fashion. Were there any ideas that ended up on the cutting-room floor? Things you can tell us that never made it in?
Brian Miller: I could, but I certainly don’t want to spoil anything either about our next film, or what we may want to do later on down the line…
TrekCore: So the good news is, there may some bits that you’ve thought about that you’re holding back and may come in another game or another film in the future?
Brian Miller: You know what’s funny though, and completely honestly, I won’t talk about the film as much, but I’ll certainly talk about the game – we weren’t looking at it that way. It wasn’t as if there was a whole list of stuff we were like “okay, we’re gonna hold off on that” and you certainly won’t get to the end of the game and feel like it’s a huge cliffhanger for you to buy another game or for us to get you to purchase a downloadable mission. We didn’t want to do that, we wanted to put everything behind this one because you never know, you never know if you’re going to have another opportunity like this again, with the way that the gaming market is or you know, just the way development works, if you’re ever going to have the opportunity to really have this great sort of mix of people ready to do things, and happily collaborate – that we just decided, “let’s put it all in – let’s just all go all in and make this the best we can”.
So other than there are plotlines and maybe some characters that we took off the table because you know, there may be some other things we’re going to do with them, whether it’s a movie or something we want to do in some novelisations or comics or anything like that. The game was really allowed to evolve into what it needed to be, without a whole lot of restrictions. So there were certainly some of those moments where we’d come up with an idea for a level and we’d go around the block and say “hey, what do you think about doing something like this?”. And you’d get a smirk from somebody going “well, maybe we shouldn’t go there”. And you’d realise oh, we’re gonna go there somewhere else, and now that I know where we’re going it makes perfect sense, but, we tried to be as honest to our game as we could.
TrekCore: Brian, it sounds like you’re the man in the know. I think you’re going to have a number of Star Trek fans trying to buy you drinks at a bar and trying to find these things out in the near future! Because there’s a lot of information clearly there that you’ve found out. You mentioned in there Leonard Nimoy, just in passing. It’s a fair question – did ever you consider him for a character in the game? Has he got any kind of contribution, or was that just off the table from the outset?
Brian Miller: You know, what I think he did so well in the last film – and it really sort of made that movie feel real and beloved – and I think the fans, and I know myself, got a huge joy of seeing him, it put that sort of Star Trek stamp of approval on it. There was really not a whole lot that we considered doing with him. I mean we really wanted it be about our new cast, and this brand new crew, and it wasn’t something that we ever really considered doing. Now that said, I’d love to work with him, or anybody else, and… hopefully you saw what we did with Mr Shatner last week?
TrekCore: I was going to come on to that next! Because I suppose Leonard Nimoy, he passed the torch, didn’t he, in the last film, and you referred to that. But then of course we had William Shatner back, doing what William Shatner does best. Whose idea was that, and are there any adverts coming that we should be aware of?
Brian Miller: Well first of all I’m gonna ask you what you thought of it!
TrekCore: I thought it was inspired *laughs*.
TrekCore: I watched and watched and watched again, and I thought it was absolutely brilliant. And I think what was really clever for you guys to do was kind sort of references, because Star Trek’s always been a wide church, and you’ve got your modern fans who’ve seen the new film; but almost in the cultural memory of everybody is William Shatner as Captain Kirk, and that Gorn, it’s the two of the things people remember – so I thought it was a masterstroke to put it out there, which was very good fun.
Brian Miller: Well I appreciate that, and I will give you – you’re the first person I’ve talked to about it, because it’s been really difficult to not speak about this. Particularly when I was in London we were right about to go film, and I knew that the best crowd to reveal that to would have been that crowd, that crowd would have went crazy. I’ll tell you a story, that the inception of that was, we certainly had discussed – we’re all big fans, and the fact that we put the Gorn into the game to begin with shows how big fans we are of the classic Trek and obviously Mr Shatner’s contribution to everything Trek. We honestly – and again, you’re the first person I’m telling this story to, so please post and get it up there! We literally were sitting around the table, I’d say about a year ago, and we’re talking about the marketing and trying to figure out what we’re gonna do, and obviously the conversation of trailers and TV spots and posters and all the other stuff come up. Because in my spare time, I also run creative for a lot of different groups and theatrical promotions in consumer products, and my mind, apart from being creative and working on a game and scripts and dialogue and all of that other stuff has always been in the marketing world.
And we were getting pitches looking through you know, trailer ideas, and it’s the typical sort of gameplay. And we just started looking at each other and like “there’s got to be a different way to do this”, and frankly the spot actually came from myself; there’s another gentleman here named Gene Augusto who works here, who, we just started brainstorming back and forth and we said “the greatest thing that we could ever do would be to do a viral video where we had, Shatner and the Gorn playing the game”. And we just started laughing hysterically as to what that would be, you know whether it was going to be a riff on “not your father’s Star Trek” or what we were gonna do. And then it just instantly went into “well we’ve got to recreate that old scene”. The whole point of putting the Gorn in the game is an homage to what they did, and there’s an homage to that scene in our actual game where you’re in an Arena fighting a Gorn that looks, that’s inspired by the old Gorn – doesn’t look exactly like him but’s inspired – and there’s the great, you know, karate chops to the neck and as part of the gameplay during that sequence in the game.
We just started coming up with it, and so we wound up on a script that we really liked which is very, very similar to the one that finally we aired, and we instantly went to storyboard because I knew this was either the greatest, or the craziest idea we’d ever come up with. We certainly had an uphill climb we had to do you know, convincing everybody, the studio and JJ and team, and then of course humbly asking Mr Shatner if he would reprise one of the most iconic things he’d ever done. And then it was just one of those things where people looked at us like, “okay – that is really, really funny” – and for us, it’s always been about just the creative work, and if it’s funny or if it’s good then we go with it. And we instantly went out and tried to secure all the deals, and it went really fast because I think everyone fell in love with it. We shot it, a couple of months ago and did a quick edit and showed it around and people were just like “that’s hysterical”, and we launched it a week ago.
TrekCore: To amazing success on the Internet – the comments have been flying thick and fast. The next question would have to be – is that going to be the high-point of the marketing campaign, or are there other surprises to come?
Brian Miller: We definitely have some other surprises to come. I think it’s going to be very difficult to top Shatner re-matching the Gorn, but we certainly have some additional trailers we’re going to do. I wouldn’t be surprised [sic] if that’s the last time you saw our Gorn out popping up somewhere! But no, we’re, we – I couldn’t be happier and frankly more humbled by the comments, the comments across the board have been ridiculously good and I think what’s been great about is that people feel… you know it doesn’t feel forced? It feels very organic, it feels very natural, and I think that’s where the comedy comes from – it doesn’t like a typical marketing ploy of let’s buy, “BUY THE GAME!”: it feels right, and I think all of that credit is due to Mr Shatner and what he did. His performance was fantastic, he really was amazing on set. What he did and improv’d – a lot of what you see in that spot was him coming up with it on the spot, willing to play along with it – again I think it came up well, far better than we even imagined it could’ve.
TrekCore: And on that, we mentioned, I think I said to you that Star Trek’s always been a broad church, you’ve got fans of every generation, every age, some have watched of the shows; some like others. I mean one of the things that sticks out in my mind, funnily enough, from the Star Trek film, was a throwaway line in there which somebody must have put into the script, where Simon Pegg says basically he accidentally evaporated “Admiral Archer’s prize beagle”, which for all the fans was a reference to the dog on the show Enterprise. Are there going to be little nods to things that Trek fans from over the last forty years will recognise, little Easter eggs and nuggets of references?
Brian Miller: Absolutely – and I think you can see some of the bigger ones just in the, just what the game design is. I mean the fact that we have the Gorn in shows our willingness to play with that and give fans what they want. I think what was done so brilliantly that you just pointed out with the last film was, we had to cast a very broad new with the movie and try to get more than just the hardcore Trek fans to show up and enjoy the film. And I think the final result speaks for itself. It was certainly not only the biggest Star Trek that we’ve ever done as a studio, but also one of the most – if not the most – critically acclaimed of the bunch. And I think what was great about the film was, while being broad and allowing people to experience Star Trek through a really, you know, bigger viewscreen – was that fact that there were a lot of those nods with the dog, with some of the lines that the crew said, that were direct throwbacks to the old show.
We certainly have taken that upon ourselves to blow out in our game, and the fact that a lot of the plot revolves around our take on the Arena episode – we also have great little bits – there’s hidden Tribbles throughout the game that will give you extra points, we have nodbacks to old shows and old lines – even for the hardcore fans, you know, we started talking about a co-op game and the nature of a co-op game is to be helpful, and that’s what always Kirk and Spock and the crew did, was they were helping each other, and we sort of, started spitballing of, you know, “if the game is designed to play for hours on end, what about halfway through, aren’t you going to get tired of playing with your friend, aren’t you going to want to shoot him?” And that led us into this thing of “oh, wouldn’t it be great at some point in the game that you actually have to fight your co-op partner?” And it’s – instantly went back to Amok Time, which I’m sure you know very well?
TrekCore: Yep, yep.
Brian Miller: Kirk and Spock fighting each other. So it naturally connects when you’re playing the game if you’re not a hardcore fan you’ll get this great moment, it’s like “oh good, now I can beat up on the guy who I’ve been trying to help for the last ten hours”, but if you’re a hardcore fan you’re like “oh wait a minute – this is Amok Time”, or our version of Amok Time. And I think those are the kind of things that fans are going to be excited to search and find.
TrekCore: I think it’s been described, at least one site, as like a “bro-op”, and I can buy into that because when I played the game in London I bought into the idea that “yeah, I got Kirk, he’s mine” and I’ve already picked out my Spock so as soon as that game’s out, we’ll be on his Playstation or on mine! Here’s a question I suppose about the fans though, just going back there a second – you a made a decision to bring the Gorn in. And I mean, certainly there’s a lot of artistic licence there – the guy who was in the trailer in that great rubber suit which was very different from how the Gorn are on-screen. Did you ever feel constrained by some of the things that have been set down in Trek canon? Did you feel that it was difficult to walk the line between making it new and fresh, and still paying enough homage to what had gone before?
Brian Miller: No, I don’t think that was ever one of our challenges, and I think that’s a credit to what Star Trek is, and you know the great work that Roddenberry did on those classic shows – specifically, those shows – was I didn’t feel like they ever, we ever were painted into a corner where we couldn’t do something because something was done in the past. And again, I think it goes to the brilliance of the timeline that was shifted with the last film, and allowing us to recreate some of that. Maybe if that didn’t happen, we’d be more constrained – but now we have a new crew that we can introduce to new characters in a different way and they’re not exactly – I’m not doing a paint-by-numbers of something you’ve already seen, or have to make the Arena episode exactly like what’s in the game.
As far as the Gorn designs were concerned – no, I think you’ve only seen one version of the Gorn ever, and that was our great rubber-suited character. And the great challenge and honour that we had with the game was to take that character and make a species out of him. So while our great rubber-suited guy is part of, still part of the Gorn world, we now have the ability to make commanders and infantry and brutes and females and so – instead of being constraining you could look at that design with their costumes and the eyes and you could pick up pieces here, and you realise that maybe that guy from that episode wasn’t the leader, or not the only of them. And it allowed us this great big canvas to play with.
TrekCore: And on that line as well, the Star Trek film of 2009 and the previous canon has obviously helped inform the game. Are there things that you’ve established in the game that will in any way do you think inform the movie we’re about to see? Did you decide on things, like alien races or anything that we’ll then see in future media?
Brian Miller: [Pause] I can’t give you every secret can I?
TrekCore: [laughs]
Brian Miller: But let me answer that question, let me answer that question for you. I also think that it was important for us not to be – I’ll use a great British term – “cheeky” – we didn’t want it to be “oh, look at the game! It’s going to reference the film!” And, “oh, look at the movie! It’s going to, look what they did to make it all work!” And I think those become a little obvious, but I do think that there are a couple of Easter eggs and a couple of little surprises that if you’re fans of the last movie, and hopefully when you see the new film, and you play our game, you’ll see that not only do they fit all together nicely, but that there are little moments and nod that you can appreciate when you see any of those and go “okay, that’s how it all works together”.
TrekCore: There’s a certain continuity I suppose, you’re helping with all three of them to flesh out this new universe, is that right?
Brian Miller: Yeah absolutely.
TrekCore: That’s great. And just on a complete tangent for a second; one question we got asked, completely away from what we’ve been discussing by one of our site readers – in the era of episode gaming, HD remakes of very old games from different platforms – going forward, do you think that you guys will deal principally with – assuming this goes well – more games within the current movie and universe reboot, or do you think you’ll ever look to do any games based on some of the older shows or timeline?
Brian Miller: You know, we’ve certainly – anything is on the table – and we treat – I’ve been thinking about this game in very much the way we think about a movie. Which is, you know, I think you make a mistake if you instantly start talking about sequels, and “what am I gonna do in the next movie?”. And I think that the ones that we think are the best are the ones that try to tell, and put all their effort behind telling a single story. So there are many other storylines, and aliens and planets that we could rediscover in the game world. I know that CBS has certainly always had plans to use Trek classic or Next Generation or Deep Space Nine in the gaming space in a big way. I would love nothing more than to continue working on Star Trek games. It’s been an absolutely joy and dream on our part, and just really a whole lot of fun. And we think that if the fans truly can appreciate what we’ve tried to do here which is, make the best Star Trek game that we could, make the best movie-based game that you can; and if we can get them to feel like we’ve done a good job, and it works out – we definitely can, we definitely are ready to jump back in.
TrekCore: Fantastic. And there are just a couple of questions that we’ve had on the actual gaming side of things. First, will there be any difference between content on different platforms, and will there be any add-on content available?
Brian Miller: The first answer is no: that we think that all the games will play the same. We didn’t want to make somebody who doesn’t own an XBox and only own a Playstation feel like they got cheated. As far as downloadable content: again, we discussed that at the beginning; and being gamers, nothing frustrates me more than feeling like I’ve paid a pretty substantial amount of money for a game, and feel like I didn’t get the full game? That there was still another level or another thing I had to purchase to make the game complete? It’s almost like you pay your money to go see a feature film, and they leave the end out, and they make you go pay twice? We didn’t want it to be like that with this one, so, we certainly don’t have any immediate plans to hit you up with a downloadable pack or additional contents or levels, but there are certainly a million things that we could do. But again, we just wanted to get a game that fans felt like they, you know, got their money’s worth; that was a full experience, that they felt like they sat through a Star Trek experience that could have been on the big screen. And again, if we can make them happy and move forward, and if we can be in a place that we’re so lucky that people are actually, are asking for additional content, that’s something that we can approach then.
But we didn’t want to start the approach – because honestly, and you probably know this better than anybody – you know, working for where you work, which is – the Trek fans have been amazingly supportive to us, over the last almost five decades. And we know that they will always have room to collect, they will always purchase, they support us, they buy our posters and toys and comics and everything else that goes along with it. We just didn’t want to – and honestly, we could have made additional content that we know people would have bought, just because they want to complete the collection. But again, as a gamer – that’s not something that I would want to do to myself, so we took the very conscious approach not to try to do that.
TrekCore: And in terms of maintenance, do you know how long the game will be actively maintained for?
Brian Miller: We have a team that’s fully dedicated here that continues to work on Star Trek, and not only Trek but other games that we’ve got planned for the future, so, there are no immediate plans not to have this maintained.
TrekCore: And just very quickly as well – in terms of working on the game, you mentioned there were some great people working on it both now and presumably post-release. Can you tell us a little bit about the pedigree – some of the things that those people have worked on that might clue us in?
Brian Miller:You mean from the film or just from a developing standpoint?
TrekCore: From the developing standpoint. Are there games or things, or franchises you guys may have worked on in addition to the game that you’ve been working on recently?
Brian Miller: Yeah I mean the great thing is, between the experience that we have here at the studio and some of the collaborators we’ve brought on that are developers, Digital Extremes – have worked on some really great projects including working on a lot of the multiplayer for Bioshock, and some of the other games that they’ve done like The Darkness II, which we thought was just really fantastic, what they’ve done. You know our writer that worked on our game, worked on – was Marianne Krawczyk, worked on the entire God of War series, which we think is amazing. Our team here has worked on a million games over the last thirty years, including a lot of the old Star Trek games, the Godfather game that we had a ton of success with. So I think we bring a pretty great pedigree of people in the gaming space, and people who have worked on the film, and when you start adding on the fact that we’ve collaborated with ILM for their files, the sound team, the costume team, the creature designer; Michael Giacchino and his team, the composer on the last movie, who’ve given us over two hours of brand new music for our game – music that was composed and orchestrated by a hundred-piece live orchestra… it’s those kind of things you normally don’t get in a game space, that we are just really excited are in ours.
TrekCore: Brilliant. And coming towards the end, one question I wanted to ask for you – Brian, over the last few months the Internet has exploded with information on this game. Your name at the minute is so ubiquitous that I think if I turned off my monitor off, it would still be emblazoned in the air. What has it been like for the last few months trailing this game? And as a senior VP, how does it compare to your usual role?
Brian Miller: It’s been a very unique role. We really – because typically, you know, studios and particularly myself, haven’t been as deeply involved in some of the games like this. Meaning, we absolutely have been involved, but this is really a different layer, I mean really being fully in control of every aspect of the script, and the recording and working with the actors and working so closely with our amazing developer in Digital Extremes on a daily basis to get it done. You know the last couple of months have been – and actually it’s been probably, I’ve been actively talking about the game now for very close to a year now. And it’s just been great, and the more that we show people,and hopefully what you saw in London certainly piqued your interest, and made you excited at least to get back on the phone with me – and so far you haven’t yelled at me so I assume you liked what you saw – it’s been… I mean the fan reaction, I think the best thing is, I think everybody is rooting for us.And I think they really want the game to work, hopefully that they appreciate what we’ve tried to do, which is do it differently.
And obviously when you play the game you make the final judge of that. But I certainly think that no-one can say that we did this the lazy way, or we went about this in a way that was just a way to put a piece of product on the shelf that people would be. We’ve truly tried to make a game worthy of our new Star Trek brand. You know, I couldn’t be happier with the work that’s been done, I couldn’t be happier with the goal that we had in mind, that we’ve certainly tried to work for. And you know everyone we’ve talked to, whether it was you or everybody in London, or over all the interviews we’ve done – have certainly been very positive and upbeat, and I couldn’t be more proud. I just can’t wait for people to play the game.
TrekCore: Yeah, what you’ve said seems exactly right; I read once somewhere once, somebody said the difference between Star Trek fans and a lot of other fans of music or film or whatever is that most fans, they want to keep it to themselves: it’s kind of “this is my music, this is my film choice; it’s a little secret I know about” whereas Trek fans actually want the film to get ratings, they want it to break the box office, they want the game to sell. And I think there’s a huge wave of support there, and a real feeling and a hope that the game will be as good as it looks. Last question! Fill in this sentence for me Brian: “If you like the game BLANK, you will love Star Trek”.
Brian Miller: Wow. This is a tough one! If you like… I’m not gonna answer the question!
TrekCore: [laughs]
Brian Miller: I’ll tell you why. Because I don’t think that this game is like that. I mean we certainly didn’t look at… I mean again, I’ll give you some games. We’re huge fans of Uncharted, because of their great storytelling. Gears of War is something that we play and think they they do a great job; and you know, cover shooter; we think that Mass Effect and what they’ve done, and Halo; what they’ve done in just storytelling and all-out scope of science fiction. We wouldn’t be making this game if those games hadn’t been successful, because nobody would think that it would work. And hopefully that we’ve made a game that I think that players will feel, feel like Star Trek. So I’ll answer that question. If you’re a fan of Star Trek, we think that you’ll like this game.
TrekCore: And on that note – we’re all very much looking forward to the game, and I think that there’ll probably be no bigger sign that it’s gone down well than if we hopefully are having this conversation again in a year or so about the next one. So – I’m looking forward to it.
Brian Miller: Well I can’t wait – and look forward to your thoughts!
TrekCore: Brian, thank you very much for your time, it’s been a pleasure, and we’ll look forward to seeing the game when it arrives!
Brian Miller: Alright, thanks so much and take care!
Star Trek: The Next Generation – “The Best of Both Worlds”
Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 3
