STO.nl Interview met Joe “Rekhan” Blancato!
In: Exclusive, STO.nl | Tags: Interview | Op 17-09-2009, om 09:13
Zo’n beetje alle communicatie die het ontwikkelteam van Star Trek Online met de buitenwereld heeft gaat via de online community representatives van Cryptic. Zij zorgen ervoor dat de community een beetje tevreden is, en beheren de officiële website, de IRC chat en het forum van de Cryptic games. De hoofdverantwoordelijke voor Star Trek Online is Joe Blancato, beter bekend als Rekhan op de forums. Wij benaderden Rekhan voor wat vragen en die wilde hij graag voor ons beantwoorden!
STO.nl: Tell us something about yourself. Who are you and what is it you do at Cryptic?
Rekhan: I’m Joe Blancato. I go by Rekhan on the forums. I’m the primary community guy for STO. This means I spend a lot of time writing stuff about the game, getting screenshots and website updates together, keeping an eye on IRC and the forums, and acting as a liaison between the community and the developers.
STO.nl: What does it exactly entail to be a Community Representative for Star Trek Online? What does your daily routine at work look like?
Rekhan: What I like most about my job is there really isn’t much of a routine. We’ve got schedules for website updates I need to stick to, but otherwise each day is very different. Some days I could be interviewing a member of the development team about a specific system – or for answers to questions for an Ask Cryptic. Other days I’m at my desk, answering forum PMs and IRC questions. And other days I could be gearing up for an STO play test and coming up with a process to deliver information more efficiently to the community. If the job were the same thing every day, I don’t think I could do it.
STO.nl: Can you read and/or write Klingon, and why has a Klingon-translated version of the game not yet been announced? As a Star Trek game you’d probably have a larger than usual part of the demographic that has the ability to understand Klingon!
Rekhan: Unfortunately, my language expertise only extends to English, and even that could be argued. I’ve got a smattering of Spanish, Italian and Latin, but that’s as far as it goes. And as much fun as a Klingon translation would be, I think we’re stuck relying on the universal translators. We do, however, have plans to localize the game into German and French, for our Klingon fans that don’t speak English. Small consolation, I know.
STO.nl: In all seriousness. How has it been so far dealing with the fans on the forums? Most of the fans that actively participate on the forums at this stage of development are probably of the most excited and passionate kind there is, right? Do you fear them?
Rekhan: It’s been pretty great so far. What’s cool about interacting with fans of both Cryptic and Star Trek is their excitement is contagious. Even if people aren’t happy about something, it’s because they want STO to be the best game ever. It’s fun to be working with passionate people like that every day. But yeah, going into a situation where you know you’re the bearer of bad news can be scary, but that’s just part of job. I just try to be as honest and transparent as possible, so even when there’s controversy on the boards, people know what they’re hearing from me is real.
STO.nl: Perhaps one of the drawbacks of the current website is that it’s not exactly a central place to go to if you’re looking for information about the game. Especially since you’ve been quite generous with providing new information through interviews, dev chats, etc. it can be difficult for people to find the information they’re after. Are there any plans to improve the site so people can find information more quickly?
Rekhan: Oh yeah, big time. A project I’ve been working on is building up an information database to get on the site as soon as I can. This is, in a word, hard. But it’s part of my responsibility to the community to help them become as informed as possible.
One baby step we’ve taken lately is to try to provide more information to our users before we hold a dev chat or an Ask Cryptic. If you look at our latest call for Ask Cryptic questions, we put together a short primer on ground combat, so people didn’t have to ask about the basics. That means people can ask more in-depth questions. It also has the side effect of making that project of mine easier. But I really can’t take credit for this idea, since it came from the folks in IRC and on our forums.
STO.nl: “The Path to 2409” series is one of the regular tidbits you provide to the fans via the official website (and probably the most interesting! ). Can you tell us a bit about how these articles are written? Do you need official approval before publishing them?
(On that topic: I especially like the “Path to…” supplemental logs. The style in which those interviews are written remind me somewhat of the novel ‘World War Z’, is that intentional? =) )
Rekhan: We’ve got two writers that produce these. Kestrel writes the yearly updates and Alivet writes the supplementals. Kestrel is our timeline guru – she knows more about the stuff between Nemesis and STO than pretty much anyone. If you were to climb the giant mountain in front of Cryptic Studios, then ascend the thousand steps and walk through our golden, communicator-shaped doors, Kestrel would be the yogi to whom you ask questions. Her writing process is beyond my human level of consciousness, and I consider myself blessed by Sulu that she sends them my way.
Alivet’s process is less mystical – partially because I sit near her desk – but also superhuman. Not only does she write the supplementals, which serve to humanize the 2409 updates and flesh out the world, but she writes all of the hero and villain profiles on our Champions Online site, as well as all of the continuing stories going on there. She works tirelessly to really get the characters she portrays right, so it’s very cool to see people’s comments when they say she really “got” a character. And yes, she draws inspiration from World War Z. Thanks for noticing!
As far as approvals go, we have to send every update to CBS, who makes sure we didn’t spoil any secrets or get something wrong.
STO.nl: Do they involve you guys in internal play tests, or any other part of the game development? If so could you tell us something about it? Are they used to solve disputes about certain game-related ideas?
Rekhan: Yeah, we participate in the internal play tests all the time. (I’m also on all the internal development email lists, which can answer a lot of questions I didn’t even know I had.) The play tests are really focused. We usually pick an episode – which really is a quest arc designed to flow together to feel like an episode from the show. Then we all run through that and share feedback on the episode, the gameplay issues we encountered and other changes made to the game between then and the previous play test. Other times, like the last play test on ground combat, we just get into a big map and kill stuff.
STO.nl: Are you by any chance familiar with the works of the ‘warrior-poet’ Xiang Yu? He said:
“Live with a man for forty years. Share his house, his meals. Speak on every subject.
Then tie him up and hold him over the volcano’s edge.
And on that day, you will finally meet the man.”
Unfortunately, we couldn’t get permission to try this style of interviewing this time round. And though you may not get the relevance of this (it’s a Firefly quote =P ), can you share with us a little known fact about working on Star Trek Online?
Rekhan: Whoa, take it easy! I’m still new at this whole answering interview questions thing. Let’s see, little known fact! I can tell you that in one play test I challenged our executive producer Craig Zinkievich to a duel, and he declined. I consider this a win and am therefore undefeated.
Thank you for answering our questions!
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