By GustavoLeao / 01:26, 30 November 2009 / Gaming

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Boomtown posted a new interview with Star Trek Online MMORPG game producer Craig Zinkievich and here are few excerpts.

Boomtown: Creating a Star Trek game, especially an online ST game must be quite scary given the incredible affection the fans have for the franchise. How do you tackle their expectations?

Craig Zinkievich: Well most importantly we are all massive fans of Star Trek on the development team. Although we want to make sure that if a player has no knowledge of Star Trek lore, they can get in and enjoy the game - at every turn, we're trying to get canonical references back to the shows and movies.

The hardcore Star Trek fan will find tons and tons of locations, character references, event references and bits of techno-speak from the show. Our goal is to constantly barrage people with a deep love and knowledge of the Star Trek universe with things they recognize.

Given the extremely rich fiction that exists surrounding the time-line the various series took place in it's an interesting decision to move the game further into the future. Can you tell us why you chose to do this?

Well Star Trek Online Set is set in the year 2409 and takes place in the prime timeline 30 years after the events in Star Trek Nemesis and 22 years after the destruction of Romulus. The alpha quadrant is not as safe as it once was. The Romulan Empire is scattered, but still powerful - chaos reigns as internal factions fight for what's left of the empire. The Khitomer Accord between the Federation and the Klingon Empire has broken down, leaving the two powers on the verge of all out war. The Borg have returned, more advanced and more bent on their goal of assimilation. Needless to say, there's plenty of work for StarFleet Captains in 2409.

The reason for setting STO in this time period as that we wanted to give players the experience of a Star Trek Universe that was familiar but, being a group of creative individuals ourselves, we weren't interested in just recreating scenes from the shows and movies. We also didn't want to force players to constantly feel overshadowed by their TV and movie counterparts. Rather, we wanted everyone to feel like they were the Kirk or Janeway or Picard of their gameplay experience.

The full interview, plus new screenshots, is here.