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Star Trek Online: Meet the Team
Szark
News ManagerMember Posts: 4,420
Cryptic Studios has posted a profile of Star Trek Online Writer Christine Thompson as part of their Meet the Team series of internal interviews which introduce the STO team to gamers.
Q: What do you do on Star Trek Online?
A: I’m the writer for Star Trek Online, which means I handle the story, characters, plotlines, episodes, dialogue, item text – anything that needs words is my area. I’m also one of the researchers, who can dig through piles of material to find the reference images for the artists or help answer questions like “do we need beaks?” I work with the designers on the content – the things we’re making are very cool and very Trek.Q: How long have you worked in gaming, and what did you do before Star Trek Online?
A: I was a writer and editor in the newspaper industry for about 13 years before coming to Cryptic Studios. I wrote everything from movie reviews to crime stories, and as an editor I did a lot behind the scenes for the production of the daily paper – laying out pages, coordinating coverage for events like the 2000 presidential election, fact-checking, editing and trimming stories and writing thousands of headlines.I joined Cryptic in 2007 to write for the web sites and work with the community team. After we got the license for Star Trek, I volunteered to help with some of the writing of the storylines and then I joined the STO team full-time.
Read more here.
Comments
Well it sounds like she could be a Trekker and not a "oh I'm working on this Star Trek project, so I'm going to call myself a Trekker" Trekker. Hopefully the "episodes" for STO won't come off like 90% of fan made junk.
Until you cancel your subscription, you are only helping to continue the cycle of mediocrity.
How does she sound like a Trekker? Or even a gamer? 13 years in the dying newspaper business, with no game design or dev experience.
How in the world do people like this get hired for lead positions with no experience in the field they're supposed to be expert in???
Have to agree with Flummoxed here.
Furthermore, the way she's writing here she "is the writer" for the game... as in the only one... She's the only writer, the only researcher. Either she's telling the truth (which is scary) or she kind of answered in a weird ego trip, and somewhere on the staff there is some real Trekkie who is also doing research into the 40+ years of material.
How dare you present him with logic! Don't you understand? He fights epic fights, in epic games, with epic toons....eats epic food and takes epic dumps! He has more e..pic..icity...ness in his little finger than you have in your whole unepic body! - ChicagoCub
I think she seems like a Trekker. Claiming she's unqualified because she worked with newspapers is pretty ridiculous. She's got the background (majoring in Medieval Studies is pretty nerdy) and the personality to be a Trekker, I'd say.
Christine may be THE writer for the game, but she makes it clear she is part of a team of researchers, developers and all the other people necessary to make a good game work.
And people get these jobs by sending in a resume which might include experieinces and talents you know nothing about.
As for the "dying" newspaper industry, while it may be true that paper copy subscriptions are failing, their online subscriptions grow by leaps and bounds. These productions still require editors and writers --- and perhaps with even more gaming-related skills than their predecessers.
Citing writers of the many ST television series and ST movies as the finite pool of talent for all ST material is a grave injustice. There are hundreds of ST novels, and most are pretty darn good. In fact, quite a few are excellent, whether you are a ST fan or not. But penning a good novel does not necessarily make you a good writer for an online game. Writing for a newspaper, now, might qualify. Christine's experience with minimal text, attention-getting buzz words, relentless documentation and crazy deadlines, not to mention SOME knowledge and appreciation of the ST universe no doubt made her a shoe-in for the position. And perhaps the game producers found her more flexible than some of the established writers.
Before you all mutiny on her, give the lady a chance.