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ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE - ISSUE 5.05 - AUGUST 2000
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Your Move...
Another Final Frontier "I find on-line gaming very interesting and not unlike entering a brave new world," says Jeff Holzhauer, producer Star Trek Conquest On-line. "The jury is still out on its wide acceptance, but I am excited about being a part of this emerging genre of game play." In order to achieve maximum game and community environment benefits, Star Trek Conquest On-line players will either purchase a boxed version of the game ($30) or download the game from the Internet Web site ($20). The advantage to the retail boxed version is that when registering to play, the $10 registration fee is waved, downloading is easier, the player receives additional collectible characters and it comes packaged with a hard copy of the player's manual. Once registered to play, additional booster packs of fifteen playing pieces can be purchased for $3 each on-line only.
"Star Trek Conquest On-line provides an interesting experiment in bringing the collectible paradigm to on-line gaming," says Holzhauer. "Players are able to purchase additional collectible playing pieces, win them from other players or by competing in daily tournaments to fine tune their playing experience." Fee players are given a starter group of 51 playing pieces from within five different segments: People, Items, Ships, Events and one Q. The player is in the role of a "Q" -- a race of superior intelligence beings that use mortals as pawns in a race against other Q for control of the universe -- manipulating playing pieces against other Internet players.
The human "pawns," or playing pieces, are characters recognizable to Star Trek: The Next Generation fans. Upon registering for the on-line game, fee players can choose key characters such as Captain Jean-Luc Pickard, Ambassador Sarek, a Borg Queen, Counselor Deanna Troi and Lieutenant Worf. For Activision, the creation of an immersive, interactive gaming experience means that people are communicating with other people on-line creating their own Star Trek Conquest On-line experience. "Players will be able to add depth to the game based on their own experience and community interactions with other players when they get together in the chat room outside of the game," says Holhauzer. "We are looking forward to some heated, 'My Captain Pickard can beat your Number One any day,' battles." Activision claims 9,000 registered Star Trek Conquest players, though they do not, at this time, have sell through numbers for the retail packaged game that launched in June of this year. Star Trek Conquest is only the first step for the gaming company that plans to add more on-line gaming to their roster.
Giants EA and AOL The gaming company has experienced certain success with its game Ultima (www.uo.com), claiming 180,000 players who are paying a monthly $9.95 fee in order to spend, on average, twenty hours a week within a medieval fantasy realm with other cyber gamers. The company, which enjoys a large European presence, plans on developing an on-line network that would provide gaming experiences for everyone, committing in excess of $200 million toward cyber space.
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