Star Trek has had a long gaming history, dating all the way back to 1971’s Star Trek text game. But ever since the release of Star Trek: Legacy in 2006, there’s been a dearth of officially licensed games (fan games and mods are still alive and well though). Aside from Star Trek: Online, there haven’t been any AAA titles released since the critical bomb that was Legacy. That ended when a new Trek game was unveiled during E3 2011 – a third person co-op shooter named “Star Trek,” set after the first JJ Abrams film and featuring Kirk and Spock as the main characters.
Originally slated to be released in 2012, it was pushed back to April 23, 2013, as part of the Star Trek Into Darkness marketing campaign.
Here’s 5 reasons this new Star Trek game needs to be good.
5. There’s Zero Press
The new Star Trek game is being made with Bad Robot’s supervision to ensure everything lines up with the new vision of Trek that JJ Abrams and company have come up with. Unfortunately, this means we barely know anything about the game, despite being only three months away from release. What we do know is that the story involves the Gorn (aka the giant lizard man Kirk punched and shot with a homemade canon in the original series), there are different Gorn castes, a space station and a Vulcan colony are involved, and you can do some exploration of the Enterprise.
While this stuff does sound cool, that’s all we have aside from some pictures, the pre-order bonus info (guns and clothes, if you are interested), and a few videos. Even for diehard Trek gamers, that’s not a lot to base a purchase on when you’re spending $60 for a game. As a Trek fan, even I can’t get too excited about a game I barely know anything about – a few interviews here and there doesn’t give me the information I need to make an informed purchase. That said, if the game turns out to be good, a lot of people will be praising the decision to not give out info ahead of time and spoil the story. If not, Digital Extreme and Bad Robot will get a lot of hate mail about how they suckered people into buying a bad game.
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3 Comments
Here’s what I think — NAMCO Bandai is the DISTRIBUTOR. Before criticizing something like this, get your facts straight. Paramount Pictures is the publisher. That’s a HUGE difference, like saying Twentieth Century Fox is the producer of a “Star Wars” movie when in fact they are the distributor and Lucasfilm is the producer. As such, NAMCO Bandai’s creative input into this game is pretty much zero.
No press? Did you see the huge story in Yahoo earlier this week? A simple Google search I did showed 17 news articles in the past week alone, with more than 100 hits in the past month. This doesn’t seem like “no press,” particularly since the game is three months away. Oh, maybe you mean no GAMING press? Maybe this is quite intentional? If I were creating a media strategy, I’d focus my efforts on the final month or so before release, rather than waste opportunities three or four months ahead of time. It’s not getting as much press as “Star Trek Into Darkness” for obvious reasons. But I just read LAST week that the LA Times has named this one of their 13 games to look forward to in 2013. I don’t think “no press” is a legitimate complaint, unless you can identify your expectations?
Co-op may be a little outdated, but silent films were VERY outdated and then “The Artist” won Best Picture and grossed $140 million around the world. Just because something is “outdated” doesn’t mean it can’t be good and fresh.
Stop being a typical gamer and pre-judging things. This is why so many gamers are never satisfied — they can’t just enjoy something for what it is rather than decide three MONTHS before the fact that they don’t like something.
First of all, Namco Bandai has been identified as a co-publisher, so they are handling the distribution and possibly tossing in a big chunk of money for advertising in the Japanese market (which Abrams and Paramount seem to be intent on targeting with into Darkness). While they aren’t involved creatively (as far as I know), they play a big role in the release’s success and possibly the future of Trek gaming.
By the way, thanks for alerting me to the Yahoo article. While it was basically a rehash of stuff already released on other venues, there were some interesting info (15 hour campaign, online only co-op). I did look into most of news posts from this week, and most of them were reiterations of previously released information. One or two mentions in articles doesn’t help build awareness of a product, otherwise some of the ridiculously minimalist advertising campaigns for movies and TV shows would’ve actually worked.
That said, your media strategy doesn’t make sense for several reasons. First, if you’re marketing a game, it’s better to start giving out a steady trickle of information months ahead of time, so people know your game exists. Hiatuses between major info releases kills your momentum, since people get caught up on other things and forget your product exists. Second, if you’re relying on the Trek gaming community to build up buzz, it helps if you give them stuff to use. Third, while it’s traditional to keep the biggest and best trailers for the final push, usually publishers put out a decent amount of video months ahead of time so gamers can get a feel for the game and start talking about it. If gamers start talking about it, then the people who rely on them for advice listen and spread the word.
I don’t get why you think I believe co-op is outdated. My entire point with that section was that it has to be executed well in order for it to draw in an audience beyond the initial wave of Trek fans/casual gamers who buy it.
I’m not sure why you think I’m prejudging the game, when my very first point is that there isn’t enough information to make an informed decision on whether it’s worth the money. It’s very important to get all the info you can ahead of time, because gamers have to set the time and money aside for any game they purchase (especially on PC, which has less of a used games market than console games do). To do otherwise risks losing time and money on a product that isn’t any good and devalues so quickly that you can’t make back some of the money you lost by purchasing.
I dont need anymore info on this game since I already pre-ordered it. Iam a huge trek fan and knew I wanted this game since early last year. If your a big enough fan then there is more than enough info out there already to make an informed decision to buy it.