Is Star Trek Online primarily so popular because it resembles a Star Trek TV series with its episodic structure?
Star Trek Online is a classic online role-playing game set in the Star Trek universe. You play as the captain of your ship, navigating either the spacecraft in space or your character along with a crew on planets. The storyline takes place after the last official movies of the classic Star Trek timeline – meaning not in the parallel universe of the “Kelvin Timeline” from the J.J. Abrams films.
What makes Star Trek Online special is not the gameplay and setting, but the episodic structure of the content updates. This is stated by an author on the gaming industry site Gamasutra. She believes she has deciphered the secret to the success of Star Trek Online.
Star Trek Online is a game like a TV series
The structure of the content is similar to that of the episodes of a typical Star Trek series and hence absolutely recommended for fans of the franchise.
As examples, the author cites the following points that make up a typical “episode of Star Trek Online:
- The episodes have a classic narrative arc, where an initially innocuous situation escalates into an epic event
- There are numerous cool interactions with the game world, which do not only consist of combat and grinding. These are very “Star Trek-like” despite the rather sparse presentation.
- Often, side plots and secondary characters are used that appeared in previous series but did not play a significant role. For example, Tasha Yar’s daughter, an obscure species from an episode of Voyager, or the return of characters like Geordi La Forge or Harry Kim. Often the developers even have the original actors as voice actors!
Thus, the secret behind Star Trek Online lies in a narrative structure that fits perfectly with Star Trek and the expectations of fans coming from the television series.
Read the full article on the narrative structure of Star Trek Online here in English at Gamasutra.
What do you think of this statement? For you, is Star Trek Online also a kind of interactive Star Trek series or just a “complex” online role-playing game?
Star Trek Online could also benefit from the new Netflix series Discovery, according to fans!
