You can find the recording of the interview here.

INTERVIEW:

Stormshade – Transcript

C: I’m really excited to say that on the line we’ve got StormShade… or maybe we should call him by his real name?

J:  Shaun Brodie?  Well, he says everybody calls him Stormshade

C:  I’m gonna go with Stormshade. You know him from the forums, he’s the Online Community Representative for Cryptic Studios.  Welcome to the show, Stormy!

Stormshade:  Thanks!  Great to be here, guys.

C:  Oh, so, now we should say, this isn’t your first time on the show. You’ve actually been featured in a couple video clips previously in STOked. But that’s — this is your first official interview on the show.

Stormshade:  Yeah!  It’s exciting.

C:  Alright, we’re excited, and we’re gonna get into all the STO-related stuff – I promise, we’ve got a ton of Star Trek Online questions, of course.  But we thought, yknow, we’re going to be talking to more people at Cryptic, and more people involved on the community side, like yourself. And maybe even some art folks –

J:  Or Q&A, or whatnot.

C:  Yeah, and we wanted to spend a little time getting to know each person we have on this show, so we’d like to spend a moment to get to know you.

Stormshade:  Cool, let’s do it!

J: Alright, well. I just wanted to know how you really got started in the industry. Have you always been on a Community Representative side?

Stormshade:  Actually, I started off with Cryptic before Champions launched as Gamemaster for Champions during the closed beta phases.

J: So that’s like Customer Service right?

Stormshade: Exactly. It was a whole lot of customer service.

C: How many years ago was that?

Stormshade:  Well, Champions launched about 2 years ago now? Yeah.

C: So that was really kind of pre… I mean Twitter and Facebook were around, but probably you didn’t have much active community on there. And so, community has changed a lot even in those 2 years.

Stormshade: Community has definitely changed an awful lot. Twitter and Facebook and all that was still around back then, but it’s becoming more and more prevalent as time goes on.

J: Now, what exactly do you … do?  We’ve gotten many people asking what a Community Representative actually does on a daily basis.  So can you give us a quick rundown of that?

C: Yeah, some people think it means just hang out in the forum all day.

J:  Troll us.

Stormshade:  Well that’s definitely a big part of what I do.

C: Oh sweet!  I already do that for free!

Stormshade:  I know, but I get paid for it!

(all laugh)

Stormshade:  A big part of what I do – or I should say, what my primary responsibility is – is I’m the go-between guy between the community of STO or CO, and the developers.  So, I’m in this weird position where… my job is really to represent you guys, here in the offices. When you guys are unhappy about some things, it’s my job to run into Dan Stahl’s office and say, “They’re not happy, and they think you’re evil. Fix it.”

J:  Boy, you must be runnin’ in there a LOT, from readin’ the forums.

Stormshade:  I used to. It’s gotten much, much better.

J:  That’s true.

C:  I was gonna say – it has gotten a lot better.

J:  Hats off to you.  I’m sure that you and the whole community team have done a lot to ease the suffering.

C:  Now, Stormy, can I ask you a question before we get into the STO stuff?  Just general gaming… what was your first big gaming obsession, where you realized “I think I might be a gamer. I think I might be more than your average gamer – I like video games!”

Stormshade: … oh god.

C: I know it’s a tough one.

Stormshade:  So… when I was first old enough to grip the joystick of the Atari2600, my father put one into my hands, and I have been playing games ever since then. I’ve done MUDs like Gemstone3, if you wanna go way back in those days of GEnie Online and CompuServe. I’ve played EverQuest. I’ve played tons and tons and tons of roleplaying games. Shooters, the whole nine yards. I just love gaming.

J: Now you mentioned EverQuest, would you probably consider that your first MMO obsession?

Stormshade:  Uh, yeah. Probably.

J: We do know, we spoke with Gozer some time ago, and he did mention that was his motivation to get into the gaming industry.

C: Wow, geez. And I give EverQuest a hard time, all the time.

J: Kind of a ground-breaker though. You should lighten up.

C: Yeah, I used to play it. Like, a long time ago. Now, while we’re still talking about things like the community, I’ve got to ask you Stormy because I’d probably wondered almost every time I see you post — What’s the story behind your avatar?

Stormshade: The story behind my avatar… When I first came to the STO community, I did not have an avatar. And this was of course, way back before even Closed Beta. And the community actually got together and made the avatar for me. After the decided that they wanted my teacup avatar back.

J: Is there a specific story behind the teacup?

Stormshade: There is. There used to be, and to certain extent still is, a group of people on the forums that roleplay in the Kingdom of Teacupland.

J:  I’m sorry, I shouldn’t giggle.

Stormshade: It’s hysterical – it’s meant to be hysterical. So, the Kingdom of Teacupland was headed up by one of our users – Trebort5050 – and he started this whole thing. And I got bored one day and made myself this glowing teacup avatar.

C: It glows! So a little Photoshop skills going into this.

Stormshade:  It was very, very little Photoshop skills, but it was there. And I told them that I stole the Teacup.

J: Oh!

C: The GLOWING teacup!

Stormshade:  And so they decided to barter to get the teacup back, and they created the teacup avatar that you see now.

C: That’s pretty resourcesful. I like that.

J:  Yeah.

C:  Now, I have to ask you, because I am a huge huge huge Star Trek fan – obviously that’s why we started this show. And I was thinking, I don’t know if I would be able to emotionally handle the aspect of working on a Star Trek MMO.  I just think that would be the most emotionally up-and-down investment I could make into a work-related project. You’ve been at Cryptic for a long time now, so you’ve seen this from the beginning. And I was just wondering, during all of this process, has there been – like during the development, or even after it – has there been some sort of milestone, specifically early-on, when you know, “Wow, this is really gonna happen. This is REAL!”

Stormshade: I think for me, it happened when I actually got control of the Star Trek community. I shouldn’t say “got control” cuz you don’t really control the community.

J: It’s like herding cats.

C: You mean you got Admin rights!

Stormshade: When I took over the responsibilities as the Community Representative for Star Trek, it became very very real for me.

J: I can imagine.

C: Does it seem like – I don’t have a lot of experience in this area – but I notice… you know, we sometimes poke fun at the forums because there’s sometimes some misbehavior going on, or people are just a little outspoken.

Stormshade: Wait a minute, people misbehave on my forums?!

J: Not on my watch!

C:  They’re passionate, I understand the passion. But, there’s the flipside too, with people that just go amazingly into detail, with even sometimes schematics or–

J: Well, like the ThomasTheCat post, was a really good example.

C: Or even most recently, there was a back and forth regarding the color of the sun in the Earth solar system. And the posters were like, “No really it’s wrong. Here’s some screenshots, here’s some comparisons.” And it just, it feels like a very high level of participation from the community, and I’m wondering what your thoughts are on that, just in general.

Stormshade: I think it’s just incredibly awesome! I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – I am incredibly gifted to be able to work with such an incredibly passionate community.  I mean, everyone from you guys at STOked, to the guys on the other podcasts, to the people in the forums. We’re really lucky at Cryptic to have a community that cares so much about the game. That we’ll actually see those huge fights over “the shade of the color is off by THIS much, and it needs to be tweaked just THIS many degrees orange.”

C: Definitely a check. People are keeping the quality level in check.

J: Now, actually kind of on that subject, and leading into some more of the serious questions that we’re gonna be asking, I’m curious if you have any recommendations for people that don’t go to the forums. For one reason or another. If there’s any recommendations you might have to allow those people to still get involved with the community of STO in general.

Stormshade: So, the best way is to get on the forums. Hands-down. It’s where we’re gonna make sure that you’ve got the dev interaction, it’s where we’ve got most of our efforts focused right now.  If you don’t like the forums, keep an eye on us on Facebook – the Star Trek Facebook page. Keep an eye on Twitter, @CrypticStormy if you wanna follow me, @trekonlinegame if you wanna follow the whole game. You know there’s a sticky thread in the forums with all the different developers that I know of that have Twitter accounts and are public.

J:  I think that’s a great move, by the way. Cuz I’ve been following you all on Twitter, and it’s really nice to be able to get to know you all a little outside of the company, outside of the game.

Stormshade:  Yeah, and we watch them, and we respond to these. We’ll respond to you guys through any medium that we can.

C: That’s our approach as well – whatever medium the audience, or the player wants to use is the one we’ll meet them on.  Now, I guess, before we jump into the game stuff, while we’re still kinda in this middle spot, I wanted to maybe touch about – because it’s something that’s just recently happening at the time that we record this. There’s been a switch over from Cryptic Store to Atari Tokens and … is it still going to be called the C-Store?  Stormy, what’s the … what’s goin’ on here?

Stormshade: We’re still calling it the C-Store right now.  It’s really just a name change, and it’s actually better for our community and our players to use the Atari Token model. So, Atari Tokens can be used on any Atari product at all. So, if you’re playing a Facebook game like “Faeries vs. Darklings” which is put out by Atari or “Asteroids Online” on Facebook.

J: Oh, I see, so it’s actually giving the players more options, for the same investments.

Stormshade:  Right. So it’s literally the same investment: 80 Cryptic Points or 80 Atari Tokens is a dollar, same as it always had been.  And it’s just unifying one currency across all of Atari’s platforms.

J: Now as far as Cryptic titles are involved, they’re pretty much interchangeable right?

Stormshade: Yeah, it’s the same thing, whether you’re using Cryptic Points or Atari Tokens it’s the same thing – it’s just a name change.

C: Do you guys get push-back on this stuff? Do people feel like it’s sort of… I guess the first thought to me is the impression could be had that it feels “corporate” over “indie” but it’s really the exact same thing. But I’m wondering, is there a sensitivity to it? Or do people just grok what it is – it’s just a name change.

Stormshade: Mostly from what I’ve seen on the forums, it’s been mostly “Hey it’s just a name change, no big deal.”  Y’know I’ve definitely seen some of the sensitivity where it’s, “I don’t like this name change, I liked my Cryptic Points better…”

C: “Change is change.”

Stormshade:  … and change is scary, right?

C: Let’s talk a little bit about a topic that’s been hot on our show recently. And I guess we’ll just talk about it from the high level. You know there’s been a lot of people emailing us about their ideas on how to … not consolidate, but someway to have sort of a guide to awesome user generated Foundry missions. Now I know you have a guide up now on Star Trek Online for the ones that are getting moved over to Holodeck. Any thoughts on how to expose the really awesome future Foundry missions, and how to make it easy for players to recommend and discover them to other players?

Stormshade:  Well the rating system is definitely something there that we’re gonna get into.

C:  I guess any thoughts on taking that outside the game? Sorta like the Captain’s Database is now, in a sense. Maybe not a full interface, but maybe just a way to search the database. Has there been any discussion on that that you’re aware of?

Stormshade:  … there’s about to be.

C: Oh, ok.

J:  heh… tease.

C:  Yeah, I like that.

Stormshade:  No, like, I am literally writing this down right now.

C:  Oh, I see.

J:  BOOM!

C:  There ya go!

Stormshade:  Community at work!

C:  The main thing I think is that, when people have been writing in I think what they wanna do is they want to know that when they create something epic in the Foundry, that there’s gonna be a way to generate buzz about it.

J:  Specifically for people that might not have a big fleet behind them that can go out and help them with publicity and everything.

C:  Or, I look at it from the angle of our show. How awesome would it be if we could put a URL in our show notes so that when we review a Foundry mission in one of our episodes.  I’d love to be able to put up a URL that a person could click on and … even if it just added it to their log, in-game. Like, somehow to the Captain’s Database. Or if there was some sort of way to do it through a web URL, sort of like how you can link to iTunes apps…

J: I was just gonna say, it’s starting to sound kind of app-like. But I like it.

C: Yeah, it’s almost converting Foundry missions into apps, that you could link to. That’s just kinda putting it into a context we can relate to. That would be amazing for folks like us.  If you’re gonna write it down.  If you’re writing stuff down – write THAT down!

Stormshade:  I totally agree. I did write that down, and I’m gonna bring that up. We’ve actually been doing a lot of meetings around here regarding UGC.  We just talked to different UGC closed beta testers and people on the tribble, and people in the forums … it’s Cryptic! We’re always looking for more ideas from the community, and we love it when you guys give us stuff.

J: Now recently there was a movement started to move some of the best, most highly-rated missions from Tribble – Foundry missions – over to Holodeck. When word came down for that, you seemed to kind of take the reigns for that and lead the community in voting for the best and giving their testimonials and everything like that.  So… great! I think that turned out great, and if you watched our show last week we played through many of those and everybody seemed to enjoy it. Are there more plans to continue that type of spotlight even after the Foundry has landede on Holodeck?

Stormshade:  Totally. The frequency hasn’t really been decided yet. A lot of it really depends on how much that I have. The process here is that obviously somebody here has to go through and play the Foundry missions.

C: We understand. It’s a difficult job, Stormy, but somebody has to do it.

Stormshade:  And I’m so glad that I have it. So I went through and played through a bunch of different Foundry episodes. I picked out some of my favorites. And then I put them forth to the rest of the Cryptic team, our QA team went through and ran a pass on them – the whole nine yards. And what we had then was the Feature Foundry Spotlight page that you see now, and the missions that we moved over to Holodeck. So, I wanna keep doing this, the company wants to keep doing this. We’re looking at doing it either on a bi-weekly or possibly on a monthly basis, really dependent on how much time I have to go through and filter through these.

J: I’ll be honest – even just one a month would be great. I hope you can manage more than that.

C: And of course we intend to do it too!

Stormshade:  Well, it would be one UPDATE a month, so it will probably be like another batch of four episodes, every time.

C: Oh that’d be great.

J: That’d be awesome.

C: Yeah, and I know that a lot of people in our chatroom and forums are already talking about setting up subforums and things like that. In fact, in our Jupiter Colony forum, there’s already a subforum in there where people are talking about reviewing Foundry Missions. So, people are definitely excited about that.

Stormshade:  I wanna go ahead and give a plug out here to the guys at starbaseugc.com

C: Absolutely!

Stormshade: Kirkfat, Havraha — They’ve all been doing a great job making that community over there. And it’s really impressive to see what they’re writing. Everyone around here is just watching that site like a hawk.

J: I concur. And I was really happy to see that their tutorial videos are now linked over there on the STO site itself, at startrekonline.com. That’s great for them.

Stormshade:  We were really happy that they let us use that material on our website. That’s just… they’re awesome videos!

J: Yeah.

C: Stormy, while I’ve got you on the line, I wanna pick your brain about a topic that came up on the show like a couple of episodes ago. We — well, me specifically — I poked a little bit of fun at the Captain’s Table. With the disclaimer that I do like the Captain’s Table. And our Community Feedback bump – which is epic – is shot in the Captain’s Table zone so… I gotta be fair it’s been useful for the show. But, any discussions? Is the Captain’s Table solid? Or any thoughts on what you think? I guess the main thing that I think of when I think of the community interaction aspect comes from is, I think when the Captain’s Table landed a lot of folks expected to have more regular chats with the Devs in there. Now, of course, everybody’s super-busy so that probably isn’t really practical. But is there any kind of discussions going on about where to go with the Captain’s Table?

Stormshade:  Yeah definitely, we’re always looking for ways to improve stuff, and the Captain’s Table is definitely something that the community has told us that we should improve. So, we’re definitely looking at ways to do that. The downside is, where are we going to focus our efforts, right? Are we going to focus it on an area that not so many people have access to right now? Or are we going to focus it on making more content and more things that everybody can access?

J: Just kind of a bang-for-your-buck sort of question.

C: You gotta spend your resources where you can. If I had… I know this isn’t the Chris interview, so I’ll just keep this short. If I had my ideal — cuz I thought about it after I made fun of the Captain’s Table, what I’d like to see happen. And I was just thinking that the Captain’s Table would be a great spot if it was open to everyone – and there’s nothing in-game that does this now, so it’s totally impractical, so it’s just me saying stuff that’s impossible… But it’s the internet, so you get away with it. Wouldn’t it be cool if the Captain’s Table become a leaderboard spotlight either your direct social friends in the game, or for all of the players in the game. Wouldn’t it be great if you went to the Captain’s Table and it was some sort of Hall of Records of all the amazing Starfleet officers that currently serve in Starfleet.

Stormshade:  That would be kind of cool.

J: You could put up a number of metrics…

C: Super super tons of work, and so I’m just throwing that out there, but that would be… that would be an amazing thing.  Also I’d take the Captain’s Table and I’d put it in the lower half of Earth Spacedock and I’d put it in Qo’nos, and I’d get it outta space.

J: Yeah, get rid of the nebula.

C: But that’s just what I would do, and I know I can say that because I don’t have to do any of the work.

(all laugh)

Stormshade:  There ya go!

C: So I totally understand why it’s not like that. Any other questions while we’ve got Stormy on the line?

J: Well, Stormy, did you have any input into helping develop these One Year events that’re going on right now?  Help out choosing which things Q turns you into or anything?

C: I’m sure we’ve already talked about it a bunch at the top of this episode, but…

Stormshade:  That’s all been the Dev team. Christine Thompson – Kestrel on the forums – she did a lot of the trivia questions. It’s all, the Dev team planned out a little party.

C:  It’s been fun.

J:  And I did see the party, which was a community thing. I know you guys brought down the servers with your crowds in Club 47.

Stormshade:  That actually wasn’t related to crowds. I actually responded to that… somebody typed in the wrong command line and things were going kind of haywire.

C: You know what, as the guy that runs server infrastructures for companies, I can admit that I’ve done that. I’ve done that, there’s an MMO that I’m a server admin for – a very, very small MMO – that I have done that before. So, I understand that one. Now, I guess that I would say, Stormy, that at this point we’ve come up on the year point of STO, and I know you can’t give us any specifics, but can we get a vital… general health stats? Y’know, let’s talk playerbase. I’ve seen, and I think maybe it’s just cuz the yearly event’s been going on, but sector space seems like it’s been more crowded than I’ve seen it in a very long time. Is there anything you can share with us in terms of subscriber base? Growth? Average?

Stormshade:  All I can say is that things are looking very good for Star Trek right now.

J: That’s great to hear. I’ve actually noticed by looking at the forums that due to the recent Lifetime sale that the number of blue names has seemed to substantially increase.

Stormshade:  Yeah, we’ve seen a lot of people who have gone and decided to become Career Officers because of the sale. We’ve actually seen an overall increase in subscribers, so the population has been growing. Things are looking really good for STO right now.

J:  I did just wanna point out one more thing… if you notice on their 1-Year Anniversary holograms that are all over Earth Spacedock, it says zero-one. That kind of indicates that they’re planning for double digits.

C:  Well, yeah.

Stormshade:  Yeah, totally!

J: So Stormy, I think that’s all we’ve got for you today. I wanna thank you very much for appearing on STOked, and you can bet that we’ll stay in touch. We are very focused on the community, as it seems you are as well.

Stormshade:  I know, and it’s awesome to see you guys every week, so thanks a ton.

C: Alright, thanks Stormshade!

Stormshade:  Alright, ciao!