Interview with 4jStudios on Star Trek: Encounters

Frank Arnot is the Managing Director of 4J Studios Ltd and the Game Director/Producer on the Star Trek: Encounters project.



1: A lot of people don't realise that there is game producers here in Scotland. The STG staff are mostly living in Scotland and I found it a pleasant surprise to see that a Scottish developer is having a part in the Star Trek franchise. From what I have read it looks like 4j Studios have only recently started as a business, will it be only PlayStation 2 based games your company will be working on now and in the future?

FRANK ARNOT: Scotland has a small game development community but what we lack in size we try to make up in creativity. 4J Studios was formed in 2005 with the express purpose of trying to make smaller, but more creative and crafted products.

And while we can still be considered a new company, the vast majority of our staff are highly experienced, many having worked in the games industry for more than 10 years.

In addition to Encounters on PS2, we are also currently working a next-gen console product (not Star Trek related), and post-Encounters we’ll be looking to increase our next-gen workload.

2: Moving on to Encounters. A lot of people are calling this game a Legacy style game for the PlayStation, is that a fair statement or is the game more than Legacy made for the PS2?

FRANK ARNOT: I wouldn’t say that is a fair statement. For starters, no-one at 4J has seen, played, or been a part of the development of Legacy or any of the other Star Trek products.

Encounters is completely its own product. It has been developed with no knowledge of what the other dev teams are up to.

Of course there will be similarities, but I put that down to some kind of creative zeitgeist. I mean, if you asked 10 separate developers to make 10 different Star Trek products there would still be similarities across the games because they all started from a common source.


3: Whats the feel of the game? Is it fast paced action all the way or is there strategy involved in the game play styles?

FRANK ARNOT: I think the best way to describe the title is retro-arcade – it has the feel of a classic action-orientated title. We wanted to make it fun to just fly the various starships and shoot things.

This might be a bit of departure from what is expected from a Star Trek product but everyone here at 4J is a fan of the various Star Trek movies and TV shows and we decided to go a little “leftfield” and make the type of Star Trek game that we would like to play, while still remaining true to the Star Trek license.

We are very happy with how the final product is working out and hopefully it finds a place with the legions of Star Trek gamers out there.

There are a number of modes to the game:

- Episode Mode: offers 20 episodes, or missions, for the player to play, featuring all 5 eras of the Star Trek universe. Each episode borrows its theme from moments in the various movies or TV episodes and while shooting is the mainstay of the missions there are other things the player has to do, for example, tracking down enemy by following warp signatures, racing through warp conduits, using nebula to allow stealthy movement, etc.

- Skirmish Mode: Head-to-head. This mode allows the player to play head-to-head either against the AI or against a friend in split-screen mode to see which ship would win in a one-on-one deathmatch.

- Skirmish Mode: Onslaught. This mode can best be thought of as a kind of Star Trek meets Geometry Wars (the Xbox Live Arcade game). Playing as a Starfleet vessel the player must survive increasing waves of enemy craft: Xindi, Klingon, Romulan, Jem’Hadar, Borg, and others, in an attempt to achieve the highest score.


4: Whats it like for a new company to have a part in the 40 year anniversary of a franchise as big as Star Trek?

FRANK ARNOT: Fantastic! We were thrilled to be offered the chance of working on the Star Trek license especially given the 40th anniversary.

5: ...and working with Bethesda Softworks who have released massive titles like Oblivion, whats it like working with them?

FRANK ARNOT: It’s been great. Bethesda gave us the creative freedom to create the game we wanted on the PS2 and it has worked out really well.

6: The PlayStation 2 has been out for a little while now, how hard was it to develop Encounters for the PS2 system and make sure that the game used as much of the PS2's resources as possible?

FRANK ARNOT: We’ve got a very experienced team at 4J who have already completed a number of PS2 projects so it was pretty straightforward to get the look and feel that we wanted.

7: Can you give any hints on what the user interface for the game will be like? The problem with some of the games for the PS2 was the overly confusing interface for the games which confused people.

FRANK ARNOT: We’ve tried to keep the interface as simple as possible with inactive items sliding off-screen but it is a very difficult thing to get right. The user interface has to communicate a lot of information to the player and striking that balance between informing and overloading the player can be tough.

8: With Encounter's being released alongside Legacy and Tactical Assault it will mean for the first time 3 games have been released in the same month in the 15 year history of the franchise, the focus is starting to turn to the Star Trek gaming franchise once more. What kind of feedback have you been receiving locally in the UK games industry?

FRANK ARNOT: The news of Encounters has just broken recently, so we’ve been very low profile, in fact, this is our first developer interview! 

9: Have the staff of 4J played any of the earlier Star Trek gaming titles?

FRANK ARNOT: To be honest, no! Most of us had played and enjoyed the first-person shooter, ST Voyager: Elite Force but other than that, no. Which I think is part of the reason that Encounters hasn’t went down the expected Star Trek game route. As I said earlier, everyone here at 4J is a fan of the Star Trek movies and TV shows and I think the Star Trek universe is rich and diverse enough to support many different genres of games.

10: Lastly...what does 4J Studios as a company have planned for the future?

FRANK ARNOT: We hope to continue our successful relationship with Bethesda and are working with them to line up future projects. We’d really love to do more Star Trek games, perhaps building upon the game mechanic of Encounters but we’ll just have to wait and see!


Thanks Erin and 4J :)