STAR TREK VOYAGER: ELITE FORCE
For 18 years I have been a professional video game developer for Raven Software, working on such titles as Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force, Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast, X-Men Origins: Wolverine and the Call of Duty series.
It was on Star Trek: Voyager: Elite Force that I got to write for Star Trek professionally. I conceived the original characters that starred in the game (serving in the "Hazard Team" alongside the main cast of characters). I wrote over 800 pages of dialogue for the game and the script was approved by Paramount's licensing and production offices (getting approval from the executive producers/head writers of Voyager).
I even got to go to Paramount Studios and participate in casting and was present for every voiceover session to make sure the performances matched my vision (Kris Zimmerman was our VO director and we really lucked out - she was amazing - professional, resourceful and a pleasure to work with). I even earned praise for my writing from one of the cast members I met during his VO session, which was a great feeling. All of this was a very valuable experience for me and I earned my membership in the Writer's Guild of America with this project.
When the game was released, it was praised as being the best Star Trek game of all time and still holds that title on many lists:
Metacritic's Top-Rated Star Trek Games
Kotaku's Best Star Trek Games
WatchMojo's Top 10 Star Trek Games
Yahoo Games' Best Star Trek Games
Wikipedia's article on the reception of Elite Force
One of the main reasons the game was praised was due to its strong writing. I applied the same values to that effort as I outlined above. It would have been easy to write off characters and development in a first person shooter, but to me the only thing that would make the game feel like Star Trek was good characters.
In addition to writing the script for Elite Force, I wrote the squad AI systems, developed the cinematic scripting system, storyboarded and implemented most of the early cinematics, implemented a few of the early combat sequences in the game and fully scripted the prototype level of the game (a later level with Seven of Nine on the Borg Cube) as well as a couple other levels (the Klingon & Imperial Enterprise stealth levels and one of the Dreadnought levels). I also worked on the multiplayer mode, most notably creating the Assimilation game mode.
It was on Star Trek: Voyager: Elite Force that I got to write for Star Trek professionally. I conceived the original characters that starred in the game (serving in the "Hazard Team" alongside the main cast of characters). I wrote over 800 pages of dialogue for the game and the script was approved by Paramount's licensing and production offices (getting approval from the executive producers/head writers of Voyager).
I even got to go to Paramount Studios and participate in casting and was present for every voiceover session to make sure the performances matched my vision (Kris Zimmerman was our VO director and we really lucked out - she was amazing - professional, resourceful and a pleasure to work with). I even earned praise for my writing from one of the cast members I met during his VO session, which was a great feeling. All of this was a very valuable experience for me and I earned my membership in the Writer's Guild of America with this project.
When the game was released, it was praised as being the best Star Trek game of all time and still holds that title on many lists:
Metacritic's Top-Rated Star Trek Games
Kotaku's Best Star Trek Games
WatchMojo's Top 10 Star Trek Games
Yahoo Games' Best Star Trek Games
Wikipedia's article on the reception of Elite Force
One of the main reasons the game was praised was due to its strong writing. I applied the same values to that effort as I outlined above. It would have been easy to write off characters and development in a first person shooter, but to me the only thing that would make the game feel like Star Trek was good characters.
In addition to writing the script for Elite Force, I wrote the squad AI systems, developed the cinematic scripting system, storyboarded and implemented most of the early cinematics, implemented a few of the early combat sequences in the game and fully scripted the prototype level of the game (a later level with Seven of Nine on the Borg Cube) as well as a couple other levels (the Klingon & Imperial Enterprise stealth levels and one of the Dreadnought levels). I also worked on the multiplayer mode, most notably creating the Assimilation game mode.
