With the speed at which news comes out in the gaming industry we sometimes miss important or news worthy things. Some of these things we want to talk about in a way that is both easy for you guys and allows us to get all the facts together as some of these stories develop quickly. Sometimes we also just cover topics that we find interesting and want to discuss.
Fan project for Star Trek, “Stage 9,” ends
In 2016, a fan of Star Trek, started a project using the Unreal engine which included VR. It was a project that allow you to walk around the Enterprise-D (Next Generation series) and explore all the major set pieces from the show. The bridge, ready room, etc. It started as a simple, self described, “fan art” and with a small group of volunteers working to make the ships layout as authentic to the show as possible. No missions, no objective, other than to explore the ship in its entirety to your hearts content. No money was needed, if it was part of a game it would be considered a mod but this was simply a stand-alone program made by “Scragnog.” They were open and upfront that this project was NOT connected with CBS nor was it an official project of any kind to do with the copyright. On September 12, CBS issued a Cease-and-Desist order to the project, shutting it down completely. They creator did everything he could to appease CBS so as not to let the project die, changing the ship class, not calling it the Enterprise, but CBS gave them a flat out “no.”
Original story by Eurogamer.
Ozzy’s Thoughts: I have been a fan of all things Star Trek since I was a kid. It was the first “Star” (Wars, Gate, Battle.., etc.) show I had heard of and I guess it just stuck with me. Any fan that looks a bit into the history of anything Star Trek will know that in the last couple of decades its had problems with franchise. CBS and Paramount fighting over who owns it (and eventually splitting it between the two,) video games coming out which of all the bad ones there are a handful of gems (THAT…NEED…SEQUELS!!!) but with that, the video games have (mostly) disappeared. The good ones are all old, the new ones coming out aren’t up to any kind of standard (Star Trek 2013) and the only constant we have is Star Trek Online(which isn’t bad) and fan mods like this one. CBS has lately, it seems to me, not very accommodating to fans. Shutting down fan filmsandnot just simply allowing the fans to be fans. Putting in rules that your fan movies can’t be over 30 minutes long, can’t use previous Star Trek actors (which a handful of fan films had a lot of them,) have more than $50,000 in a budget (the last major fan movie had crowdfunded $638,000) and one of the last things that bugs me, is the sets/props can’t be professional? (So no buying an old set prop off Ebay to use) So not long, not much money, and not pretty? That seems very nit-picky to me. If it were simply a legal matter such as “you didn’t post on the intro that you are in no way affiliated with CBS/Star Trek and that this was a fan project” and helping them change that, that would be fine. Shutting down a completely free program which is nothing short of a love letter to a franchise someone loves? Come on. Just let fans be fans.
