Why the blog?
With 2008 coming to an end, I have started to think about what has happened this year as we get closer to the start of 2009…
Some people have asked me why I care about Star Control so much to the point where I wanted to make a blog about it. When I was in my final year of high-school, Star Trek Enterprise was in its fourth and final season and I knew it was going to be cancelled; it was rescheduled from a convenient Wednesday night to the Friday Night Graveyard. It bothered me. I am not a hardcore trekkie; I simply liked the show.
The first thing I did was search the internet when I found an organization called “Save Enterprise”. It had a great guide on what kind of letters to write and who to send them too. They even raised over 3 million dollars to fund a fifth season. I wrote so many letters. I tried to convince other Star Trek-loving friends to join in the letter-writing campaign. They told me that it’s too late and I was wasting my time. I never gave up. I kept buying stamps, writing letters, and dropping them in the mailbox. Unfortunately, Enterprise was cancelled in its fourth season, and the $3 million raised was given back to everyone who donated. Later, there was a petition for a direct-to-DVD movie of Enterprise, which ultimately failed. I know it’s a prequel, but I liked it! I just wished that there was more the fans could do for the series, instead of arguing about whether or not it’s worth saving.
So, what makes Star Control different? We all want the same thing! Even though there are some people who say “It will never happen”, they still want TFB to make a new Star Control game just like everyone else. They’re not against it; they just want to see more powerful people in the gaming industry support it.
The second Alex Ness wrote on the TFB website that they would like their next game to be a Star Control game and that they were collecting fan mail, I immediately thought of Star Trek Enterprise. At first, I wrote a massive amount of letters, when I realized that a mass quantity of letters is not enough to convince Activision. I didn’t just write to Alex. I wrote letters to other people involved in the gaming industry about Star Control. Although not everyone wrote back, I thank those who at least read it and a special thanks to everyone who wrote back to me; it really helped me out with the blog and helped me get different perspectives of the video game industry today.
At this time, the UQM forums were very active and I was still a new member. There were lots of cool discussions, and I even started up a Photoshop thread inspired by the “Photoshop Phridays” at Something Awful. I admit that some of my images are amateur-quality.
As time went by, I started to get busier with college and work, so I had to put my letter-writing and forum-posting to a pause until I had more free time. I suddenly became inspired to learn about web design and get back into blogging. While brainstorming the things I could write about in my blog, Star Control popped into my mind, and Star Controller was born.
