Step 1: Design a new Enterprise for STO. Step 2: ??? Step 3: Cool prizes!

They want every subscriber to win.

Well you have to think to submit you have to basically sign a release for them to use your work with the only compensation being the prize. So they are getting a lot of work for potential new ships done for practically nothing.

And if obsessive communities have taught me anything, its that they have no qualms about doing extremely detailed work for the sake of doing it.

Yea, I'm going to go ahead and say it. You would think that a company that wants to go head-to-head with CCP in the space-based MMO scene, endeavoring to offer a different and alternative experience for those who like sci-fi, should probably try a little harder not to blatantly rip off the other companies marketing schemes, guys.

But he does bring up a good point. One of STO's complaints at launch was that the Cryptic designed ships (not the existing ships from lore) were pretty horrible designs and many felt they really didn't fit Star Trek. Now this contest is going to have dozens of submissions of ship designs made from other artists. Now I have no problem with this at all, it's a contest, it's all in fun.

BUT...if the remaining few players start wanting those runner up models in the game available to them, then Cryptic goes and starts selling these same ships on their bottom feeding C-Store, then those artists should definitely get a piece of any sales made off their artistic work.

I don't really think this would be an issue this time, because commercial artistic/creative laws pretty much cover these things. But given Cryptic's reputation and recent history, I wouldn't blame someone for being a bit worried or skeptical that they might try to make money off someone's non-commercial submitted creation if they could get away with it.

And I do agree on Suricata, I wouldn't be surprised if they were the winner as well. They were born 4-5 centuries to soon.

If Cryptic would ever kick their writers into finishing the "Path to 2409" backstory articles we might know the answer to that.