Defiance, an MMO Designed to Overlap with the Defiance TV Show (and Vice Versa)

Now here's something I've been waiting years to see: Defiance, an upcoming multi-platform MMO, will launch with a SyFY TV show of the same name. So what, so meh, you might think, because there's several MMOs based on TV shows (Star Trek, Galactica, etc.) So here's the ambitious and interesting part, via Alice Taylor:

The television series is being developed in conjunction with a massively multiplayer online game, and the two will be launched simultaneously. They'll be connected by the same overall storyline, to the point that events from the show will play a part in the game, and vice versa.

Ever since MMOs started to attract audiences in the millions, I've wondered when we'd start to see transmedia efforts like this. If it's done well -- and that's a big if -- the MMO's users will also play a part in the show's plot. The writers could integrate Defiance player activity into the Defiance television story, basing it on the emergent behavior and social conflicts that crop up there. As I can attest first-hand from reporting in SL, those are bound to be as interesting as anything the writers can come up with.

I could also see this kind of interaction working with smaller, indie MMOs. For example, I bet a mini-MMO the size of Second Life's Bloodlines could be integrated into an ongoing machinima-based series on YouTube, boosting the game's audience size, and for the developer, creating a new channel for their franchise.

Anyway, check out footage for the Defiance MMO below:

A bit heavy on the face punching, but hopefully the actual MMO comes with guilds and economic systems and user-generated content and all the other features that make emergence possible.

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Comments

[Pussycat Catnap]

Meh... Its just a video game. amiright?
- Or isn't that what they keep on trying to say with all of this stuff.

It doesn't help matters that SL, in trying to be seen as serious; flips it and tries to pretend that it is -not- a video game when its really not all that different from any other 'massive multiplayer online world'.

SL actually hurts its popularity and potential by trying to pretend to not be a video game in world where half the people expect video games to be serious entertainment and social venues - all the things SL can provide, and the other half look at anything with animation or 3D and dismiss it out of hand no matter what it claims to be.

Its like folks in the ghetto who try to bleach their skin to be white or change their dialect to be WASP... you end up failing in both worlds. Own your roots (be they hood or redneck).

(That is not saying you should be your RL self in SL - that's a very different thing. Though I do think people should not be 'fake' about the ID they choose: don't pick one to hide yourself. Pick one to be more yourself, even if that makes you a floating blue ball.)

Back to SL, games, and cross-over media...

- Video games are -THE- future of entertainment. TV, Radio, Movies,and all that other stuff is dated - it is very viable, but its not where the main focus should be anymore.

You shouldn't use a video game for added value for a TV show or movie. You should use the movie or TV show as an added bonus to the video game. The profit, the money, and the audience; will come to and from the game first and most.

Denying that and be-littling things for being 'games', is like the decades Jamaica spent refusing to air Ska, Rocksteady, and Reggae on its radio shows because it was 'black music'... its denying the reality around you.

If SL were to own what it is more, it might be able to get better media than a couple of movies and shows about people portrayed as 'weird sex freaks using it for escape'...

SL's deeper nature would make it -perfect- for a cross-media project like this. Where you can expand in near real time on both sides and have them influence each other more.

[shockwave yareach]

Eh, I can't take it seriously because it's Syfy. They'll end up setting everything in the woods of the Northeast (like Flash Gordon) because it's cheap to film there. When they get back to being a science fiction network instead of showing wrestling (or at least put the wrestlers in rubber costumes), I'll watch it again.

Syfy -- it's Simply Syfylus!

[Allwa Frognik]

the alien worlds of Vancouver....lol