MMO Game to Affect Plot and Storylines of TV Show, and Vice Versa

  • MMO developer Trion Worlds is developing a massively multiplayer game called “Defiance” whose plot and storyline will influence a TV show based on the game that will run concurrently on the Syfy network.
  • “We started the project in a more traditional ‘games-and-Hollywood’ way. They’re sending us scripts, asking ‘does this work’ — and it didn’t work,” Nick Beliaeff, head of development at Trion Worlds, told Ars Technica.
  • “They’re about characters and all that stuff, and for us… we care, but that’s not what we start with,” he said. “What’s the art, what’s the technology, what’s the gameplay style? Once we realized that, we took a step back and educated each other — here’s how you make a game, here’s how you make a show, this is what we need to do first, this is what they need to do first.”
  • The game (to be available on PC, PS3 and Xbox 360) will have been in development some five years when the show launches in April 2013.
  • “It remains to be seen whether Trion and Syfy can pull off this ambitious integration in a meaningful way,” notes the article. “Still, it’s nice to see someone trying to thread the cross-media licensing needle with something a little more substantial than characters and setting cribbed from an established film or TV universe.”

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