Building a sci-fi TV show through an MMO (and vice versa)
Building a massively multiplayer game on top of an existing science fiction universe is nothing new, as anyone who has played The Matrix Online, Star Wars Galaxies, or Battlestar Galactica Online can tell you. But with Defiance, MMO developer Trion Worlds is trying to create a new dynamic where events that happen in the game directly affect the plot and storylines in a concurrently running Syfy network TV show, and vice versa.
Already over four years in the making, the team behind Defiance is finally unveiling details about both the game (which will be available on PC, PS3, and Xbox 360) and the show, in advance of a planned April 2013 launch. Set in the near future, the world of Defiance is built on the premise of a group of alien ships crash-landing on Earth and terraforming the planet in significant and somewhat destructive ways.
At a press event, the show's creators stressed the human scale of what's essentially an immigrant drama, where the citizens ...
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