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You are here: Home / Popular Culture / Gamer Dork / DEFIANCE: It’s A Floor Wax TV Series and A Dessert Topping Online Game!

DEFIANCE: It’s A Floor Wax TV Series and A Dessert Topping Online Game!

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Because I have too many hobbies and not enough money, I don’t have cable and I’m not a gamer, but this is certainly an intriguing concept. Do any of you better equipped to judge want to offer an opinion?:

… “Defiance,” a new series on Syfy that [premiered] on Monday, and Defiance, the new video game from Trion Worlds that made its debut last week, will face considerable skepticism from viewers and players. But this joint project is worth paying attention to, even if it can’t be deemed a success just yet.

In an unusual arrangement, neither the show nor the video game is a spinoff of the other. Instead, in a process that took five years and three contracts between Syfy and Trion Worlds, the fictional world of Defiance is a collaboration between the companies. The series and the game were developed simultaneously. Each is designed to be a stand-alone piece of entertainment. Yet they also intersect. Events in the show will influence the game. And events in the game will influence the show….

The first several hours of Defiance the game, a massively multiplayer online world set in the same universe’s San Francisco, are less entertaining. Running around and shooting things — bugs and mutants and whatnot — is reasonably fun, but the character animations, acting and dialogue all feel second class. A lot of the game is discontinuous, with scenes beginning and ending abruptly, and a little buggy, at least on the Xbox 360 version that I played. (It is also available on PlayStation 3 and on personal computers.) It’s too early to give up on the game — one of the benefits of a big virtual world like this is that it can be altered and improved over time. As an isolated experience, though, it’s not worth checking out yet.

In combination, however, “Defiance” and Defiance are promising experiments. The first two characters seen in the television pilot — Joshua Nolan and his adopted alien daughter, Irisa Nyira (played by Stephanie Leonidas), begin as characters in the video game. Missions that players can carry out alongside Nolan and Irisa will be removed from the game when the series begins next week. The goal, Mr. Murphy said, is for the show and the game to pass characters back and forth freely.

After each of the first television season’s 13 episodes, a similar series of missions will be introduced into the game, and then retired by the time the next episode starts. After an episode about a plague, for instance, players will have to figure out how to cure the pandemic…

And Nick Beliaeff, the senior vice president for development at Trion Worlds, added that there were lots of ways for players to be represented in the show without turning it into what he called “a choose-your-own-adventure story.” Syfy and Trion are discussing, he said, an in-game contest for players after the end of the first season. The winner’s video game character would appear in some fashion on the series during the second season.

“Assuming they have a name that’s appropriate for network television,” Mr. Beliaeff said. “And that is a serious concern. Oh, I wish I were joking.”

Reader Interactions

36Comments

  1. 1.

    Darkrose

    I have two big questions about Defiance:

    1. What happens when SyFy cancels the show, as they inevitably will?

    2. How many Trion resources have been pulled off of Rift for this?

  2. 2.

    Yutsano

    Sounds a wee bit too convoluted for its own good. And you know as soon as there’s ONE inconsistency between the show and the game the fanboys will scream to the high heavens about whichever being teh mass suxxors. I give it one season before it stops being cost effective.

  3. 3.

    MikeJ

    Events in the show will influence the game. And events in the game will influence the show….

    I look forward to the show having lines about how YourMom1994 killed 100 imperial guards.

  4. 4.

    Forkbeard

    Watched the first 15 minutes of the Defiance pilot – interesting, but it hasn’t grabbed me yet. I’ll watch the first few episodes at least.

    Been playing the game, too – the first hour or so is really underwhelming. The tutorial alone just sucks. But once you get out there and start understanding the game systems (and get yourself a ATV), the entire thing is a blast. Basically a huge open-world 3rd person shooter where other players are dropping in and out of your quests the whole time.

    Basically, this guy sums up the experience of me and the other two guys I know playing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IAG3stZESM

    Edit: For gawdsakes, play the PC version! Less lag, less buggy, prettier, and gets update patches much faster.

  5. 5.

    Alison

    I don’t know anything about this one but reading it makes me really miss my old MMORPG days and friends. Meeeeeemorriiiieeeesss…

  6. 6.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Alison:

    Meeeeeemorriiiieeeesss…

    If people are going to start citing “Cats,” I will begin to wonder if Cole got the blog restarted too soon.

  8. 8.

    The prophet Nostradumbass

    @Darkrose: I played Rift for a while, and eventually got bored with it. Having to re-boot into Windows didn’t help.

    I’ve had a World of Warcraft account for about seven years, but I think I’ve just about reached the boredom point with it, too. I have the feeling I’m going to suspend that one as well.

  10. 10.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Alison: I try not to judge. Although I do despise the people who like Andrew Lloyd Weber productions and think that this fact means they like opera.

  11. 11.

    Soonergrunt

    I went to a presentation on it at last year’s Comic Con in San Diego. I thought the idea was intriguing, but I don’t see how they are going to keep the continuity there for the gamers. If events in one media affect events in the other, that’s fine going from the show to the game. That concept has been done several times and the logistics of it are pretty well worked out. Every show or movie that’s ever had a tie-in game has done that. But to go the other way is going to be a logistical nightmare, OR (more likely) entirely synthetic. In order for the game to be a money maker, the different events have to be experience-able by different players at different times, and even have to be re-playable.
    So how do they do that? Which player-character’s activity gets chosen to affect the show? And which iteration of that activity?
    Like I said, I think it’s an interesting concept, but I’m not holding my breath that it will succeed.

  14. 14.

    Yutsano

    @Amir Khalid: Yeah, I went to Babs as well. But I have issues with Andrew Lloyd Webber anyway. How many times can you use the same melody though an entire musical? Oi.

  15. 15.

    Soonergrunt

    @The prophet Nostradumbass: Yup, and it will be the game world where all of the changes are made.
    The problem here is that one medium is inherently passive and non-interactive, and the other one is active and interactive.
    How you tell a consistent story between the two without crippling the interactivity of the game world to a significant degree is something that I can’t figure out.
    In any event, the idea of the universe itself isn’t that appealing to me. Joss Whedon already did that with Firefly. But I am interested in seeing how they do the dual media thing.
    Who knows? They might pull it off.

  16. 16.

    NotMax

    For those who may not have seen it, here are the first 14 minutes, uninterrupte.

    Seems very run of the mill, with a heavy reliance on not quite state of the art CGI.

    Mad Max with alien prosthetics and stock characters.

    Tried watching the preview SYFY ran the night, but had to give up due to the excessive patting themselves on the back for technical behind the scenes stuff rather than promoting such things as character and plot.

  18. 18.

    AA+ Bonds

    Links on Libya (Cole Was Right):

    Libya now key source of arms for conflicts

    Eighteen months after the civilian conflict and NATO bombing campaign ousted longtime Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, most of the weapons in the country remain in control of civilians and militias, according to a UN Security Council report. The trafficking of those arms is both a lucrative business and a major security threat to the entire region, the report revealed.

    Militias drain Libya’s coffers

    Armed groups have proliferated across Libya since the revolution, and the authorities have been struggling to bring them under control, even as they have also relied on them to maintain security. Militias have filled up the vacuum left by the crumbing of Mr Gaddafi’s hated police force and the break-up of his army.

    Local observers and former government officials blame the decision to place ex-fighters on the government payroll for the mushrooming of local militias many of which engage in human rights abuses and often also criminal activity. Some, especially in the east of the country, also pursue extreme Islamist political agendas.

    Detained Journalist’s Wife Asks Why Publishing Articles Has ‘Become So Dangerous in Libya’

    The wife of a hunger-striking Libyan journalist has told Amnesty International of her disbelief that her husband has been imprisoned and denied bail for ‘offending’ the judiciary under an al-Gaddafi-era law.

    Amara al-Khattabi, the editor-in-chief of al-Umma newspaper, was arrested last December and has been on hunger strike since 28 February in protest at his detention. He was arrested a month after his newspaper published a list of 84 judges allegedly involved in corruption.

    Old animosities thrive in post-Kadafi Libya

    A Human Rights Watch report released in February said that “several thousand” detainees were being held illegally by private militias. Those armed groups include Ansar al Sharia, blamed for the attack in September that killed U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans but now policing the city where he died, Benghazi.

    The government is paying millions of dollars a month to militias in attempts to appease them. A deadly battle between militias from Zintan and Zuwara last month at an energy complex temporarily suspended oil production and natural gas exports to Italy. The fight was predictable in its irony: It erupted when Zuwara tribesmen challenged Zintan fighters for the contract to protect the plant.

  19. 19.

    AA+ Bonds

    Until my post gets out of moderation for the huge amount of must-read links:

    Old animosities thrive in post-Kadafi Libya

    A Human Rights Watch report released in February said that “several thousand” detainees were being held illegally by private militias. Those armed groups include Ansar al Sharia, blamed for the attack in September that killed U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans but now policing the city where he died, Benghazi.

    The government is paying millions of dollars a month to militias in attempts to appease them. A deadly battle between militias from Zintan and Zuwara last month at an energy complex temporarily suspended oil production and natural gas exports to Italy. The fight was predictable in its irony: It erupted when Zuwara tribesmen challenged Zintan fighters for the contract to protect the plant.

  20. 20.

    AA+ Bonds

    Libya now key source of arms for conflicts

    Eighteen months after the civilian conflict and NATO bombing campaign ousted longtime Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, most of the weapons in the country remain in control of civilians and militias, according to a UN Security Council report. The trafficking of those arms is both a lucrative business and a major security threat to the entire region, the report revealed.

  21. 21.

    AA+ Bonds

    Detained Journalist’s Wife Asks Why Publishing Articles Has ‘Become So Dangerous in Libya’

    The wife of a hunger-striking Libyan journalist has told Amnesty International of her disbelief that her husband has been imprisoned and denied bail for ‘offending’ the judiciary under an al-Gaddafi-era law.

    Amara al-Khattabi, the editor-in-chief of al-Umma newspaper, was arrested last December and has been on hunger strike since 28 February in protest at his detention. He was arrested a month after his newspaper published a list of 84 judges allegedly involved in corruption.

  22. 22.

    NotMax

    Also found it very, very grating that they (mis)use the term “terraforming” for how the aliens have altered the biosphere of the Earth.

    Terra is Earth, period. Terraforming describes a process whose aim is making someplace more Earth-like.

    As they went to such pains to craft alien languages, someone could have come up with a proper term. Exoforming, or ecoshaping or some such. Even terradeforming or uneterraforming would be more apt.

  23. 23.

    AA+ Bonds

    Militias drain Libya’s coffers

    Armed groups have proliferated across Libya since the revolution, and the authorities have been struggling to bring them under control, even as they have also relied on them to maintain security. Militias have filled up the vacuum left by the crumbing of Mr Gaddafi’s hated police force and the break-up of his army.

    Local observers and former government officials blame the decision to place ex-fighters on the government payroll for the mushrooming of local militias many of which engage in human rights abuses and often also criminal activity. Some, especially in the east of the country, also pursue extreme Islamist political agendas.

  25. 25.

    Darkrose

    @The prophet Nostradumbass: I’ve played a fair amount of Rift since NCSoft–may their stock continue to tank–pulled the plug on City of Heroes. Rift’s a gorgeous game, and the original concept was good. I’m not sorry that I got the year subscription for Storm Legion, but I haven’t played in a month or so. I get the feeling that the devs aren’t sure where they want to go next.

  29. 29.

    kindness

    The tie in concept is interesting, particularly for media executives. For me? I just wish that SyFy would produce decent Science Fiction shows again. They seem to have forgotten that part of the equation lately.

  31. 31.

    The Other Chuck

    @The prophet Nostradumbass: My guess is all they do is script events players can partake in between seasons, and reference them in the show. It’d be like World of Warcraft becoming a series, where and whaddya know next season it turns out they finally killed Deathwing.

    I give this gimmick about as long as Trion’s minimum contract length before the game part disappears. Who knows how long SyFy will push the show along, I’ve never been any good at the prediction business for TV shows.

  32. 32.

    Nina

    I’m not fond of shooters, and MMO-shooters sound to me like a recipe for imbalance (laaaaaag!). I didn’t like Rift much so I will be giving Defiance a pass. The TV show looks vaguely interesting, but I’m about 4 series behind on my to-be-watched pile. If I hear good things about it I’ll get on the bandwagon later.

  33. 33.

    CaseyL

    Re Libya: Not surprising that country has TTS’d. Libyans’ concepts of governance have been shaped by 40 years of Gaddafi rule, not to mention the place is as tribal as Afghanistan.

    People do what they know.

  34. 34.

    Forkbeard

    @The Other Chuck: From what I understand, the game/show interface is going to look a lot like this:

    1) On the show, someone mentions a medical supplies shortage.
    2) In the game, players all get a mission to gather and send off supplies.
    3) On the next week’s show, those medical supplies are received from San Francisco, where the game takes place.

    So basically, loose attachments between their storylines.

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