Sci-Fi Channel Merging TV Show with MMO

Erik J writes "In a fairly bold (and quite possibly stupid) move, the Sci-Fi Channel has announced plans to use missions and campaigns of players in their own developed MMO to shape and guide a new 'ongoing' television show. They hope to have the project up and ready to air by 2010, as they work with game developer Trion World Network to create 'the ultimate merging of the TV and gaming mediums.'"

What A Waste

[Atomm]

I would rather see them take that money and put it into a better Saturday Night SciFi Movie.

This annoys me

[dj245]

about as much as quick and nasty History Channel specials that make liberal use of video game footage. TV and video games are completely different mediums. Trying to shove them together and hope it works out never does.

Probably Not Stupid.

[Vectronic]

Given that people in general love to feel "famous", and given the popularity of MMO, this could at least be highly lucrative as far as a business goes, however, the quallity of such a combination remains to be seen. Depending on the "plot" of the show and game, I could see this being quite entertaining, especially for those envolved or even if you know someone envolved.

Combining the millions made on MMO's, and the millions made on stuff like 'American Idol'... i'd say the chance of this making money, is pretty high.

Everything NBC touches turns to shit

[Duncan Blackthorne]

OMG, this is such a horrible idea. First they put effing wrestling on SciFi, now this unwatchable crap. Oh the humanity! When will the madness stop?

Re:Say what you will....

[nuzak]

Battlestar Galactica and Dr Who are proof that even a blind squirrel finds the occasional nut -- and notice how those are both remakes.

The rest of the Sci-Fi channel's productions are just abysmal. They make Uwe Boll look like Martin Scorcese.

Epic lulz

[stormguard2099]

How many internet groups will get into this just to fuck it up for everyone else? I'm sure anonymous, SA, [insert other internet group] will fill the ranks just so they can make the game and hence the tv show an abomination to play/watch.

I mean come on why would you give the hordes of gamers, who act a fool just to show off to 3 friends the chance to do the same on cable tv? the temptation is just too strong.

  Hell I'll probably do it too if I can sign up fast enough to get the name "Leroy Jenkins"

Re:What A Waste

[MBraynard]

However, the appeal of this kind of programming is that it costs almost no money.

MMOs and TV show universes

[davejenkins]

Fans cannot get enough of their fictional universes. I've seen the wikis for WoW and other MMOs grow larger than the wikipediae of several second-tier languages. The wikis for complex TV shows (BSG, Lost, 24, etc) are almost as big.

Give these fans a place to 'play' inside a universe linked in with a TV show? Oh yeah-- there's nothing "stupid" about this idea at all.

Re:Say what you will....

[Anonymous Coward]

"Battlestar Galactica and Dr Who are proof that even a blind squirrel finds the occasional nut -- and notice how those are both remakes."

Not to get all super nerdy on you, but Doctor Who is not a remake, it's a continuation. BSG is a remake. Doctor Who takes place with the history of all the previous shows intact (or, as intact as it's ever been).

Ughhh!

[sir_eccles]

It's bad enough already with dozens of shows which seemingly make no sense unless you've also watched the podcasts, read the magazine, surfed through the website and decoded the clues to unlock secret sections, watched the spin off series where they explain the back plot, played the video game, watched the hidden features in the DVD, used the decoder ring in the special pack of Krusty-Os,... Can't we just have normal tv shows!!!!

Kind of like that EVE commercial?

[badboy_tw2002]

I hit play too quickly while going through the commercials during last week's Battlestar and saw a commercial for EVE where they did it as a faux news cast about some star ship commander ramming a space station. It was a little cheesy but I suspect its the kind of premise they're going for here. The game that's played would have to follow the lines of EVE where the focus is PvP, and the "drama" comes from players attacking each other, coming up with scams, backstabbing, forming alliances, etc. I can't really see some pre-canned dungeon raid content making a good TV show.

Sounds like a PR stunt

[Moraelin]

TBH, this sounds more like a PR stunt for the MMO than anything relevant to the Sci-Fi channel.

I mean, think about it in the context of existing MMOs: sure, the quests are fun, but would you really want to see a TV show about most of them? Let's assume you're a SF fan, in fact a SW fan. (Role-play a bit, if you aren't;) Would you want to see SWG footage on TV?

Or maybe you're into medieval fantasy? Well, exactly which of WoW's (or EQ2's, or whatever) quests would be great fun to watch on TV?

This week we follow the adventures of grunt Horribly Polygonal and his trusty sidekick Tusked Girl, two simple hunter-gatherers, as they slaughter Durotar Tigers by the dozen, unaware (yet) that only 1 in 10 Tigers has a skin. And will they manage to pull voodoo trolls one at a time, while the rest of the tribe wanders obliviously 10 ft away from the fight? Or will Tusked Girl get impatient again and over-aggro? Watch them meet a new group member and enjoy the suspense of finding out: is he a n00b and gonna get them wiped? Is he going to leave the group immediately after he gets the last skin?

And next week we can follow them through the Barrens, as they slaughter about 100 Zebras to get 4 hooves each. (You'd think that being asked to bring 4 hooves, would mean one zebra, right? Shows how much you pampered city-folk know about hunting.)

Or watch Tamriel the wise druid preserve the balance and harmony of nature... by slaughtering bears wholesale and waiting for them to respawn. Then slaughtering them again. 'Cause he just got bored of alchemy and went leatherworking, so now he needs leather to grind it up. (Remember, kids: living in harmony with nature means taking all you want, but not more than that!)

Don't get me wrong. In the game it's fun. But 99% of the stuff I did in MMO's, even _I_ wouldn't want to see it on TV.

On the bright side, as a SF fan, I am looking forward to a new SF MMO. Nothing against medieval fantasy as such, but God knows there's no need for 99% of the market to be medieval fantasy. It's nice to have a choice. So I'll probably buy it anyway. But, still, just saying, I doubt that the whole Sci-Fi channel thing is more than a PR stunt.

Re:Say what you will....

[Reivec]

Big bang theory is awful. How can you even clasify that in the catagory of geek? It is just lame.

Re:There is ONE item you did not cover.

[techpawn]

The hero will get a rez and be back to fight the boss monster next week.

If it's like any MMO I've ever played he'll be back to fight the boss next week. And the week after that and the week after that... until that boss stop giving exp... then on to the next boss... lather, rinse, repeat

Re:Epic lulz

[Coryoth]

How many internet groups will get into this just to fuck it up for everyone else? I'm sure anonymous, SA, [insert other internet group] will fill the ranks just so they can make the game and hence the tv show an abomination to play/watch.

If the show producers have even half a clue they can take care of this for the show, the game may suffer though... The key is that the game will "shape and guide" the show; i.e. add texture and events to the show's world. If some griefers come and make a horrible mess of some event then the show can demote it to something that gets a casual mention: e.g. "In other news, there was yet another skirmish with an as yet unidentified alien foe; back to you John" on a T.V. in the background of the show. If things go well, they can make more of a deal of it on the show and have it feature prominently. There's no reason anything from the game world has to make the show unfiltered; the show writers will have plenty of scope to write around events from the game world (many of which will in turn be semi-scripted by those writers to begin with) and pick and choose what they care to bring into the show. The effect of griefers will be in managing to make sure keen players don't get their exploits to feature prominently on the show, which may still attract plenty of griefers, but it will only ruin the game, not the show.

Of course all of this was working on the assumption that the producers have a clue, and this is SciFi we're talking about, so I wouldn't count on it...

Re:Oh, I Can See the Dialog Now ...

[Aerynlore]

Maybe it's just me, but it seems everyone is looking at the show as an extension of the game. RTFAing, it seems they are going for a game that's based on a television series. Is this really much different than making a game from a novel series (ie Lord of the Rings) or from a movie trilogy (ie Matrix Online and Star Wars Galaxies).

And even if there is a reciprocal interaction where the players can give storyline feedback to the writers, there might (*gasp*just might) be some real aspiring writers with some really solid concepts that help feed the TV show storyline.

Hell, even if they just had an advancing time-line in the game, that would go a long way to adding something to the MMO "standard" (why does it take 3 years for the inn in Westfall to get repaired?).

There's a reason we have authors.

[goodmanj]

If you've ever seen an "open-ended" MMO with players in charge of creation (say, Second Life), you've probably seen little sparks of creativity in a sea of boring copies of trendy junk. 90% of everything is crap. And the little sparks of creativity don't tie together: one person's perfect recreation of the rebel base on Hoth is right next to another person's gothic revival castle, and they clash horribly.

The same is true of TV shows with a large pool of authors (say, your average sitcom). Some episodes are good, some bad, but none of them mesh up together, and you're left with a mess.

For both MMOs and TV shows, a dictatorial author is the only route to success. The best MMOs (say, World of Warcraft or EVE) allow roleplaying only within the tight rules of the game world. The best TV shows (say, Lost, Battlestar Galactica, or Firefly) have just one or two guys who call the shots for the layout of the whole show, and set firm boundaries for the writers.

An open-ended MMO inspired by a TV show, and an authorless TV show inspired by the MMO? It's the blind leading the blind, a ship without a rudder, drifting off into banality.

And if the show *does* get a visionary author to conduct the show, then the whole MMO / TV connection is pretty much irrelevant, it becomes, first and foremost, the author's story to tell.

Re:Oh, I Can See the Dialog Now ...

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the same network that gave us "Mansquito"... That WOULD be good by their standards

Re:Oh, I Can See the Dialog Now ...

[Tychon]

I'm not sure why. Many MMOs have it right in the EULA that anything you say or do in the game belongs to them. You're only renting access to data on their servers, they maintain all ownership of that data. They should be able to easily take whatever interesting bits they like.

Granted, IANAL, so I could be hideously simplifying a decapitation into a flesh wound.

Re:Oh, I Can See the Dialog Now ...

[Saxerman]

I still recall feeling a little crestfallen way back in the day when I first completed a major MUD quest. I had dethroned the pretender, restored the rightful price to power, and put the spirit fo the former king to rest... only to have everything undone when the area reset. Since then I've been waiting for a MUD (or MMORPG, as the kids call them today) to incorporate more of the player actions into the game world. This seems like a step in that direction, with a large dose of Dreampark [wikipedia.org] thrown into the mix.

The novels were about an uber-geek style LARP, where a large mix of special effects allowed the players to have their game filmed in front of cameras and then turned into movies... which would then help fund the expensive LARP theme park. This looks to be different, in that they will be filming the TV show completely outside the game world, but they would incorporate the ongoing events of the game world into the episodes.

Re:This annoys me

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm guessing you were not a child of the 90's. Ever hear of the Super Mario Brothers Super Show? Legend of Zelda and Sonic the Hedgehog also had their spinoff tv shows. And I don't even need to mention pokemon.

Granted, this is a different kind of show than those cartoons, but to say TV and video games don't mix is just wrong.