Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[ronin]

Article here

Like Capt. Mal Reynolds stumbling in after a bar fight, the short-lived but much beloved sci-fi series Firefly will soon make an unexpected return, not as a TV show, but as a massively multiplayer online game.

Now that's shiny.

Multiverse, maker of a free MMO-creation platform, plans to announce Friday morning that it's struck a deal with Fox Licensing to turn the show into an MMORPG in the fashion of Star Wars Galaxies or Eve Online.

The "Browncoats," as Firefly's most devoted fans are known, have been campaigning to bring the show back almost since the moment it was canceled in late 2002. Now they'll get their wish, albeit in a new form.

"We see virtual worlds as an extraordinarily promising new entertainment medium," said Adam Kline, Fox Licensing's vice president of media enterprises in an e-mail. "We believe Multiverse can deliver an experience that will remain true to the original series, while enabling a whole new level of personal involvement for fans."

Canceled in the United States after only 11 episodes, Firefly has become the Star Trek of 21st-century sci-fi fandom: a show that seemed to remake the genre even as it stayed faithful to the conventions of "hard" science fiction, like engine room problems and menacing hordes lurking on the edge of known space.

What made the show special was the wry, often self-deprecating humor of its characters, from the captain with the checkered past to the unwittingly sexy engineer, the dull hunk of a mercenary with a girl's name, and the mysterious young woman passenger with special gifts.

The online version will move away from those central characters -- after all, there's only one Mal Reynolds. In an MMORPG, "everybody has to have their own story," says Multiverse co-founder and executive producer Corey Bridges.

"Television series can be really good properties to turn into MMOs, because when you make a TV series, not only do you need great characters, but you need to create a full, rich, compelling place," Bridges says. "If you're doing science fiction, you have to really think it out and create an incredibly rich environment that is compelling in its own right, and worth exploring and going back to week after week. That's what Joss Whedon did with Firefly."

The universe of Firefly and its spinoff film, Serenity, featured everything from Old West-style towns to futuristic urban environments, gritty spaceships and pastoral retreats -- freedom fighters, oppressive government agents, smugglers, outlaws, mercenaries, trader, townsfolk, futuristic geishas and a race of corrupted humans known as the Reavers.

Bringing those environments and character types to life as an online game will be a challenge: Multiverse is not a game developer, but rather a platform provider whose product is still in beta. Instead of making the game itself, the company will hire a development team that will craft the virtual galaxy using Multiverse tools.

"We want to find someone who wants to do something unique and fun and interesting, not just a re-skin of World of Warcraft or Star Wars Galaxies," Bridges says.

Because the underlying technology is already in place, "I feel confident that we'll see something the public can play sometime in 2008," he adds.

Founded by several early Netscape employees, Multiverse hopes to do for virtual worlds what Netscape did for web pages: provide a universal browser that lets users access any world built on the Multiverse platform using the same client software.

Already, some 7,000 development teams have registered for the Multiverse beta, according to Bridges, and more than 150 are making MMOs and non-game virtual worlds on a full-time basis. The tools are provided for free, with Multiverse taking a cut of revenue only if developers charge for their games, or for virtual items available within their worlds.

Landing Firefly on the Multiverse platform would seem to be a sure-fire promotional move. But satisfying the show's committed fans will not be easy. Online communities like FireflyFans.net, the show's premier fan site, have generated an endless stream of fan fiction, art, blogs, pod casts, meet-ups and even a fan-produced documentary, Done the Impossible, which briefly broke into the top 1,000 in DVD sales on Amazon.com.

The announcement comes just in time for this weekend's second annual gathering of Firefly fans at the Hilton hotel in Burbank, California. The "Flanvention" has already sold out, with 500 prepaid attendees signed up.

Bridges shrugs off the pressure; he just wants to make "something worthy of the show," he says. "This all springs from the genius that is Joss Whedon. It's rewarding beyond words to be able to hopefully be a footnote in the history of Firefly."

[godinpants]

I would love to play as reavers.

If only because they have the coolest ships in the 'verse.

[ronin]

I would love to play as reavers.

If only because they have the coolest ships in the 'verse.

Fan of spiky bits?
:p

[Catfish_Man]

87% chance they fuck it up.

[Grawsith]

No, it's not like they're doing this under Joss Whedon's nose. This might work.

[supersheep]

Gotta say I'm worried too. I have issues with the grindgrindgrind of MMOs, and any Firefly game that was not all kinds of brilliant story-wise will piss me off BIG TIME.

[nihilist]

I don't really see how they can turn the property into an MMO; seems more like a cash grab on FOX's part.

At best it'll have share some of the planet names, perhaps some characters from the series/movie, but otherwise?  I don't see it being a story-driven MMO...  Would have been better to just not do this.

[Ozymandias]

There's two timeframes they can do it in and have it be good:

The Independence War or a civil war following the events of Serenity.

Otherwise, meh.

[Rocinante]

OH NOES!

I love Firefly, but I'm always skeptical when they announce an MMORPG( Poor, poor Star Wars...), although one based on the Firefly universe would be pretty neat. Your basic dude would be like "What?? There's no aliens?, WTF?", while the rest of us know that good sci fi doesn't even necessarily need aliens. Heck, the Reavers are alien enough! I'd like to see any developments made on this game. Incidentally, has anyone played the Serenity pencil and paper RPG? If so, what did you think of it?

[godinpants]

I would love to play as reavers.

If only because they have the coolest ships in the 'verse.

Fan of spiky bits?
:p

Spikey bits, crazy paint jobs. but mostly those ones that fired out some sort of tow cable then swung the other ship around.



Come to think of it now, the game would lose alot of its fun without joss whedon's comic genius in there.


Infact i know exactly how this game should work.

Rather than playing as galavanting heroes/villians in space, the entire game is played as wash's toy dinosaurs.

You must colonise "this land" without falling victim to the sudden but inevitable betrayal of your fellow carnivorous dinoaurs.

[Slick]

Ar first I read this and my jaw dropped in a great big silly grin. Seriously, my friend asked me what was wrong.
But I don't know how they can do it. I don't see what you'd do with it. A lot of the beauty of the show was that they didn't just run around and shoot things, and their ship didn't even have guns on it. I'm not sure how they'd figure out a universe full of smugglers sneaking around the place.
Nevertheless, I'll try it when it's out. If it ever gets out.

[thegreatbuddha]

The PnP's kinda meh. The system was really simplistic, but they did have some cool new background info, written or overseen by Whedon from what I remember.

[I Am Not Amused]

Honestly, I'd rather have the show back on the air. There's so much stuff you could freakin' do with where Serenity ended. Gaaaah.

[Entilzah]

Honestly, I'd rather have the show back on the air. There's so much stuff you could freakin' do with where Serenity ended. Gaaaah.

I agree. It was a great show and there is so much more they could do with it. If they're looking to make more money off of it, starting the series back up would create more revenue than a MMORPG would. Especially since MMORPG's have a way of screwing a series up. Not only that, but I'd rather see the show back than have a game anyways. But as dedicated to the series that I am, I will get the game {if it ever comes out.....which I'm sceptical about} and play it....or more rather bitch and moan about how they messed it all up!!

[Marauder_Pilot]

I was once able to recite 'Jaynestown' from memory on a drunken bet. I don't know how ACCURATE it was, but that's beside the point.
Firefly and Serenity are pretty much the only DVDs I've bought.
I've sworn in Mandarin because of that show.
I run a Firefly RPG on another board.
Am I excited?

Fuck yes.

[I Am Not Amused]

Firefly tabletop RPG: Yes.

Firefly single player RPG: Yes (if Joss Whedon has a hand in writing it)

Firefly MMORPG: No. You couldn't recreate Firefly in this sort of atmosphere. Firefly was successful because of its episodic storytelling; to transfer it to a gametype that inherently has no overarching story would be, at best, disappointing.