Defiance: Rockne O'Bannon TV series/video game crossover

[JD]

It's a cool idea, but I don't know if it would really be possible.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

I found a bit more info...sure enough, this project isn't sounding nearly as exciting as it could be.

Perhaps the most exciting prospect for the competitive types in the audience is the fact that accomplished players -- such as those who are high on the leaderboards or who have had the most impact in the game -- could receive mention on the TV show as the characters sit about in a bar, remarking on current events.

Eh, lame. Being "talked about" in a TV show as a reward for beating everyone else and rising to the top of the leaderboard is insufficient to the amount of effort it would take to accomplish that. The most successful game characters should be integrated into the TV show as recurring or even main characters.

However, Trion -- knowing the online gaming crowd as it does -- is going to be careful to ensure that players can't grief the TV show. Sorry, griefers, but no gunning down the show's main characters for you.

Bah! That would be the best possible reward for gaming success - the ability to choose which character you find most annoying and remove them from the TV series. It would be even more fun if removing that character was what opened up a slot for the player's character to join the show. (If the producers are cagey, they'll deliberately create a Jar-Jar type to be the sacrificial goat.)

Too much of the interaction between the game and show sounds like dialogue and backstory. Maybe this is all just warm-up to the real integration, when they get the guts to go there. Or maybe we need to wait for this lukewarm project to be a success before someone else takes the next step.

 

[Kegg]

I found a bit more info...sure enough, this project isn't sounding nearly as exciting as it could be.

Perhaps the most exciting prospect for the competitive types in the audience is the fact that accomplished players -- such as those who are high on the leaderboards or who have had the most impact in the game -- could receive mention on the TV show as the characters sit about in a bar, remarking on current events.

Eh, lame.

And expected as a consequence of setting the game world and the TV world in two different locations.

They could be doing nothing but performing nonviolence resistance by mass dance moves and it wouldn't affect the actual TV plotting... which, you know, won't be a bad thing if the TV plotting's any good, which will let the show rise or fall regardless of its gimmick.

However, you seriously do not know MMO gamers if you think being talked about briefly on a TV series isn't incentive enough for them to put hours and hours and hours and hours of game time into something. There are people who have spent months on these games grinding for slightly different mounts that do exactly the same thing as the easier to acquire mounts, or who obsess over world firsts and server firsts and so on.

Give them something pointless to do with a purely symbolic reward and they'll hunker down I guess I'm saying here.

Of course, that'll still pose problems.

What if Phatlewtlol and his guild <Single Noun> take down a major alien boss? Those don't really sound like names you can casually throw into conversation and not sound ridiculous, but 'hey last week some heroes took down the alien overlord in St. Louis' seems anticlimactic in the extreme.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Well if that's good enough for the gamers, fine. But it doesn't make the game world interesting to the TV viewers. The point of the interaction is that there needs to be interest and awareness in both directions. Otherwise, it's just a gimmick slapped onto what is essentially just another non-interactive TV show.

Here's how you can tell that the interactivity actually means something: when the TV viewers know and care about what's happening in the game. I suspect what's going to happen is that the game will rise to nothing more than the level of an occasional annoyance, as the show comes to a screetching halt to let the characters chat about something the TV viewers don't understand or care about. This means that the TV show will be hampered by the game rather than enhanced. Considering that the TV audience will be 90% of the overall audience for the game and show combined, I don't see the point of this at all.

 

[Witterquick]

The game needs to be more accessible. Like something on facebook. It's the only way to elevate this thing to something more than cult status.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Now you're talking! The Facebook-TV show connection is more apples to apples in terms of ease of use and mass marketness. Other than it being an attention-getting gimmick, a true "gamer" game isn't going to draw the numbers that will do much to help out the TV show at all. The sole value would be that the gamers would be capable of building up characters that are complex enough to perhaps vault into TV character-hood. If they're not going to do that, then what exactly is the rationale behind this project?

What the show needs is a way to tap into Facebook and Twitter fanbases for the well known actors in the cast (the unknown actors can develop fandoms along the way - wouldn't want to be prejudiced against new actors, after all.) I've seen actors with 1 million+ fans on their Facebook pages.

The fans should have some way of giving simple input to the show, but something a little more significant than voting. So having them actually play a simple Facebook game and be expected to show some skill is a great idea. Get each of the teams of fans to compete to somehow elevate "their" character in the show in some way, in a way that is reflected in the show. Not only do you generate interest among multiple huge fanbases, but people will also recruit their non-fan (and non-viewer) friends to come help support the cause.

This might be hard to arrange in a straightforward fictional narrative, because it would be too much of a burden on the writers who would have their hands full just thinking of a good plotline, nevermind worrying about what's happening on Facebook.

So I wonder if some quasi-reality TV approach would be better. For instance, a Running Man scenario. Obviously the actors are not really contestants risking their lives, but if your Facebook team doesn't give you help to survive the next (fictional) challenge, you're out on your ass.

 

[Witterquick]

Oh something with a huge cast of characters then. There would be an ongoing story of course but with a few "tournament" type episodes. Anime fans would know what I mean. Early Naruto for example had student ninjas with different skills/talents fighting in a tournament exam to graduate.

They could also do a Quantum Leap kind of show in which the characters bounce from realities to realities. So groups of gamers create their own virtual worlds and in special episodes, the characters would leap into those realities and interact with the characters inside.

These do not sound like very good shows.

We might be going completely off base now though. I can't even remember what O'Bannon intends to do now.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

I like the Quantum Leap idea!

I think they do sound like good shows, but what they really need is some "chat" ability that runs along the bottom of the screen, but divided up into thousands of individual groups of just a few hundred people each so each viewer has a good chance of reading messages from people they know, at least via online communication, as well as their own comments.

It's basically what people do here when they watch shows live and post messages during them.