Can two alien cultures coexist in one writers room? Sci Fi is entering a brave new world by teaming television writers with video-game designers to create a franchise that is both a television series and a massive multiplayer game on the Internet — more than that, the fans who play the game will actually help shape the show’s story arc with their virtual exploits.
“This is the Holy Grail for us, without a doubt,” said Dave Howe, president of the Sci Fi Channel, which has teamed with Trion World Network, an on-the-rise gaming company.
“This is groundbreaking, and I don’t say that lightly.” Sci Fi Channel executives are mum about the title of the show and game, but they do hint that it will be set 80 to 100 years in the future.
The team has summer 2010 as the targeted launch.
Massive multiplayer online role-playing games — MMORPG — have become a sensation, especially World of Warcraft, which has 10 million subscribers who pay about $15 a month to explore, battle and interact with one another. The game pulled in $1 billion last year, and Legendary Pictures has plans to make a $100-million tie-in film next year.
Howe said bundling a World of Warcraft player community with a series and an on-line social community is something the Sci Fi Channel has tried to puzzle out for several years.
“A television show that is on once a week isn’t enough. The fans today want the experience to go beyond that,” Howe said. “For example, we can tell them that there will be an alien invasion at a certain place in the game, at a certain time, and to be there with all their friends and be ready. The outcome depends on them. And then that battle will be part of the universe in the show.”
It sounds intriguing, but there are significant challenges. The field is already crowded, but no competitor has been able to come anywhere close to Warcraft, which has about 60 percent of the market.
The games find their strongest settings in vast and dangerous worlds where any character can have his or her own quest to follow, while an episodic television drama is far more adept at zeroing in on a handful of individual protagonists. It’s the difference between aerial footage of the Normandy invasion and the intimacy of a foxhole monologue.
” “Putting these creative people from very different fields in the same room together creates a lot of energy, and there’s strong curiosity about each other’s craft,” said Adam Stotsky, Sci Fi’s executive vice president of global brand strategy.
