MMO Coming to a Theater Near You?

If you’ve been awake for the last 50 years of the movie industry, you are intimately familiar with movie tie-in merchandise It goes from action figures all the way to food items. It’s a time honored tradition that has produced some of the most notorious games in the short history of video gaming.

Like, ET, for example.

Actually, ET has been voted as the worst game ever several times over. The game is so notorious that there is even a urban near-legend that it drove Atari into bankruptcy as they dumped entire truck loads of the unsold game out in the desert. My dad bought this when I was a wee lad, and I still remember how frustrating the game-play was for this game. It was as bad as they say it is.

So, to get back to my point, there’s been a long tradition of generating more money for a movie using different media streams such as the game platforms.

But what about a movie that’s really a tie-in to an existing game? We’ve seen movies that were made from existing games, such as the Mortal Kombat franchise and the Streetfighter series, but what about a persistent game world such as an MMO?

Recently, Funcom, the publisher of Age of Conan, announced it will be creating in-game events that directly lead up to and correspond with an upcoming unannounced Conan movie. Which is fancy speak for, 'if anyone ever makes a Conan movie, we'll make it a part of our game.' And, given that Age of Conan has 400,000+ subscribers, that isn't small screen release.

But let's take this up a notch- imagine a movie based on an MMO but not as a marketing ploy for the movie but to drive up more business for the game. Imagine the ad campaign for a World of Warcraft movie- liked the movie? Do you want to live the adventure again and again? Why, for a mere $15 a month you too can be a Night Elf Shaman or Blood Elf Paladin.

Don't think it will happen? Consider these three things- first, movies are about shared experiences. Until recently, those shared experiences have been novels and short stories. We gather to watch our favorite novels turned into film with others whom love the story like we do. Now, more and more movies are made based off of video games. Instead of Gone with the Wind, we are Alone in the Dark.

Second, World of Warcraft has 10 million subscriber's. That's right 10,000,000 accounts. All of them paying $15 a month. Every month. You do the math. Blizzard can write its own check to make its own movie.

And, lastly this sort of thing happened once before- remember the good old days of cartoon's in the 80's? GI Joe, Transformers, My Little Pony? When everything seemed to have its own toy line? Well, it was actually the other way around. They developed the cartoons to sell the toys.

We are coming close to the day when a video game won't be a tie-in to a movie, but the movie will be used to generate buzz for a new video game.

And, bonus Cool Points if you know the first video game based on a movie.

Star Trek Back Online?

For several years now there has been a website for a Star Trek MMO that
said nothing more than “coming soon”. And, that was it. Oh, the
forums on the site had a development
blog and made lots of promises. Like, everyone would be a Captain of a
ship. That the big vehicles would have to be run by groups of
players. And lots of other things.



Oh, and oodles of concept art. Lots of that stuff.



But, that was it. For four years.



Until recently.



A classic in-joke among the sci/fi crowd is that in any show to win any conflict someone merely needs to reverse the polarity of something and the fight is over.



And that has been done with Star Trek Online.



After languishing in development at Perpetual Entertainment, the Trek
world has had its polarity reversed and has been picked up by hot new
developer Cryptic Studios.
You may remember these guys from the big hit of 2006, City of Heroes
and City of Villains. They sold their interest in those games to
Korean Publisher NCSoft for what is known in the industry as a suitcase
full of cash.



It's a technical term. And they used that cash to buy two things. The
first was probably a lot of beer. The second was Star Trek Online.



According to the company's creative leader, Jack Emmert, they have not
used much of the pre-developed material that came with the package they
bought from Perpetual. They have, in their own words, re-built it from
the ground up.



The game does promise to be interesting. Cryptic has decided to not
work within the era of existing material, choosing instead to set the
game some time after the chronological end of the series of shows.
Which I think is a good idea. This allows their writing staff the
ability to come up with original story lines that don't interfere or directly contradict the cannon material from the shows.



You know what a picky bunch us sci/fi nerds can be.



And, like Perpetual, Cryptic has put out oodles of concept art. Some
of it recycled from Perpetual. However, what they have done besides
that is put together some game play footage, and provide a lot of
screen shots. Cryptic too is proposing that the player will be the
commander of the ship, with a skill sets that come from the different
areas of the show such as medical, security, engineering, and non-ship
related such as archeology.



You non-sci/fi nerd types probably don't know that Picard was a trained
archaeologist before he was the captain of the mighty Enterprise.



Which I think is important. While I think it will be fun to engage in
ship to ship combat, the show was about more than that. The character
backgrounds gave hint of more complex life and society than a one hour
space opera normally should. And that needs to be reflected in the
game. And, it also does need to be taken in that this is going to be
an MMO. So, players are going to have to deal with each other as they
deal with the conflicts of the game. Meaning, they'll have to
negotiate and trade between themselves and the game to get the things
they want. Properly done, this game will be a licenses for Cryptic to
print money.



And, I think it can be properly done. There is already a successful space game out there, EVE Online.
And, Eve does a lot of things right. It gets the look of space right.
Which is not that they faithfully copy what the void really looks like
but that they get it right because they faithfully show it the way it
is in our heads- beautiful. And the combat is good too- lots of
orbiting and planning your moves.



Which is how space combat should be. Don't get me wrong, I'm a Star Wars Kid that loves some X-Wings but that's not how it would be.



However, one of the great staples of a MMO game is the crafting
system. And, I don't know how this could be handled. Everything in
Star Trek came from the replicators. Things were not truly built, so
much as designed in brought into existence fully formed. So, in a
world that is pre-built how will the players make things?



I know they could design it and then produce it, but that's not what
I'm talking about. While Trek does have a culture of inventiveness-
remember the reversing polarity joke at the beginning? It does not
have a culture of invention. By which I mean there are not a lot of
shows that brought out new ideas created by the characters. Yes, the
guest scientist of the week would bring on a dangerous machine that
would later get its polarity reversed but it wasn't a centerpiece of
the show. So, it will be interesting to see how Cryptic- a company
that produce a game that had no crafting system for some time- will
produce another game with a complex crafting system.



However, Cryptic has some time on its hands. They've already announced
it's going to be a few years before this game is ready to be launched.
And, since the Trek crowd has already waited a few years, what's a few
more? Personally, I would have Cryptic follow the Blizzard style of
development. Which is, wait until it's right before you release it
rather than have them push it out the door to make a quick buck.
Seriously, do you remember how long we had to wait for the first
Starcraft? I do.



It's going to be interesting to see what the talent that Cryptic has
assembled put together for us. I mean, for the Trek fans. And, since
this is a game being re-built from the ground up it's going to be
another couple years wait before Trek Fans too can say, “These are the
voyages of the Starship...”