Firefly To Live On As MMORPG
Joss Whedon’s Firefly is largely considered (by those who managed to watch it before its untimely demise at the hands of Fox) to be one of the greatest TV shows ever aired. Its movie spin-off/bigscreen series finale, Serenity, has been named “the greatest science-fiction movie of all time” by Orson Scott Card. Now, it looks like the show’s universe is going to continue in game format.
Fox has now announced that they are going to try and cash in on the franchise with a MMO for PCs. While Whedon fans are probably dancing in the street, Kotaku has pointed out some less-than-stellar information:
Wired is reporting that MMO platform developer Multiverse has struck a deal with Fox to throw the Firefly property into the crowded MMO ring, but has yet to put together a development team. They’re hoping they’ll find someone to “not just [do] a re-skin of World of Warcraft or Star Wars Galaxies” but give the itty-bitty Firefly fanbase something “unique and fun and interesting.”
I can’t say that this announcement fills me with confidence, but I will admit that I’ll at least be willing to give the game a shot simply because it’s associated with Firefly. If Joss himself is involved with the development, especially the game’s plot and overall visual appeal, I think it could develop into something really cool… still, time will definitely tell on this one.
Boy of Tomorrow
Posted to Video Games on 8 December 2006
· Comments (8)
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Loved the show, liked the movie okay (I’d have liked it more if my favorite character hadn’t been killed off in such a sudden and rather pointless way…), but this sounds…iffy.
Still, if ANYTHING gets me to play an MMO, this could be it.
There’a lot of development studios out there with experience on MMOs, unfortunately, quite a few of them stink. Hopefully the time and money will be spent to make the MMO great.
At least that’s what I’m hoping for. :)
I’m wary. I liked the show and I’m a huge fan of Joss Whedon. However, there are two things that give me pause.
1. Since the show only lasted for a short amount of time, the universe of Firefly is very underdeveloped. To make an MMO, it’s going to need a lot of fleshing-out. This normally wouldn’t be to bad, except…
2. After Fox terminated Firefly, Joss as stated on several occasions that, after the Serenity movie, he had no plans on working with Fox again. Ever. He was really ticked they killed the show as early as they did.
If he stays true to his vow, that means the Firefly MMO will be developed without him, which in turn means the universe of Firefly has a high chance of diverging way off from his vision.
In short, this game has a high risk of becoming a SW:Galaxies clone.
The few episodes I actually got around to watching bored the hell out of me.
I can’t get why people hail this as such a great show.
Sad too, considering how much I like Nathan Fillion.
Add to that how annoying Joss Whedon is. He is TV’s Peter Jackson really.
The first season of Babylon 5…. that was boring. Firefly came out of the gate hot (well, if you watched the first episode first, and not the train robbery one Fox aired first.) It had plausible science with a generous helping of quasi-mysticism and conspiracy theory, wrapped up in Whedon’s trademark wit, and managed to do all that without a single bumpy-faced alien. In fact, it had no aliens at all, possibly a first for a space-based TV series.
I still miss it, but the movie made me miss it less (not that it sucked, but it wrapped up enough storylines to make it a satisfying end.) Still, if there were ever a MMORPG that made me want to try it, it’ll probably be this one (unless something happens and we suddenly have a virtual B5 to play in before this thing goes live.)
Ah! A Babylon 5 MMORPG. Now that’s something I’d like to see. Though how it would play out is another thing. Maybe one of those non-action oriented ones like Life in the Desert or whatever it’s called, but with you living on the B5 station.
And I liked the first season personally.
I liked it starting with “And The Sky Full Of Stars” (actually, that’s where I got hooked), but before that it seemed like a generic low-budget episodic show. I never saw the pilot till they showed it on TNT before year 5, so the whole “Sinclair has a hole in his mind” thing took a while to get through to me.
Some episodes from that year I actually hated, like TKO. I disliked that so much that when Battlestar had its boxing episode last week, I almost didn’t watch, except theirs was completely awesome in every way.
Okie dokie…
Anything Firefly without Joss at the helm will for all intents and purposes tank. This is why: His writing style and in depth character developement allowed the world to seem real.
MMOs do not have character developement.
Thus, a series built on conspiracy theories and character developement will be suck when turned into an MMO.
I thank you!