The SyFy network (formerly known as SciFi) will develop a TV show set in the same world as an MMOG to be made by Trion, with the game and the show influencing one another.
The Peacock Equity Fund is a venture capital arm of NBC Universal’s parent company, General Electric. The Peacock Fund, which primarily invests in tech companies, recently announced that it is funding the development of a new TV show and game to be be produced concurrently by its SyFy Network and Trion game studio. The game is described on Trion’s website as a “Massively Multiplayer Online Action Role Playing Game” and the GE Reports blog states the working title is One Earth. There are no details on what kind of TV show will be paired with the game or what the exact setting is (one would think it involves Science and/or Fiction), but the two entities are intended to evolve together.
“In this unique set-up, we can do things that other people would never even dare before: create a videogame world and a television show based on the same universe, they take place at the same location in the future,” said Lars Butler, CEO of Trion. “They not only promote each other, they literally depend on each other and co-evolve.”
“We have two teams of creatives. We have a TV team that understands character and story, and how a TV show works, and we have a game development team that is fantastic at building a game universe, a mythology and a set of characters,” said David Howe, President of Syfy. “And that joint team has to figure out how that TV show interacts with the game on a weekly basis on a linear basis and how the game reflects what’s going on in TV world and what the TV show reflects in terms of the game world.”
“This project, in collaboration with Syfy, in and of itself, is completely different from anything I’ve worked on in the past,” said Rob Hill, Trion’s senior producer. “Usually you have a game that’s based off of a book or television show or movie, or a movie that’s based off a game. Some of the implications of what we are trying to accomplish here are to really be able to broaden the audience.”
It seems like an ambitious project, but I think that more crossover between games and other media is generally a good thing. As long as the TV show isn’t directed by Uwe Boll, we should be fine.
Source: GE Reports
