WIRED: Will Syfy’s Defiance Game/Show Hybrid Deliver?
By Ruth Suehle
03.28.13
SyFy has been pushing Defiance hard. We encountered them at last year’s Comic Con and this year’s SXSW. They took the show’s Dodge Charger to the Chicago Auto Show and talked about creating alien languages for TED. With just a few weeks before both pieces launch, can the first integrated TV show and video game deliver on the hype?
What’s the story about?
Defiance is set in 2046, which is 33 years from when the aliens come to Earth. (We’d better start building some really killer tech fast before they get here!) It’s got that general post-apocalyptic look about it. Things aren’t good when a diverse pack of aliens shows up, starts inhabiting the planet, and the entire landscape gets transformed. But hey, there’s still Johnny Cash on the radio, so it’s not all bad...
... The aliens of Defiance are called “Votans,” and there are seven species, which based on the preview videos, seem to be pretty well-developed already, each with their own distinct looks, cultures, and even a few languages. They collectively come from the Votanis star system, which they left in starships known as “arks” and 5,000 years later found themselves looking at Earth. And maybe a little bit invading it...
... David J. Peterson, who created the Dothraki language for Game of Thrones, also created languages for the Castithian and Irathient [two of the alien species] for Defiance.
... The payoff
Although it’s hard to see one from the other right now, the idea is that characters from the show will appear in the game and vice-versa. Anything that affects the planet or at least a sizeable chunk of North America will affect both.
This is all a big gamble. It’s the first project to tie a video game to a TV show like this, and NBC/Syfy have invested a lot in it. (According to The Wall Street Journal, 150 people and $70 million for the game alone.) If one doesn’t go well, it could easily sink the other, and if it all sinks together, we might not see such an interesting cross-media effort again for a while...
Defiance premieres Monday, April 15, 2013 at 9/8C on Syfy.
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