There’s an interview with Multiverse’s Ron Meiners up on Warcry. Unfortunately, all he’s saying about the Firefly MMO is:
We’re really excited by this, but I can’t really say anything about it now. The fan reception has been awesome, but we don’t have anything to announce at this time.
I’m getting a bit impatient for some news at this stage, I have to say…
Gaming site Ten Ton Hammer have published an interview with Ron Meiners, director of developer relations at Multiverse. Much of the interview concerns the Multiverse platform and other games being released on it, but there are a few snippets concerning the Firefly MMO:
We asked Meiners whether Multiverse had found a developer yet. “No, not yet,” he said. “We’re still talking to people and shopping around.”
and:
Concerning the connections with Fox and getting any of the voice actors for the game, Meiners said that everything was still just being looked at and worked on. He seemed confident that Fox would eventually get back to them, but it would just take time.
… which aren’t the most positive pieces of news we could hear, but at least things are still in progress. Hopefully we’ll hear more soon.
The BBC have an article up, saying that Serenity has topped of poll of SFX readers, beating Star Wars to the place as number one scifi film ever. It’s very nice to see that kind of recognition hitting the mainstream media, and I know from a number of conversations I’ve had with non-fans that it’s getting the name of the movie out there in a way that ordinary advertising never could. It was also one of the BBC’s most read articles for April 2nd!
It’s been widely rumoured (but not confirmed) that Raph Koster (or his new company, Areae) is going to be involved in some way with the Firefly MMO. There’s a newly published interview with him at RealMMO. He doesn’t say anything about Firefly, but it makes interesting reading all the same.
There’s a new interview with Corey Bridges up at Gaming Angels. He’s commenting on the strength of the existing fanbase, and the likelihood of encountering characters from the show in the game.
Matt Mihaly has put up another interview with Corey Bridges. This one deals more with the Multiverse platform than anything else, but Firefly gets a look in at several points. Matt’s is an excellent blog if you’re interested in MMOs, by the way.
Firefly MMO News recently had the opportunity to ask Corey Bridges a few questions about the game. Corey’s title is “Multiverse Co-Founder and Executive Producer”, so as you can imagine, he’s pretty close to the heart of things.
Did Multiverse approach Fox about the license, or did Fox approach Multiverse?
James Cameron, director of Titanic, the first two Terminator movies, Aliens, and so on, is on the Multiverse board of advisors, along with his producer Jon Landau. They have a great relationship with Twentieth Century Fox, so they introduced Fox and Multiverse. In the first meeting, we were talking with the Fox Licensing and Merchandising folks about virtual worlds and massively multiplayer online games. They said, “Here’s a list of some of our properties. Which of these do you think would make a great MMO?” I didn’t really look at the list, and said, “Is Firefly on the list? Firefly would be perfect!” Happily, the Fox folks were fans. They were really enthusiastic about the idea, and of course Multiverse is chock-full o’ Browncoats. So from that meeting onward, it was all about making this game happen. That’s what drove this partnership forward–everyone really wants to live in the Firefly universe.
Are connections with the original writers, cast and crew spelled out in the license? If they are, can you tell us something about them, and if not, what are you hoping for in that area?
Those relationships aren’t covered by the license. In fact, we didn’t think it was a good idea to start discussions with Joss or Nathan or anyone until we closed the deal with Fox. We just finalized that deal last week, right before the news went public. And the very first call I made after that was to Joss’s agent. And then I got the chance to talk to a couple BDH’s and composer Greg Edmonson at Flan B. They were really supportive. We haven’t hired the game-design team yet, and obviously the game design is what has to drive these choices. But that said, we would absolutely love to work with the writers, cast, and crew. It could only make the game more true to the show.
What kind of development team are you looking for - professionals, amateurs with experience, a group brought together for the purpose, or a whole company picking up the contract? Who’s going to be paying the developers’ salaries?
It’s going to come down to a combination of whoever has the best vision and ability to execute. We’re most interested in hiring a professional team, but we’re not going to rule anyone out until we make the official choice. We’re also open to different structures — if we get the perfect designer, and she doesn’t have a whole team around her, we can help assemble that team. But most folks have some amount of team with them. And we’d also certainly talk with folks who come from fully funded and fully staffed game studios.
We’re speaking to different investors right now about financing and company structure. Nothing’s finalized there. One really gratifying result of this announcement is that lots of investors have asked to participate in this opportunity. We’re in good shape on that front, but we’re always happy to talk to people with money!
Where in the timeline will the game happen? And connected to that, does the license cover the events in Serenity, or just those in Firefly?
The license is through Fox, so it doesn’t cover events in Serenity. I can’t tell you how many people came up to me at Flan B and told me how psyched they were that they get to play in a universe where Wash and Book were still alive! And don’t forget that the ‘verse is large. The TV show introduced us to some fascinating planets, but there are even more that we haven’t seen. That’s why Firefly is actually perfect for a massively multiplayer online game–it revealed glimpses the overall structure of a fantastically interesting ‘verse, but actually didn’t fill in very many details at all. There’s all sorts of interesting stuff–big and little–that could be going on in the timeframe of the show–stuff that happened off-camera, as it were. The actual timeframe hasn’t been chosen. The most predictable thing would be for us to set it during the TV show, but some fans have expressed an interest in seeing us explore the time of the Unification War.
Does the Multiverse engine lend itself to “sharded” style play, with multiple worlds like EverQuest or World of Warcraft, or a single world like EVE Online? Or are there other models in mind? If it can go both ways, what way do you envisage the Firefly MMO going?
The Multiverse Platform lets you build whatever kind of world you want–whether sharded, seamless, instanced et cetera. Nothing decided yet on which way the Firefly MMO will go. There are different reasons to use each approach. If there’s a lot of pre-generated content–quests, interesting locations, and so forth–then replicating the world with multiple shards or servers is generally a good way to let lots of people experience that content without feeling overly crowded. But if the gameplay depends more on what the actual community of players does, then the single big world can be more useful.
We’ve already seen Multiverse posters on the forums asking for suggestions; how much influence do you see the fan community having on the development of the game as it proceeds?
Without the Browncoats, we wouldn’t even have the incredible opportunity to make this game. So not only do we owe them for that, but they are the experts–not just in trivia, but in the feel of the Firefly ‘verse. And that’s a critical part of the game. If it doesn’t feel like Firefly, then why the hell did we make it? And the Browncoats are the only ones who are qualified to judge that.
Many thanks to Corey for answering those questions for us, and to Alan for sorting out the communications!
Jon Wood of MMORPG.com covers Firefly in his weekly column. He has a particularly interesting point to make with regard to the amount of information already known about the setting:
I think that one season was enough to give the audience a taste of what the universe was all about, but leaves enough of the lore unexplored to allow the game’s developers the chance to stretch their legs and create some new and interesting content. In fact, it’s the short-lived nature of the show that actually gives the game a significant advantage over other sci-fi MMORPGs like Star Trek Online and Stargate Worlds, which run the risk of getting so bogged down in the lore of their television predecessors that the fans will pick the games apart and turn away from them.
Certainly, continuity is (or was) an issue in SWG, where the game was nominally set at one point in the timeline, but had ships from further on, and numerous other problems that were noticeable to fans.
