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With
my ship safely docked back at the station after href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/62045" target="_blank">last
week’s excursion into
the starry skies of href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/eve/" target="_blank"> style="font-style: italic;">EVE Online’s
New Eden, the experience left me craving more sci-fi in my MMO diet.
The building anticipation for the newest crop of promising titles
looming just over the horizon may temporarily have my sights fixed on
the future, but in the here and now there is a distinct void where
sci-fi should reside, no doubt created by the vacuum left in the wake
of some of the MMOs that reached for greatness yet ultimately fell
short of their goal. Obviously a few games still dot the sci-fi skies,
but there’s hardly a galactic presence to rival
fantasy’s grip on the industry.



Days
of Future Past


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The
force wasn't quite strong enough with SWG.

Last week, Ethec href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/62017" target="_blank">brought
up some good points in one of
his daily Loading… columns that got me thinking about the
current state of my favorite genre. One notion that stood out is that,
as a genre, sci-fi has exceeded fantasy’s draw in film, but
the success rates flip in fantasy’s favor within the realm of
MMOs. Two massive IPs that instantly come to mind here are style="font-style: italic;">The Matrix
and Star
Wars. These are stories and
worlds that transcend normal benchmarks for success and have been
embraced by pop culture on a global scale. Yet somehow that universal
appeal left a sour taste in the mouths of MMO gamers who expected the
same sweetness found in film when they first stepped into href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/taxonomy/term/207"
target="_blank"> style="font-style: italic;">The Matrix Online
and href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/taxonomy/term/42"
target="_blank"> style="font-style: italic;">Star Wars Galaxies.



While I realize there are thousands of gamers out there who would argue
till their dying breath that Galaxies was the bee’s knees at
launch, only to be spoiled later on by the infamous NGE, the game was
never the success everyone expected of such a monolithic IP. If it
were, the NGE never would have been suggested in the first place.
It’s possible that the market wasn’t quite ripe
enough to pick a Star Wars MMO from the vine, but it’s more
likely that Galaxies lacked the same kind of spark that ignited href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/wow" target="_blank"> style="font-style: italic;">World of Warcraft’s
meteoric rise to success.



As easily as I could hypothesize about the history of sci-fi in MMOs
all day, instead, I’d like to take a closer look at what the
future holds for fans of the genre. Theorizing about future events style="font-style: italic;">is
one of the core elements of sci-fi after all!

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Star
Trek Online could beam sci-fi up to the top of the MMO charts.

Foreseeable
Futures



Scanning over the growing list of sci-fi MMOs in development,
it’s hard to ignore the one-two punch of href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/taxonomy/term/1422"
target="_blank"> style="font-style: italic;">Star Wars: The Old
Republic
and href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/taxonomy/term/117"
target="_blank"> style="font-style: italic;">Star Trek Online.
If any IPs have the potential to assimilate a massive following that
shatters the bonds previously holding the genre back, it would be these
two. That said, there are other promising titles on my radar that I
fully expect will knock people’s collective +2 Socks of
Socking off. I could wax poetic about upcoming titles such as href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/taxonomy/term/306"
target="_blank"> style="font-style: italic;">Jumpgate Evolution
until the cyborg cows come home to recharge their batteries. The
difference here is that both TOR and STO have acronyms that you can
annunciate much easier than JGE. But beyond that, they also share a
universal appeal that spans generations and has seen their IP transform
into a brand name that even non-fans would instantly recognize.



It could be argued that BioWare faces one of the stiffest challenges
the industry has ever seen. Not only is the Star Wars IP so huge that
the logo has graced the likes of everything from lunchboxes to
Underoos, but there’s also another MMO set in the Star Wars
universe already on the market – one that notably
didn’t live up to the potential of the IP in terms of
subscriber numbers. At the same time, I know I’m not alone in
being an extremely vocal supporter of even the style="font-style: italic;">idea
of an Old Republic MMO since the first KotOR graced store shelves.
While the BioWare logo might not be stamped onto obscure bathroom
accessories the way Star Wars is, the studio has certainly gained the
respect of gamers over the years by crafting solid, enjoyable RPG
experiences across a multitude of genres.



What
lies beyond the sky?



All this talk about BioWare and MMOs inevitably leads me to speculate
about some of the other promising sci-fi IPs out there, one of them
being BioWare’s very own style="font-style: italic;">Mass Effect.
While we’ve only seen the first installment of a proposed
trilogy, Mass
Effect already has a solid
foundation that could easily be expanded upon and translated into a
massively multiplayer experience. Call me crazy, but a small part of me
wants The Old Republic to be a success simply to prove the viability of
a ME MMO at some point in the future.

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All
your base are belong to Skynet.

There’s also been some href="http://forums.tentonhammer.com/showthread.php?t=40265"
target="_blank">recent talk
about a possible style="font-style: italic;">Terminator
MMO. While the IP does have a clearly defined central conflict,
I’m not entirely sold on the idea that it would translate as
well as href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/62084" target="_blank">some
might think. Without a lot of
stretching to make the IP fit onto a MMO canvas, I have a hard time
imagining anything more than a sandbox shooter with limited potential
for mass appeal.



In the Terminator
films, though the future threat of Skynet was obviously present, the
stories themselves were a bit too focused on the how the actions of
individuals today will ultimately help shape future events. Learn from
our mistakes or doom future generations to a wretched robotic fate and
all that jazz. *pauses to carve “there’s no fate
but what we make” into his desk* Unless the game were set
entirely in the future, I don’t see any other way to make it
work. Otherwise, the first successful raid would ensure that Skynet
never comes into existence and the servers could all close.



In some ways, that cuts to the heart of why sci-fi has only seen
limited success in the realm of MMOs so far. While fantasy is all about
rich settings and mythologies, most popular sci-fi focuses more
directly on personal stories, or a singular aspect within the realm of
“What If?” While high tech settings may be a staple
of the genre, their past is most often our present – we
already know the lore because we’re living it right now. In
part, that’s why it’s easy to claim Star Wars
shares more in common with fantasy than with sci-fi. By setting the
conflict in another galaxy, the past was left wide open to explore.



Captain’s
Log: Stardate 2020.9



While I’ve only touched upon a couple of notable sci-fi IPs
at this point, I know there’s easily dozens if not hundreds
of others out there that have the untapped potential to make a great
sci-fi MMO. The re-imagined style="font-style: italic;">Battlestar Galactica
series instantly comes to mind here. Still others might make for an
interesting read or excellent film, yet lack some of the depth
that’s allowed fantasy settings to remain king of the hill
for so long.



For example, I’ve been a major Philip K. Dick fan for well
over a decade, and though I could read each one of his novels countless
times and continue to be entertained in the process, I’m not
sure his writing could ever successfully translate into MMO form. Then
again, Dick’s work is a prime example of character-driven
narratives where futuristic settings serve primarily as a backdrop, or
a means of letting the impossible be possible without having to explain
how or why.



What about you, fellow humanoids? Are there any existing sci-fi IPs
that you’d like to see make the transition into the wacky
world of MMOs? Share your thoughts right here in our forums, or if
you’d prefer you can always send a virtual carrier pigeon to href="mailto:[email protected]">my inbox!