Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMO Gamers to the Next Level!

With my ship safely docked back at the station after last week’s excursion into the starry skies of 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

The force wasn't quite strong enough with SWG.

Last week, Ethec 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 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 The Matrix Online and 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 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 is one of the core elements of sci-fi after all!

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 Star Wars: The Old Republic and 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 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 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 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.

All your base are belong to Skynet.

There’s also been some recent talk about a possible 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 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 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 my inbox!