I plan on putting these to good use fairly soon. I’d also like to teach/learn a little bit of sign language so that the kiddo can learn to communicate before she can speak. My boss did this and says his daughter would sign a bit and help them figure out what she wanted.
My little brother has been hard at work at the Guildhall. Here is his latest project:
It looks like it might be a skin for an Unreal mod. He named her Talia, but I’d call her Suzan-Tron the Gnome Squisher. She was once a lowly barmaid until she lost her limbs in a fight with Nester Diddlefoot, the gnome dish washer. Now, thanks to technology, she can seek out Nester and claim her revenge.
Well, it looks like someone agreed with me. The Firefly/Serenity setting would make a great setting for an MMO. Multiverse is planning to hire a development team to produce a Firefly MMO using their system. I had read about Multiverse a while back, but hadn’t heard anything new lately. It looks like they’re trying to make a push to break further into the industry.
On the positive side, there’s a rabid fanbase. As the Wired article says, Firefly is the new Star Trek. Browncoats are the new Trekkies. The setting is perfectly laid-out. There are enough details in the series and the film to give you a good starting point, but it is vague enough to allow for some new ideas. Also, the Sci-Fi MMO market is not saturated like the fantasy MMO market is, so they could fill the void.
On the negative side, a lot of things have to go right to pull this off. First and foremost is the game design. There is a reason there aren’t many Sci-Fi MMOs out there. It’s hard to pull off ranged, real-time combat. Melee combat can be a bit slow and meticulous, but ranged combat needs to be fast-paced. Standing in a field 10 paces from your enemy exchanging gunfire is not fun. Combat is required, too, so don’t make it secondary. However, it can’t be the only part of the game. Politics are extremely important to the setting, as is trade. Another hurdle is not only doing right by the fans, but doing right by the creator. A Firefly game without direct involvement by Joss Whedon would fail (see SWG).
I’ll be keeping an eye on this game as it progresses. As I said in my previous post: Do right by the setting, have some innovative features, and this game would be crowned the new king.
