starship-troopers posts

The Daily Grind: Which MMO deserves the movie treatment?

by Akela Talamasca Jun 7th 2008 at 8:00AM

Filed under: Culture, Lore, Opinion, Massively meta, The Daily Grind

The World of Warcraft movie is coming, barring one of those infamous Hollywood accidents that seem to happen to many movies before they're finished. We've covered the others before, with a gloomy outlook. But statistically, surely at least one of them will be watchable.

So if not City of Heroes, or Everquest, which property might make a good movie? Which one has a good setting, visually interesting powers or abilities, a rich storyline, and engaging characters? Tabula Rasa might be a fun romp if it could avoid comparison to Starship Troopers. Perhaps Hellgate: London might make a good Summer spookfest. Weigh in with your thoughts!

Tags: city-of-heroes, everquest, hellgate-london, movies, starship-troopers, tabula-rasa, tdg, the-daily-grind, world-of-warcraft

Why Fantasy, and not Science Fiction, Part Eleventy-Billion

by Akela Talamasca Jan 23rd 2008 at 10:00AM

Filed under: World of Warcraft, Fantasy, Sci-fi, EVE Online, Neocron 2, Culture, Game mechanics, Lore, Opinion, Star Wars Galaxies, Tabula Rasa

As my compadre Eli writes here, there is reasoning available that Fantasy MMOs have flourished due to there being a greater preponderance of Fantasy titles, in various media, upon which to draw inspiration to sustain an MMO. The lack of substantive Science Fiction titles of the time, therefore, leads to the correlating dearth of such MMOs. However, this argument only mentions in passing what I think is the more crucial element, which is this:

Fantasy titles are about the Hero's Journey, or the Epic. Science Fiction titles are about exploration of ideas. One of these story types makes for better adaptation to immersive gameplay. Guess which?

Now, I will back up a bit and acknowledge that as a blanket statement, what I said does not (and should not be considered to) cover every Fantasy or Science Fiction title everywhere. Clearly, Star Wars is the most well-known Epic SF story, but then again, Lucas based the plot almost entirely on Joseph Campbell's monomyth, which was itself formulated around the epic myths and stories of history. And perhaps one of the finest Fantasy titles ever written, John Crowley's Little, Big, uses Fantasy tropes to examine the idea of the complexity of human relationships, rather than one character's journey to overcome evil. But having made those concessions, let me make my case.

Tags: blade-runner, cyberpunk, epic, eve-online, extrapolative, fantasy, george-lucas, heros-journey, john-crowley, johnny-mnemonic, joseph-campbell, little-big, max-headroom, monomyth, neocron-online, science-fiction, space-opera, starship-troopers, strange-days, tabula-rasa, the-matrix, the-terminator, world-of-warcraft

What's NCSoft Europe working on?

by Akela Talamasca Jan 4th 2008 at 2:45PM

Filed under: At a glance, Sci-fi, Galleries, MMO industry, New titles, News items, War

Trawling the web is a tedious process that rarely yields significant results without a great deal of patient sifting. However, when one does strike something valuable, it makes it all worthwhile. To wit: NCsoft Europe is on a hiring spree for a previously-unannounced project!

In fact, it gets better. Looking at NCE's website gives us a page of concept art that seems to indicate a science fiction/Starship Troopers-esque military title with a slight mystical leaning. This is big! NCsoft is a -- forgive me -- massively prolific studio, with no less than seven MMOs under their belts. Can no one stop their madness? Do we really want to? No! Keep 'em coming!

We'll keep on top of this as more develops!

Tags: concept-art, hiring, ncsoft, ncsoft-europe, science-fiction, starship-troopers