As I mentioned before, I am at the Penny Arcade Expo here in Seattle, a big video game convention. Sure, I like reporting on video games as much as the next guy, but what Trion Worlds and SyFy are doing is very different.

Defiance is a game that is a “multi-platform shooter MMO”. For those that aren’t familiar with video game terms, it means that you are playing a game where you are basically shooting things and players from all over the Internet get involved as well. What makes Defiance different is that the MMO is directly tied into a television series.

The Defiance television show will premiere on SyFy later next year, about the same time as the game’s release. The show is about an alien invasion, and how the Earth has been “terramorphed”. I am told that writers from Battlestar Galactica and Farscape are involved, and so it should be quite cool as it is “the biggest thing that SyFy has ever done”. That was a quote from the booth.

What is really interesting is that Trion tells me that the events in the Defiance game will alter the plotline of the show, and vice versa. I am a little skeptical about how these two mediums will work together, but I am excited about the prospect. I believe that this is the first time that something like this has ever been tried, and I hope that it works well and won’t be a failed experiment. I recall The Matrix tried to spread out in mixed media like video games and the Animatrix, and it didn’t insure a long lifespan for the franchise.