Determining the Success of Trion's Defiance

There's been a lot of talk circling Trion's ambitious move in merging TV show and video game together. Being the first of its kind, Defiance will merge the two in order to create a one-of-a-kind experience to gamers. It's not all about gaming but it's about following the TV series which can reveal more about the game.

Let's take a look at the concept art for Defiance:

This is a concept art of the city. As you can see the city is located within an enclosed valley shrouded in mist and foliage. The city continues to flourish with people---humans, Castithans, Irathients, Votans and more. Like any other city, the city continues to bustle even if amongst the alien vs human conflicts.

In the TV series, the producers and cast try to link the TV show and the game together seamlessly. But what happens if the TV series turned into a flop? Would it effect the overall environment of the game?

In an interview with Trion Worlds' Rob Hill, GamerZines asked this very question. The response received was thoughtful:

“Well, it’ll effect it in the fact that the show is free advertising for us and we’re really excited about the crossover elements, but we’re to very a real extent developing the game alone. The game has to survive on its own and it has to be a good game, regardless of the show being around or not,” explained the senior producer of Defiance: The Game.

“We intentionally built the game so that you didn’t have to do both, because we’re not going to get everybody who watches the show to play the game and vice versa. We know this and Syfy knows this, but what you do get is a deeper understanding of what is happening in the universe, the characters which cross back and forth and the species that get introduced; all that kind of stuff. We didn’t want to alienate either side, if somebody doesn’t like to play games or watch science-fiction on television, we don’t want to cut those people off.”

So in conclusion from the interview, it's safe to say both teams are focusing directly on the game rather than the hyped up TV show itself. The writers for the Defiance TV show are the same writers which wrote Syfy's own Battlestar Galactica. Trion is planning to invest a substantial amount of money into the TV show and especially it's FX. So in theory, the show is expected to be a hit.

All that's left to do is introduce a plot who can stand alone long enough without the help of the MMO. If Trion can pull it off, then Defiance will not be considered just another mmo waiting to be flamed by disappointed sci-fi fans.


For skeptics and enthusiasts alike, the game is now going into it's second closed beta. You can try your hand at playing a EGO enhanced Ark Hunter and unravel more of the story within the game.