I was reading an article on the front page of the New York Times today and saw a banner ad above it. It was for Defiance, the new transmedia project that’s a TV show on the Syfy Channel and online game from Trion Worlds.

As we were warned by the producers, Defiance is going to be inescapable. If you’re breathing, you’re going to hear about it. NBC Universal heavily advertised the television series pilot, and it seems to have paid off. The show drew 2.7 million viewers on Monday, and it was the most-watched scripted Syfy premiere since 2006.

A marketing juggernaut

The stars, like Grant Bowler (Nolan), are on the talk-show circuit. And Defiance earned a lot of “social exposure,” as measured by Syfy. I thought the opener was good, but I said it was no Game of Thrones. In fact, the premiere of Defiance outperformed Game of Thrones on its own premiere day. Syfy hasn’t had a show this hot since Eureka, and its second-screen tablet app posted its best day ever with the debut. The digital stats in terms of uniques, page views, and visits are stellar.

Meanwhile, the massively multiplayer online game has scored 6 million hours of playtime since the launch two weeks ago. I’ve poured around 10 hours into it myself. This transmedia — or a story that is told in more than one medium — has to be considered a success in terms of its ability to grab attention even though it appeared on the same day as the Boston bombings.

Can it last?

But the nagging question remains for me. Was it worth it? Will it last? This $100 million-plus project (the budget for both the $70 million game and the TV series with its 12 episodes) was in the works for more than five years. It occupied the time of hundreds of game developers and show creators.

In my view, the show is good, and the game is good. The cast is talented, and the special effects are respectable. But they weren’t outstanding. And with so little time on my hands these days, I won’t give a lot of time to entertainment that is just good. On TV, especially on Monday nights, the show doesn’t have a ton of competition. But when it comes to games, I have endless choices now.

That’s why the launch of the game was particularly important, and it is bad news that it had a lot of hiccups. A lot of players complained that they couldn’t get into the game. Trion took down the Xbox 360 and PC versions for part of Monday due to problems with a patch.  You would think that after five years of planning, these technical issues wouldn’t happen. But it seems on par with the launch of major games these days.

The question is whether the TV show is good enough to keep the players interested even though the game’s launch could have been better. The next TV episode comes on April 22. The show will be critical in determining the fate of the transmedia project. If the audience grows — thanks to word of mouth and the ubiquitous marketing — the franchise could still be a hit.

Trion appears to understand what is at stake. When I took a couple of nights off, Trion sent me an email saying it wanted “to make amends for some of the tech issues at launch.” It gave me a bunch of virtual credits to help my progress in the game. Trion said it was “working around the clock to deliver a gaming experience that exceeds fan expectations.” It said a massive patch was coming to improve server and client stability and a bunch of other fixes.

That ability to fix problems shows the company is willing to invest in the game as an ongoing service. I am glad for that, and it may make me stick around for longer.

Players themselves appear to be strongly engaged, according to player statistics gathered by the gamer social network Raptr. In the first week, the average Defiance player on the PC played for 15.1 hours. They played for 2.2 hours each session, and played 6.8 sessions during the week. Xbox 360 player stats were similarly strong. In the second week, play time was 14 hours, 2.2 hours each session, and 6.3 sessions per week. Those are strong results that show no sign of weakness.

So, how does it play?

For those who have seen just the TV show, it may be worth it to wait until the game bugs are squashed.

I share many of the same feelings that my fellow GamesBeat writer Stefanie Fogel expressed in her initial impressions. The standard enemies in this game are really stupid while bosses are impossibly tough. On Metacritic, a review aggregator, the game has a weak 63 out of 100 score, and it’s gotten weaker as more reviews come in. (The TV show has a rating of 55 out of 100.)

The game is different because it is a third-person shooter where you can level up in many different ways. It’s not your typical role-playing game in that respect. The dynamic events can spice things up, creating big headaches — and opportunities to collect a lot of loot — where there weren’t any before.

My view is that the story of the game is compelling enough to keep you playing. You have to protect an important (but arrogant) scientist and his work from falling into the wrong hands. And you have to unravel a mystery in parallel to the mystery in the show. I’m not going to argue with people who say the story is terrible, like in a B movie. But I have to admit that it’s why I have continued to play.

Some nice touches make the game fun. The third-person combat is fast-paced and entertaining. Like with Borderlands 2, you have all sorts of ways to level up your character, weapons, vehicles, and special abilities. The open world gives you a ton of choice on which missions to pursue. You can follow a straight path on the main missions or deviate into side missions. And it’s easy to get around. You can press a single key on the keyboard to call up your vehicle, and then you can jump into it and zoom off to your next destination. You aren’t doomed to walk through the cool future landscape of the Marin headlands.

But there are also drawbacks that tell you the game has been five years in the making. Like Electronic Arts’ Star Wars: The Old Republic, the 3D graphics look like time has passed them by. The facial animations and the outlines of the bodies aren’t as smooth as they could be. Offline games still look a lot better.

And the experience isn’t all that good. I have had to replay some missions as well because the game wasn’t smart enough to figure out that I had already completed them. Some of the missions are difficult enough to get my blood flowing.

But other tasks are so difficult for the level of my character that I wish I had some gigantic gun at my disposal to take care of the problem. Those are the missions where I enjoy having a human companion to help me. Others are way too easy, with enemy A.I. that are incredibly easy to outflank. The balance isn’t there.

The dynamic events, where lots of human players converge on a single alien incursion, are fun to join. Dozens of players can converge on a single area and band together to stop the attackers. You feel like you are working toward a common goal, and you don’t have to worry that those players are going to steal your loot. I also like the fact that, when I’m driving down the road, there is no way I will hit another human player’s vehicle. I just pass right through them.

But each of these dynamic events plays out the same, and they don’t seem to be connected to the story at all. That’s a lost opportunity to make the missions more meaningful.

I know there is a connection to the TV show and its characters. By playing the game, I can become steeped in the lore of the show. But the connection seems too loose right now. I understand that both the show and the game have to stand on their own and attract fans who will enjoy one but not bother with the other. But there should be more rewards for those who both watch the show and play the game. I hear these are coming, but I don’t want to put 30 or more hours into the game before I figure out if it’s worth it.

I’m not your classic massively multiplayer online (MMO) fan in that regard. I am impatient. For this game to be a success and to generate a payback on those five years of investment, it has to reach people like me and convince us to stick around not just for a couple of weeks but for a number of months. Right now, I don’t see myself doing that. I just want to solve a mystery or two and then escape.

But I’ll give Trion this much. There’s room for improvement. The game can be polished. If the company is holding back anything on the experience for later on, it should consider releasing it sooner rather than later. This game isn’t doomed. But it has to be fixed.

Check out our poll about whether you like the game or not, and please leave a comment.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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The opening pilot of Defiance, a TV-game transmedia project in the works for five years, debuted last night on the NBC Universal’s SyFy Channel. Early reviews are coming in for both the online game and the show — and they’re not overwhelmingly positive.

Having watched the pilot, I think it was an enjoyable two-hour episode. It has humor, action, political intrigue, and some mystery to keep you enticed to watch more. But Game of Thrones, it’s not. I’ve watched the show and played the game (see our impressions story by Stefanie Fogel), and they are not the highest-quality entertainment experiences I’ve had in the past year.

Add to that the huge distraction from the horror in Boston today, which may deter people from creating any buzz around the pilot. The initial talk about the game was negative because of some well-known server issues that stopped people from joining the game at the outset.

That means the risky bet that some big companies have made on Defiance is looking pretty scary right now. Trion Worlds spent the past five years and an estimated $70 million developing a cross-platform online game for the PC, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3. The game-show combination is perhaps one of the biggest bets in entertainment today.

The show has good cast, starring Grant Bowler as Joshua Nolan, a war veteran who becomes a lawman in the wild-west town of Defiance in a future where a post-apocalyptic Earth has become the home to seven alien races. Bowler and his adopted daughter Irisa (played by Stephanie Leonidas) make an appearance in the game and then escape the San Francisco Bay Area and drive onto the TV show’s setting in what was once St. Louis, Mo.

The initial reviews are thin and not pretty. So far, 15 game publications have given the game an average rating of 62 out 100, according to Metacritic, a review aggregator. That’s pretty pathetic. On TV, 13 critics have given the show a rating of 52 out of 100. That’s even worse. The Boston Herald said it felt like the “Frankenstein of TV shows,” built from the parts of other successful shows — from Battlestar Galactica to Deadwood.

That doesn’t bode well for Trion, which has to hold the attention of gamers for many more hours of content compared to the TV show, whose first season will span 12 episodes.

I’ve put a dozen hours into playing the game, and I have to agree with the critics so far about its shortcomings. But I will acknowledge that I have played a tiny bit of the available content, and I am not willing to give the game a review score just yet.

As Nolan and Irisa move into the town, they meet the mayor, Amanda Rosewater (Julie Benz), and residents like Rafe McCawley (Graham Greene), lounge owner Kenya (Mia Kirshner), and the ambitious and evil-looking aliens, the Tarrs (Tony Curran and Jaime Murray). Then events unfold that threaten the fragile peace in the town where aliens and humans live together.

In the TV show, Nolan and Irisa are scavengers. In the game, players take on the role of Ark Hunters, who hunt down lost alien artifacts. The idea is to make the players feel like the main characters. In the show, Bowler does a great job being a cocky yet diplomatic lawman in a lawless town.

Trion is promising a couple of patches to fix software problems. And it has to give out some extra goods to players to convince them to stick with the game.

As I noted in my previous preview, the content is good. But I don’t know if this show and the game are going to pan out. You don’t have to watch the show and play the game at the same time, but it’s a fair bet that these two will live or die together.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the development costs alone on the video game are $70 million. That’s not hard to believe considering Trion has raised more than $150 million and has a team of 150 working on the game. Over five years, it’s easy to see how payroll costs alone could hit that number. Another 150 worked on the TV show at SyFy, and they all had to coordinate.

The story is set on Earth in the year 2046. It takes place after a massive alien ship, the Ark, crash-lands on Earth. The aliens are seeking a refuge as they flee their own planet, but they make a mess of Earth. The ship terraforms the whole place, and it dumps seven unwanted alien races to live or fight among the surviving humans. The aliens brought with them a new resource, Gulanite, that everyone wants to control in a kind of gold rush. The game’s version of San Francisco is in a state of constant warfare. In Defiance, the races are living together in an uneasy truce.

In today’s pilot, players got to see more of the backstory to the game that they’re playing. Nolan and Irisa roll into town, meet the mayor, and quickly get into trouble. The mayor talks Nolan into becoming the sheriff of the town, and he immediately has to deal with a Romeo and Juliet subplot that leads to a cross-species murder. Nolan and Irisa just want to escape to Antarctica, but they have to choose their temporary allies wisely.

Add to that some serious scheming among the power brokers of the town and those who don’t mind betraying everyone who lives there. The townsfolk learn that they’ve got an invasion of mechanical robots to fend off. They have to either pull together as one to defend the town or fall as a divided community.

The story of the town is an immigrant drama. The pilot has some slow parts, but it drew me in. The acting was good, and the story had tension, action, and comic relief. The climax combat scene was pretty satisfying, but I had to shake my head at how dumb the invaders were. They don’t seem to have heard of these things called “scouts,” and they walked right into an ambush.

The show also set in motion a number of mysteries that will unfold in future episodes. I liked the episode, but I can’t say it’s going to hold my attention for a whole season in competition with so much other entertainment. It has a large cast and is tightly woven for a two-hour episode.

What was your opinion of the TV show? Take our poll below.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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LAS VEGAS — The production of Defiance, a transmedia property with both a game and a TV show, took place over an agonizing five years. The trouble was that both the TV show and the online game associated with it had to be made on very different, and terrifying, schedules.

But against the odds, the giant project is nearing its completion, and both the game and the SyFy cable-network TV show are going to launch in April. The top executives in charge of the project spoke about working together at the DICE Summit, an elite game industry conference in Las Vegas today. They also gave a joint interview to GamesBeat before the talk.

“This was a five-year journey of taking a hypothetical idea that has never been done before,” said Nick Beliaeff (pictured above, left), the vice president of production at Trion Worlds, the maker of the massively multiplayer online game. “It was turning a leap of faith into a reality.”

Many had tried to take a linear story from a film or TV show and make it interactive. But both parties were prepared to make huge investments. Trion raised more than $150 million and hired more than 500 people across a variety of studios to make dynamic MMOs, where the content could be developed in an episodic fashion, much like a TV show. The company launched its Rift fantasy MMO in 2011 and generated more than $100 million in revenue in its first nine months. Trion also has several other projects being launched this year, like Rift China, ArcheAge, and possibly the online real-time strategy game End of Nations.

But the flagship title that has consumed more resources than anything else was Defiance, which required 150 employees for the game and another 150 on the TV show. If you count contractors and outsourced workers, another 100 contributed to the game.

“We wanted to create something big enough where we didn’t have compromises,” Beliaeff said. “Or at least not fatal compromises,” Stern said.

“Which is better?” Beliaeff asked. “I’m not binary. I like both linear and interactive entertainment. There are different audiences and they complement each other,: said Mark Stern (pictured right), president of SyFy, a property of NBC Universal.

“We’re not binary when it comes to entertainment,” Beliaeff said. “We have touch-points. We don’t care how you get into Defiance, through the TV show or the game. We just want you in Defiance.”

Stern said that the companies found each other while Trion, which was just a year old at the time, was raising a round of funding from media partners. NBC Universal invested in that round. The idea of doing a transmedia property with a game and TV show combined came up. Stern’s team sent a bunch of scripts, some of which became good TV shows later.

But Beliaeff said that the scripts for the TV shows were too thin. They could work for a half hour of entertainment, but Trion needed a deep and complex story that could last for hundreds of hours.

They came up with separate territories for the show and game. The show is set in St. Louis, where political intrigue is the norm. The game is set in San Francisco, where combat is the reality. The story of the science fiction show is really more like a Western. The locations are close enough that a player can talk about hearing something that happened in St. Louis without having to go there on a daily basis.

“I didn’t want gamers running through my town with guns, shooting up the place,” Stern said.

Players will encounter a “changed Earth,” where aliens fleeing their own planet have crash-landed on humanity’s home. Their terraforming equipment has hit Earth and caused a lot of destruction. But the aliens, who are split among seven factions, also brought with them a new resource, Gulanite, that different parties will fight to control in a kind of gold rush. The game has a lot of “fast, kinetic action,” Beliaeff said.

Stern said the “terrifying” part was that his TV show team had to agree to a story and characters in the game so early, since Trion’s team had to spend several years creating an enormous amount of animated content. At one point, a proposed alien race eventually became a rock, the Gulanite resource. Still, Stern said it was difficult for the TV show crew to approve characters and a story three years before they started shooting.

“There were times when Nick and I had to get in there and pull people apart and pour cold water on them,” said Stern.

Beliaeff said the game will feature thousands of players at once, often teaming up to deal with events where they have to take care of various alien threats. Sometimes, “arc falls,” or big pieces of the alien ship, crash down to Earth. This creates a battle for the resources in the wreckage. The more players play together, the better the loot when they achieve their goal. That encourages teamwork.

Right now, the TV episodes are edited and are in the home stretch, Stern said. The game is in its “mastering stage,” Beliaeff said.

Soon, advertising will be everywhere. NBC has made Defiance one of its advertising priorities for the full year, with the full assets of the company promoting the TV show and the game, which will ship on the PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

“The whole company is going to promote Defiance,” Beliaeff said. Products have been placed in both media. For instance, Dodge has its Challenger vehicles in the game, and Chargers in the TV show. Preorders have begun. And Stern said that the TV show team is working on Season 2.

Asked what he learned from the process and from shipping Rift, Beliaeff said, “We have learned to be responsive to what the players want. When we ship this game, it won’t be done. We will run it as a service.”

Beliaeff said that April is looking like a great release window for the game. When Take-Two Interactive announced it would delay Rockstar Games’ Grand Theft Auto V to September, Beliaeff said, “There was much rejoicing.” And Beliaeff said the team is starting to think about, “What do we do next?”

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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