14 DAY TRIAL // After a long period of limited news, Trion Worlds Inc. has been showing off quite a few pieces of information about its future projects, including a new real time strategy MMO, called End of Nations created in collaboration with Petroglyph, veterans of Command & Conquer, and a name change to Rift: Planes of Telara for its more fantasy-oriented multiplayer online world.
It seems that Trion is also working hard on a secret project with the newly renamed Syfy Channel that will blend television and gaming in different ways.
The collaboration has been in effect since 2008 and Nick Beliaeff, who is the senior vice president of development at Trion, told Gamasutra that the game would be more action-oriented than other projects from the company, although the basic MMO structure will still be there. The setting is also revealed as being Earth with the time zone shifted to about 50 or 100 years into the future.
The aim is to create a synergy between the events mentioned in the Syfy show and what players can experience in the MMO made by Trion. This includes quest lines linked to the television world and their achievements can then be mentioned on the show, creating a full loop. It's not clear whether the MMO will be built in such a way that it can go on after the television show ends on the Syfy Channel or whether the entire project will be built with a limited play time in mind.
Nick Beliaeff also told Gamasutra that “The Sci-Fi Channel has always had a big passion for games, and has such a synergy with their audience that they wanted to get there in a really meaningful way. We wanted to take it beyond the traditional licensee/licensor relationship. We live in a connected world. We can really do something nobody has done before.”