Poll: which Sci fi universe would make the best game?

[Johnny Impact]

40k would be an awesome MMO if anybody had the resources and time to develop it properly. Sadly, not even most national governments have the kind of revenue it would take to truly produce this game. It's best if nobody tries it. The FPS is good.

Stargate has some potential as either an FPS or MMO. I'm not an expert on the series or the games it has or hasn't spawned but I think it could work.

I'd have to say a Battlestar game concentrating on semi-realistic space dogfighting would be cool.

 

[Skalman]

40k would be an awesome MMO if anybody had the resources and time to develop it properly.

As long as it's a MMOFPS and not a MMORPG I'm supporting it! If they turn it into another MMORPG then the developers are proper fucked for all i care...

A good example of a MMOFPS is Planetside, that game was really fun and would they do a game like it in a Warhammer 40k setting, now that's a wet dream!

But like you put it, there's some serious resources needed to successfully pull off a warhammer 40k MMOFPS

 

[mooma482]

Warhammer 40K is possibly the best FPS material I've ever heard of, it's true that it would take a developer with balls of steel to tackle it, but that's what would make it so great - you'd be left with either a total flop you could just forget about or something mind blowing. The possibilities are endless, you could end up with an Alien vs Predator experience where each race is playable and all play differently, multi-player would be a blast.

You could end up with a bowel emptying horror - a lone guardsman trying to get out of a dark city over-run by Tyranids, with smaller Tyrandis scuttling over buildings and dragging people away, giant beasts roaming the streets, and you picking your battles trying to get to the last drop ship that's about to leave (Similar to the marine sections in Aliens vs Predator).

You could have amazing action - playing as a space marine riding a Drop-pod down into a city being attacked by Orcs, charging in with a bloody chain blade and bolter gun, spraying blood and gore, destroying anti-aircraft guns so that landing craft can bring down reinforcements (similar to Gears of War).

You could be part of a Tau Pathfinder squad, jump jetting with your team mates across the tops of smashed buildings to set up a snipers nest to reinforce a position that's about to come under attack.

You'd end up with a brutal multi-faceted game, with dozens of unique and interesting enemies, a cinematic experience rate R. Then when it comes to multi player, you could have coop, or battlefield style maps, or multi-species death match (Orcs rushing forwards with axes, marines blasting away with bolters, Tyranids scaling the walls). The beauty of WH40K is it's such a vast universe you don't have to cover everything, you can pick and chose and it lends itself to what you're doing.

 

[Erana]

The Dragon Riders of Pern would be a PERFECT starting point for a game.

For those who don't know the series, it is a scifi/fantasy book series that takes place in the distant future, on a planet called Pern. A bunch of people decided that they wanted to be all Amish-ish, so they went to this earthlike planet to live a simple life away from the pollutants and technology of Earth.
Everything was going fine until these silver spores, they called Thread, fell to the surface, literally burning away all organic material it touched.
What did they do, you ask? The only logical thing, of corse.
The remaining scientific minds took these littl native, dragonlike creatures and genetically altered them into giant, fire-breathing psychic creatures that fly around burning the spores and saving the world.

As for it being a game, I think it would be an interesting MMORPG because:
1. There are a variety of classes: Harpers, Drummers, Dragonriders, people who use flamethrowers, people who communicate with sentient dolphins, etc.
2. There are a variety of major cities and unique locations mapped out in a suprisingly game-like manner.
3. They have science. A great excuse for anything they'd like to throw in.
4. The Thread. What's more convenient than a wave of things to destroy that actually fits the storyline?
5. Fire lizards. They are the little version of the genetically-inhanced critters people ride on. Perfect for being pets, and unobtrusive little dragons would make a titch more sence than some other pet systems I know.

Yes, I have pondered this far too much. But I think it would work. =P

 

[a big stupid idiot]

I think Truancy by Ismau Fukai. Its about students who try to over-through a corrupt government, its a good read a I think it would make an interesting game.

 

[Thaliur]

I think the Star Trek universe would offer the most opportunities for good games, since it's really thought-through (though there were frequent changes to accomodate to new storylines) with defined alliances, complex politics, and lots of life all over the galaxy/universe.
Basically any kind of game would work there, even simple board games (There are complete rules for the Star Trek 3D chess, for example), and its high technological standard allows the easy introduction of new technologies.

 

[Imperator_2]

Torchwood and UNIT should be in an FPS game.

 

[Rath709]

No. No touch Legacy. BAD.

 

[Church256]

No. No touch Legacy. BAD.

Agreed. If you want to buy Legacy you need shot. Bridge Commmander is much older but much better when you add mods.

 

[Uncompetative]

Farscape would make for one hell of an RPG. Heck, if they took it online, it could even make for an MMO that's actually fun.

I was just about to post the very same thing, minus the MMO part.

Farscape is a terrific suggestion, but it would need to be an MMO in order to fund the enormous and ever expanding cost of all that 'Art'. The mistake is in thinking that MMO = WOW or EVE, where all the players exist in the same land or space, "Instancing" enables small groups of players (more like Phantasy Star Online) to go on adventures in parallel universes, never meeting their doppelgangers. I also think that the social problem of multiplayer needs to be better worked out than friends lists, clans and regular time intervals when they play together. I miss the four-player join and leave when you like model of Arcade Gauntlet. If all the important 'character' roles fill up then late comers could either skip to the lobby of another instance or play for the enemy 'counter-operative' style as in Perfect Dark on the N64 where you would keep jumping into the body of the next guard to face down Joanna Dark after she had killed the last one she had encountered.

It could even generate some of its revenue from character customization and if on PC this could even be outsourced to licensed partners, whose quality of costuming or weapon design had been sanctioned as being in harmony with the 'house style' - a little like Second Life. Female gamers tend to like creating stuff and making friends, whilst male gamers like destroying stuff and dominating enemies - I know, a massive over-generalization that is unfair to both genders, but it does indicate that there is an untapped Animal Crossing shaped void in the space-opera MMORPG/FPS.

Here's a wild thought: you could have different character personas manifest their presence in the game world in terms of different genres.

So you wouldn't have a user interface that was struggling to be an FPS/adventure game (i.e. MMO quests -> person to person combat) and an RTS/city-builder with all the problems of mismatched time intervals (i.e. for the FPS to run at real time the city-building game would become unplayably slow, also a Homeworld style RTS is somewhat sped up to prevent boredom). You would pick a character like Zhaan for a 3rd person RPG interface, but be witness to Crichton's use of weapons, which if you were 'in his shoes' you would see in 1st person. Yet another point of view would be available to Scorpius as he would at times be in control of his Peacekeeper Command Carrier as an RTS (without resource-gathering). You would not have an interface like Mass Effect that tries to fuse everything at once and makes it seem rather complicated. Non-player characters would feature heavily and each would encode one or more story arcs as in Oblivion. A player could take charge of an NPC as their temporary avatar and then that NPC's quest goals and 'idiosyncratic motivations' would become theirs, so in a kind of Amateur Dramatics way players would be encouraged to travel and interact in interesting patterns and in ways that were consistent with their character's personality (e.g. they may get points for being cowardly -> level up attributes of any character to gain permission to 'buy' stuff; so even if real money were involved a rich player would not be able to instantly kit out their character with the best stuff as they would need to have the relevant attributes expanded appropriately. The game engine would cinematically transit between modes with a view to telling the story of the most local quest context. The city-builder would lie outside of 'time' in a protected instance (as they would get irritated with their city being routinely destroyed before they had finished it to their satisfaction), then they would upload it to an unvisited world (simply, the Uncharted Territories are spatially non-contiguous, Starburst is used to hop from region to region and the new city on a new world gets introduced in a new and therefore not yet visited region) once integrated into all parallel instances it can be destroyed by one set of players only to remain unharmed for another. Ideally, long-running instances would be persistent as long as those that exited and rejoined Gauntlet-style came back to the same one, but you would need distributed servers to hold all the changes that this group of players had made to their Farscape universe. You could put the changes to the original in one host machine, but you would need to replicate this information to the other players machines in the event that the host left. Tricky...

 

[Xhumed]

William Gibson's Neuromancer. Though personally id rather see it as a PC game, since i dont own any consoles.

Firefly can go burn in hell. God I wish that show never came into existence and took over Dark Angel's time slot just when DA was getting good. I don't think I would mind a Farscape game even though I think it would be cool to have a Dark Angel beat em up type game. I really want an exo squad game though.

you, sir, are an imbecile. Firefly was one of the best written tv shows around. It isn't its fault Fox are idiots. Though to be honest, while DA had its moments, frankly i struggled to maintain my interest. DA and Firefly, and Farscape too, like many good shows, suffered due to studio execs being strategically shaved chimps.

 

[mark_n_b]

It's not so much "the universe" Any competently created science fiction IP has a universe in which a good game can be created.

It is the game itself. Think, there have been good Star Trek Games and There have been Good Star Wars games, there has also been multiple examples of bad from both universes.

So which is the better "universe" to make a game out of. Well, really, that component is secondary. A good game developer could develop a great game out of a shoddy sci-fi theme just as many have made horrible games out of great sci-fi worlds.

 

[BreakAtmo]

Firefly? It's good and all, but here's the thing that makes me laugh. Firefly gets cancelled after half a season. Joss Whedon makes a movie to tie up loose ends, and that's it. The fans all sit around moping, telling each other that Fox are evil, and that Firefly will come back at some point. They just have to sit and wait...

Now Farscape. After four seasons of stonkingly good sci-fi, it gets cancelled. However, the Farscape faithful are a little more pro-active than their Firefly brethren. Within weeks of cancellation, the Save Farscape campaign has begun. Not just a random collection of internet petitions to the Sci-Fi channel, this is the real deal. The fans themselves send out enough letters, make enough phone calls and generally make enough of a noise that the miniseries Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars is commissioned to tie up all the loose ends. The success of the mini-series means that a series of Webisodes is also commissioned. Strike that up as one for the proles.

You do know that there are annual Serenity charity screenings, right?

 

[Exterminatus]

I WOULD say 40k, but...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BLAME!

... I would like to see in game form more.

 

[Flicken]

40k has had many games based on it, Firewarrior was a decent, if slightly under the radar FPS that I felt showed off most of the weapons in 40k a lot better than DoW did. The Bolter was highly inaccurate and the Bolts fied a lot like the RPG from HL and even made little explosions of impact, coupled with a small clip size (6-12, I forget exactly), made it feel like it was like firing a bolter by someone who wasn't a Space Marine, while the Space Marines you fight seem to be able to tear you three new belly button holes from 400 metersd away (As they should)

The other guns were just as good, if it wasn't for the fact that the last levels of the game consisted of almost every enemy carrying a rocket launcher (Even if they were Chaos Marines) I'd say it was almost perfect in giving off the 40K FPS feeling... If you've never played it, go get it, both PC, PS2 and probably XBox aswell...

There's rumours of a 40k MMO by Mythic after WO:AoR is finished/released...

 

[Eyclonus]

We need a good Dune game. Not some stupid RTS on Arrakis or something like that, something awesome. Like an MMO. There could be a bunch of classes like Swordmaster, or Mentat, or Bene Gesserit, and... and...

It sounded cooler in my head...

They were making it and there are a few screenshots if you can find it but the studio went bust.

EDIT: I'd say Farscape is perfect for a MMORPGer.

 

[shadow skill]

William Gibson's Neuromancer. Though personally id rather see it as a PC game, since i dont own any consoles.

Firefly can go burn in hell. God I wish that show never came into existence and took over Dark Angel's time slot just when DA was getting good. I don't think I would mind a Farscape game even though I think it would be cool to have a Dark Angel beat em up type game. I really want an exo squad game though.

you, sir, are an imbecile. Firefly was one of the best written tv shows around. It isn't its fault Fox are idiots. Though to be honest, while DA had its moments, frankly i struggled to maintain my interest. DA and Firefly, and Farscape too, like many good shows, suffered due to studio execs being strategically shaved chimps.

Firefly was never really all that interesting to me, I never bought the whole sci-fi western feel of the show. The whole thing was just so forgettable. Buffy the vampire slayer was more interesting in the very beginning than Firefly to me anyway. So to see a much better show get canned for one of lesser quality is really just infuriating. I put Firefly on the same level as Deepwater black in terms of shows that should be completely and utterly forgotten.

 

[KSarty]

I can't believe nobody has mentioned the Honor Harrington series. I admit it would be difficult to make the game engaging considering the incredible long-range nature of the battles, but there is actually a Homeworld 2 mod out there that plays very similar to what I think an HH game should, with newtonian physics and everything. That kind of combat gameplay mixed with a larger view like Empire at War or Sins of a Solar Empire I think would make an excellent game.