Friend and goodly neighbor Keith has brought to my attention that a Firefly massively multiplayer online game is in the works. His initial response: this is going to suck, and it would have been better to get another TV show. My response to his response: yes, probably, but perhaps this will be so popular that we’ll see more movies or shows some day. His response to that: good point. My secret response in my head, an hour or two later: nah, probably not.

If Star Wars couldn’t leverage its entire universe into a successful MMO – with a larger built-in audience, decades of back story, alien species, cataloged planets, and technically detailed hardware and spaceship specifications across several media formats at its disposal – I find it unlikely that Firefly would succeed here. Then again, Star Wars had some factors acting against it:

The actual mechanics of the game sucked. Actually, the mechanics of most MMOs kind of suck, if you’re not particularly interested in the repetitive slaying of computer-controlled creatures. It’s particularly disheartening to play through this when you’re a great and mighty Wookiee chasing around vermin for a few paltry points. Keith, Angel, and I were discussing how current MMOs are descended from MUDs, the text-based combat games from days of yore, while Second Life is more like a MUSH in which players uninterested in combat can create their own objects and environments. Some MUSHes particularly emphasized in-character roleplaying and interaction, and a Firefly MMO would probably be better for it just because … well, I guess just because we wouldn’t be interested in killing Reavers, space pirates, and Alliance soldiers all day long. Moving on to another failing in the Star Wars MMO…

You couldn’t just log in and make a fun Jedi right off the bat. You think Star Wars, you probably think Jedi. You want to swing around a lightsaber and crush somebody’s throat with your mind. However, the game would kind of suck with a bunch of thirteen-year-old twits hopping around, hacking off limbs and crushing throats with reckless abandon. Maybe you’d rather be a moisture farmer?

And then the people in charge alienated their player base well after the game started by changing the game significantly. Now you could actually log in and make a fun Jedi right off the bat, which the people running the game hoped would attract more players, but which probably just encouraged people to hop around and act like morons with lightsabers.

Firefly doesn’t really have any must-play class like that, which could act in its favor. It’s also got the little fanbase that could, who are determined to see this thing succeed no matter what. Nevertheless, I imagine most people who followed the series would probably agree that the big draws were the writing and acting. Something tells me the average gamer acting in-character just isn’t as quick with the quips as an actor reciting a script written by Joss Whedon and Ben Edlund. Meanwhile, the setting itself just isn’t focused enough on combat and hardware to make a good Everquest/WoW knockoff.

All of that said, I’m not into MMOs, so I can’t say for sure whether other people would be interested in playing where I wouldn’t. At this point, I’d go watch more Firefly movies or shows, but I also imagine that Whedon has plenty of good ideas left in him; I’d sooner follow his work than any particular media property. You read comic books long enough, you learn that people can really butcher another person’s idea.