James Cameron has transported film audiences to worlds inhabited by carnivorous aliens, time-traveling assassins, and passengers on an ill-fated ocean liner. Now the director of Aliens, The Terminator, and Titanic is trying something different. Holed up at his home in Santa Barbara, Calif., Cameron is working on the screenplay for Project 880, which he describes as “completely crazy, balls-out sci-fi.” If it gets produced, it could be the first major Hollywood project that audiences will experience first as a multiplayer game on the Net, and only later on the silver screen.
And this part annoyed me for some reason:
And the game could spawn whole communities of diehards such as those who spend every waking hour immersed in EverQuest, World of Warcraft, and other massively multiplayer online games, known as MMOGs.
It’s like they decided the end goal would be to get themselves a community, and then started on the product. Instead of the community being a result of the product. Sounds too manufactured and fake to me.
And the whole “…gamers could be exploring Cameron’s virtual world for weeks before they head for a theater to learn the story.”
Sounds like a promo, not a game, and most certainly not an MMO. They should stick to putting up trailers and posters if the end result is about getting people to go see their film.