Best of Geek Week Award Goes To....

The Best of Geek Week Award goes to...Syfy's Defiance transmedia show and MMO. 

Leave it to geeks to figure out a way to merge two of our favorite worlds (yes, I said ‘our’). We geeks love our sci-fi shows and  we can discuss ad-nausea about who was the best Caption (clearly Picard). But we really love combining two great geek experiences to make an even better geek experience. Sometimes the whole IS greater than the sum of the parts (Conventions + Comics = Comicon J) and sometimes it isn't (Harry Potter + Cosplay = Quiditch in the park L).

The winner of the Best of Geek Week is SyFy’s Defiance for combining two of our favorite past times by merging a brand new sci-fi show with MMO gameplay.  This article in Business Week by Devon Leonard explains that the idea to combine a current TV show with a live video-game experience has been in the works for over four years. SyFy has invested over $40 million in the game and Trion, the game developer, has spent over $70 million on the game itself.

Now, uber geeks can immerse themselves in Defiance MMO gameplay before or after the weekly episode and guide their online character through this week’s plot. This is the most extensive and expensive attempt at a Transmedia experience to date. However, it is not the first attempt and it has yet to prove if it can be successful. One such success is the Simpsons which has been merging their weekly episode with their successful iPad game The Simpsons: Tapped Out. Not only is the Simpsons in its 24^th season, but Tapped Out has been the highest downloaded game in the app store for over a year. In this article by Jason Ankeny it states that Tapped Out made EA Sports over $23 million last quarter alone.

Clearly we will need to wait and see if this new multi-platform experience will be successful, but for now, its this week’s winner of the Best of Geek Week award.