You Call This A Delusion? Total Recall MMO
Okay, here's the new angle. If you've not yet made your MMO (as indeed everyone must have made one by the end of 2012, according to international law) there's an approach you may not have thought of. Base it on an old movie. Astonishingly, there is to be a free-to-play incarnation of Total Recall.
It's to be a 3D browser-based game, which according to this here press release will be "capable of rendering console-like graphics". Console-like graphics on the PC?! The new dawn has arrived! A new dawn that will presumably stop our eyes popping out of our heads.
It's a "historic deal" between SEE Games (responsible for 'Planet Michael: The Ultimate Michael Jackson Online Game', I swear) and a Chinese developer called ZQGame (Shadowland Online, apparently). The press release title takes this historic hyperbole one stage further, to declare:
"SEE Games And ZQGame Enter Into First-Ever China-US Strategic Relationship To Bring Total Recall To The Global Video Game Market"
If they mean, it's the first ever China-US relationship that brings us Total Recall games, then fair enough. But I'm not sure that's the boast they were aiming for. The one that would probably surprise China and the US, what with the former currently owning the latter's economy.
Sony are in on this too. Mark Caplan, the VP of Sony Pictures Consumer Products Inc. (they brought out the big guns) explained that "Total Recall is an international phenomenon; we know this well-known property will make a great 3D browser based game." (Man, transcribing these misplaced and absent hyphens is hurting me.)
Because, of course, Total Recall is receiving an ill-advised remake. Of course the 1990 version is teased, because it's Arnie, and because it has that lady with the plastic third boobie. But at the same time, it's a Paul Verhoeven movie, and there's a reason why we've all watched 27 times. It's actually pretty good. I'm not sure how much the universe needs a version with Colin Farrell grumping his way through the role. Especially from the director of Underworld.
So what will your MMO be? Which old movie are you going to revive to release as a free-to-play browser-based phenomenon? You've got to make one soon, anyway, so you may as well pledge now. I've already bagsied Shadowlands.