There’s a good reason that Syfy had the largest hotel-draped sign at San Diego Comic-Con this past July to promote Defiance. The upcoming TV series stands above just about anything else out there in entertainment when it comes to ambition - the first science fiction universe that was designed by both veteran game developers at Trion Worlds and Hollywood creatives working with Syfy.

There have been plenty of examples of Hollywood adding interactivity to television series through Facebook games and second screen online options, but nothing to the magnitude of a fully realized world that offers a deep third-person perspective shooter as well as a dramatic serialized TV series. Defiance is set 30 years from now in a post-apocalyptic world. While the game takes place in the San Francisco Bay area, the TV series is set in the town of Defiance, which sits atop what used to be St. Louis (part of the arch still exists as a reminder). Characters, including those played by series stars Grant Bowler and Stephanie Leonidas, will make their debut in the game world before leaving for Defiance and picking things up in the show.The game world will offer a much different landscape for exploration, thanks to the remnants of the tech Mecca of San Francisco. In a stark contrast to these playable massively multiplayer online (MMO) environments, the town of Defiance has more of a Firefly feel. The Toronto set of the show is nothing short of amazing. It’s a huge hodgepodge of cargo containers, train cars, trailers, burnt-out vehicles, built-up structures and even a Winnebago. The outdoor set goes on for blocks in all directions with some structures rising three stories. It has a very unique feel, although there’s a blending of Western and sci-fi as the Lawkeeper’s office has exotic alien plants growing amongst discarded remnants of the ‘80s and ‘90s.“The backlot is my favorite ever,” said Bowler (True Blood), who plays Chief Lawkeeper Jeb Nolan. “From a practicality perspective, we get to shoot inside and outside, which I think adds enormous value. In terms of the audience, it becomes incredibly immersive to be able to watch a scene being played, and also see the town in the background outside while the actors are playing it. It takes it away from the studio and really puts you in the world, which I think is key because we have so much science fiction and so many fantastical elements to the show. It really grounds it in reality. I think that’s really powerful storytelling-wise.”A walk through the desolate streets, littered with vintage trash, is like exploring another world. Once you move away from the main street where the huge sound studios are – home to the indoor sets of the larger homes and buildings – it’s easy to feel like you’re not in Toronto any more.“The backlot in itself is just beautifully done,” added Bowler. “It gives us so many different looks for the town. It’s been designed in such a way that the streets aren’t necessary straight forever. They all curve. There are no 90 degree angles, which means that no matter where you look from you always see another part of the town and it always looks like a different part of town. We can get a couple of dozen different looks out there. So it covers quite a bit of Defiance. As an actor, when you get to walk through the town into your office, it’s incredibly immersive.”Gamers will be able to immerse themselves even further within this fiction thanks to the PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 Defiance game that will be released in tandem with the April 2013 launch of the show. The man orchestrating the TV side of things is executive producer, writer and showrunner Kevin Murphy, who has worked on series like Desperate Housewives and Caprica over the years. But this creative process between game makers and Hollywood scribes has been a very different experience.“Everybody needs to play nice, and that’s something that we learned very quickly,” said Murphy. “The theme of the show is ‘We’re Stronger Together,’ and that has been applied across every element of this, that there’s no room for divas or egos. If someone says, ‘You have a spider on your shoulder,’ and you’re on improv comic, you’re not allowed to go, ‘No there isn’t; that’s dumb.’ You have to go, ‘Ah!’ and go with it. That’s kind of what we’re all doing, because there are great ideas coming out on a daily basis. Every time they come up with an idea it goes to San Diego, where you have a bunch of equally awesome visual artists in the game world who are coming up with things that are coming to us. Every time they have a great idea, it’s the spider on the shoulder, and we’re going, ‘Ah!’ Ultimately, the goal here is to use all these great ideas. You have a coordinator who makes sure that the different mythological elements don’t bump into each other. The only way to do something as immersive and cross-platform as this is to have a lot of lead time.”Throughout the development of the game and show, a team of approximately 30 people across all areas of creativity from writing to marketing to art on both projects were in constant communication on a daily basis. The show’s two-hour pilot was shot in June and then everyone took a short break to map out crossovers from the linear to interactive stories.“We took a dark period from June to end of July where they kept all the show writers on payroll but didn’t film,” said Rob Hill, senior producer on Defiance at Trion Worlds. “Syfy’s writers room headed by Kevin Murphy and our team of Tony Garcia, Rob Hill and Bill Trost spent a lot of time figuring out for each and every episode what the major and minor crossovers would be. The game was always in the lead up until the pilot, but once they started the season, they have everything in can in November and the show hits in April. We had to commit to things early and pick what was sacrosanct and write that in ink. Once they went back into production, we saw digital dailies and got scripts. There was a lot of horse trading throughout the creative process. Ultimately, it was all about iteration and narrowing things down. There was some arm wrestling, and some easy decisions and some hard decisions, but at the end of the day, both sides are happy.”Nathan Richardsson, vice president of development at Trion Worlds and executive producer of Defiance, said that what makes for a good TV show in character development over time, with unexpected twists and turns, doesn’t make for compelling gameplay.“Syfy is telling a character-driven story over time, while we’re telling two stories – a more personal player story and the broader story of the Defiance world over time, which ties into personal story,” said Richardsson. “The game has to talk to the individual and move the entire world forward through time. We coordinate with the show writers on how we move the universe forward through time. But there are different audiences and goals. If we did TV show stories in a shooter, we’d piss off players. If Syfy only focused on shooting action, it’d be a pretty bad show because they need characterization. With Defiance, each medium has its own voice and each is strong.”Leonidas (MirrorMask) plays Arissa, an Arathian alien who travels to Defiance and has developed a close father-daughter relationship with Nolan. The actress is practically unrecognizable underneath all of the alien facial prosthetics that she wears. She’s one of many key actors who have worked in both the virtual world and on set in Toronto.“The two worlds are going to collide quite a lot,” said Leonidas. “I think playing the game and seeing things happen there and how it will then affect the show is going to be very interesting. I don’t know whether I can say too much, but there are a few things that will happen through the game that will suddenly start affecting our characters in the show. There are things that might attack in the game first and then they might start attacking us. It’s going to be an amazing experience for fans who play the game and watch the series.”Syfy and Trion Worlds on counting on just that. Trion had a huge success with its first MMO game, Rift, a fantasy role-playing game. The game maker is also releasing a sci-fi real-time strategy game, End of Nations. But the game that everyone in Hollywood and in the games industry is focusing on is Defiance. Come April 2013, audiences will decide if the future of entertainment is here to stay.