Last week, Firefly Online announced that it had scooped up almost all of the old Firefly cast members to voice the multiplatform online-but-not-really-an-MMO. Cue internet nerdgasm! I am impressed that the game is managing to dodge so many of the usual problems of IP-driven games; you’re playing not Mal or Zoe but a pale imitation of them as the captain of your ship, and while you’re the protagonist in your own story, you’re not necessarily a big damn hero.

On the other hand, the “online” part of the game is more or less limited to social connections and player-generated content in the form of custom missions. It’s going to be cool, but I can’t help but worry that far too many games that would have been designed as MMOs a few years ago are going this cheap and easy route now instead — that this is the sort of game that will bleed our genre rather than round it out.

Will you play Firefly Online, or are you holding out hope that the IP will get a proper MMO at some point? Do you think this style of game is the future of MMOs?