Franchises are everything in Hollywood, even if audiences aren’t necessarily showing up for them the way they used to. The idea of interconnected universes that can attract viewers based on brand recognition alone is an enticing idea, of course. It’s how the Marvel Cinematic Universe got away with making films centered around lesser-known characters like Ant-Man or an entire TV show about Moon Knight — the brand was so strong that people would just show up. Now, the DC Universe wants to go even further by not only linking its live-action movies and TV series but also its animated shows and video games.
Not that this is a wholly new thing. Back in the 1990s, for example, Lucasfilm released “Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire,” a multimedia project that told a story across video games, comics, novels, trading cards, toys, and role-playing games. Then, in 2013, a highly ambitious venture managed to combine video games with TV in an impressive way.
The project? “Defiance,” a science-fiction Western drama series developed by Rockne S. O’Bannon, Michael Taylor, and Kevin Murphy. Released on SyFy, the show takes place in a post-apocalyptic future where the Earth is now populated by all manner of new species, be they from other planets or beings mutated by the various terraforming technologies that have transformed our world. The story follows the new mayor of a small town built on the ruins of St. Louis, itself the site of a previous battle that took place between humanity and some other-worldly visitors.
Yes, genre shows with high concepts in the early 2010s were a dime a dozen after “Lost” became a global phenomenon. What made “Defiance” unique was that it had a canonical Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) tie-in video game.
Defiance was an ambitious proposal
Again, tie-in games are nothing new. Virtually every film had one in the 2000s and 2010s. Some are great, like “Spider-Man 2,” the “Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King” video game, and the 1990s classic “Goldeneye.” For the most part, though, they’re simply cash grabs that tried to just replicate the plot of the movie that inspired them with forced video game mechanics.
Not “Defiance.” The show was fine. It wasn’t particularly groundbreaking, but it was a fun “Gunsmoke”-style Western featuring aliens and other weird creatures. What made it unique was the MMO game. A third-person shooter, “Defiance” the game was not only set in the same universe as the show, it also took place in the same continuity and constantly crossed over. Case in point: In the first mission in the game, you encounter two of the show’s main characters, and they set you off on a quest after giving you a strange device — one that plays a crucial role in the series’ premiere episode.
Both the “Defiance” TV show and video game could be experienced on their own, but those who devoted time to both of them would get plenty of intersection between their stories. There were even missions that you had to complete in the video game in a certain time frame because they’d factor into the plot of the next episode of the TV series. And if you failed to complete the mission in time, the game would simply keep up with the show and automatically resolve the quest’s storyline.
Was Defiance a failure? The answer is complicated
Unfortunately, as ambitious as “Defiance” was as a multimedia undertaking, it had several problems from the get-go. The “Defiance” TV show never achieved the kind of popularity it needed to sustain the project, while the game was criticized for being ridden with bugs and technical issues (via Digital Spy). Then, the show was canceled after three seasons in 2015 due to poor ratings and, presumably, the high budget required to make this whole thing work (via Variety).
The video game, on the other hand, lived on and continued to be supported for several years. In that time, it received a big update titled “Dark Metamorphosis,” which arrived a year after the “Defiance” TV show ended, with developer Trion promoting the update as the TV series’ fourth season. In 2018, there was even a new, updated version of the game released for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. By 2021, however, the company behind the game, Gamigo, had shut down its servers, seemingly killing the “Defiance” brand a second time.
Except, much like the titular town, “Defiance,” well, defied expectations once more. In 2025, Fawkes Games announced it had acquired the “Defiance” game’s licensing rights and relaunched it on PC. All purchases were erased, and players were forced to start over from scratch, but like previous versions, the game was free-to-play.
“Defiance” may not have been a game-changing multimedia project or even an altogether successful one. Still, it’s fascinating that such a thing once existed, and the fact that it was based on an original IP rather than a pre-existing one makes it that much more impressive.
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