Bigpoint to Release Battlestar Galactica MMO

At the Games Developer’s Conference (GDC) taking place this week in San Francisco, web-based MMO publishing house Bigpoint (www.bigpoint.com) announced their intentions to release an online game based on the award-winning Battlestar Galactica television show licensed from NBC Universal.

Many of you will know that SyFy’s re-imagined version of Battlestar Galactica conceived and produced by Ronald D. Moore and David Eick first aired in 2003 and it received both popular and critical acclaim for his mature themes, edgy production and political commentary. The show was nominated for and won a variety of awards over its six-year run, and fans can continue to immerse themselves in the mythos of the show’s universe thanks to the airing this year of the prequel series Caprica.

The world of the new Battlestar Galactica has already been licensed for a trading card game published by Wizkids Games (www.wizkidsgames.com), a role-playing game published by Margaret Weis Productions (www.margaretweis.com) and a board game published by Fantasy Flight Games (www.fantasyflightgames.com).

Bigpoint’s proposal is to develop the game jointly with Artplant (www.artplant.no), as a platform-independent browser-based gaming experience using the Unity engine (www.unity3d.com) that will not require subscribers to download a software client to their desktops. Apparently players will be able to play both humans and cylons, and the game is set to include tactical space combat, exploration and story-driven missions.

There are no press statements up yet on the SyFy or NBC web sites, but Bigpoint has put up a holding page for the project at www.bgo.bigpoint.com where you can sign up to their newsletter to receive future updates.

More details and further commentary on the news can be found at http://it.tmcnet.com/news/2010/03/09/4665512.htm and http://www.airlockalpha.com/node/7199.