Stargate Worlds

Description | Notes | Discuss

Stargate Worlds was to be a massively multi-player online role-playing game, giving players the chance to freely explore the far corners of the Stargate universe.

PLATFORM: PC
DEVELOPER: Cheyenne Mountain Ent.
RELEASE DATE: Cancelled (2009)

Step through the Stargate as an SG team of soldiers and scientists, and travel instantly to fantastic worlds in this galaxy and beyond. Players can forge alliances, establish trade, investigate ancient mysteries, and defend Earth from such hostile forces as the Goa'uld and the Ori in an immense multiplayer universe.

Stargate Worlds provides players with a form of ranged combat unique to MMORPG that will take full advantage of modern and science fiction weaponry, cover, and terrain. Players will be able to form squads with their friends or use bots for players who want to go solo. Squad leaders will control maneuvers and objectives through an innovative combat control interface. Players may choose to create characters that are members of either the S.G.C. (the Good Guys) or the System Lords (the Bad Guys). Characters are equipped with varied and mixed skills, with the choice to form such classes as Research, Combat Marine, Medical, Scientific, Diplomatic, Engineering, Archeological, and Exploration. PVP will be possible between the two alliances on many contested worlds, actually swaying the balance of power on those planets, and unlocking hidden content. Cooperative play will also be possible, and players will be encouraged to forge temporary alliances to deal with greater threats, such as the Ori.

The universe evolves as players inhabit and vie for control over alien worlds. Local populations will shift their allegiance between the two alliances. Outside threats, such as the Ori, will conspire to further change the face of these worlds. Players will be able to tip the balance of power on these worlds, beating back the Ori invasion, and swaying the local populations to their side through quests, combat and trade. Whether you are a solitary explorer, master tradesman, or commander of a massive armed force -- your every action will alter the worlds of the Stargate universe.

From Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment

NOTES

  • Like the unreleased PC/console game Stargate SG-1: The Alliance before it, Stargate Worlds featured the voices of the cast of SG-1, including Richard Dean Anderson, Michael Shanks, Amanda Tapping, Christopher Judge, and others. TV series executive producers Brad Wright and Robert C. Cooper served as consultants for the game, and intimated that the game's story would be canon for the Stargate universe.
  • In the midst of Stargate SG-1: The Alliance's legal collapse Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment was founded with the sole purpose of creating a massively multi-player online role-playing game (MMO-RPG) set in the Stargate universe. Rather than progressing through levels in a linear fashion the game would allow players to create and customize their own characters, team up with friends online, and freely explore a vast universe of planets, ships, technology, and alien races. Set missions also provided some structure for game play, and as an online, subscription-based game it would feature new content releases and on-going storylines.

    Stargate Worlds went into active production in 2006 at Cheyenne's Phoenix, Arizona headquarters.
  • By 2009, though, it became clear to long-patient fans that the developer -- and the game -- were in big trouble. Cheyenne Mountain ran out of money, laid off its staff, and filed for bankruptcy in February of 2010, with a court ultimately deciding to liquidate the company's remaining assets to pay off some of its more than $10 million debt.

    At the same time, Cheyenne Mountain fought a legal battle with its former CEO, Gary Whiting, over financial mis-management.
  • In an attempt to salvage at least some of the game some of the company's remaining leadership spun off a new studio, Fresh Start Studios / Dark Comet Games, and successfully released the game Stargate: Resistance (utilizing the same engine and graphics from SGW). The game was released in February 2010 -- but Cheyenne Mountain shareholders sued Dark Comet for what they claimed to be theft of Cheyenne Mountain's assets.

    In the fall of 2010 MGM opted not to renew the game's license, and Resistance was taken offline in January 2011. Any lingering hope for Stargate Worlds was also dead.
  • Only years later, in 2021, was it revealed that the story for SGW was moving toward bringing back the villain who started it all: the Supreme System Lord Ra. "The main story was that Ra was coming back and the dark side was trying to leverage it while the light side was trying to stop it," Senior Content Designer Steve Garvin told The Companion. "So the two stories were very disparate, a vastly different experience."

    The "dark side" Garvin refers to is OP-CORE, a group of humans who are aligned with the Goa'uld.

    Some 16 different planets were in development for the game's initial launch. Among them was Lucia, the yellow-skied homeworld of the Lucian Alliance -- never seen on screen in the television series.

    Finally, Garvin confirmed that the game was eager to expand upon the legend of the Furlings -- and the show's producers were gracious to allow them to do so. "We had this whole idea for the Furling being a single entity that stretches across time, able to see the past and the future," he said.

    "It was mostly a lovely experience. It was a friendly team, we were close and it was a great learning environment with empowering leadership. But it also sucked. We had the great pieces for a good game – never enough to look you in the eye and say it was great – but we were getting there. But what was most disappointing was not getting some of the world-building and Furling stuff out. It would have filled in a lot of gaps in SG-1 lore, and the showrunners agreed that what we had was pretty cool. The fans would have loved it – it was fan service." (Senior Content Designer Steve Garvin, in an interview with The Companion)
  • In addition to the game trailers above, check out this fan-made video with 7 minutes of footage from the game.