'Defiance; - can a game and a TV show work cohesively?

While on the Herald website recently, I saw an article about a New Zealand actor being cast in a TV show that apparently tied itself with an MMO. Intrigued, I looked into it further and found that indeed, the SyFy channel in the United States are producing a television show in collaboration with an MMO. The show and game, called 'Defiance' are apparently supposed to work together, in that they are set in the same universe and things that happen in game play can come to effect what happens in the show.

The lecture on Friday got me thinking about this and how it will possibly work out, when we discovered that generally other media based on video games tend to be bad because of things like differences in the way narrative works in both forms, it doesn't seem to be something that works together that well. This situation is different from a film based off a pre-existing game however, the creators have stated that they want to tie the two things together, fans can play the game and interact with the characters on the show and have the opportunity to influence the way the television show goes. I do wonder how this will work in practice though, will the game just become an off shoot of the television show with no relation whatsoever? Or will this prove to be a situation in which these two forms do come together to work cohesively? It will definitely be interesting to see where this goes and how the creators try to make it work like they envisioned it.