Ready at Dawn doesn't own The Order but would "love" to be a part of its future
"The first game was more than anything a launch platform."
The Order: 1886 developer Ready at Dawn has reflected on that PS4 game as "more than anything a launch platform to build upon", yet revealed it does not own the IP and therefore may not be involved in its future.
The information came from a GamesIndustry.biz interview with the studio's glitzy new hire Paul Sams, former Blizzard CEO. Sams will be the new Ready at Dawn CEO, with current CEO Ru Weerasuriya realigning as president and chief creative officer.
"We feel that The Order showcased the fruits of our labour on technology," Weerasuriya said. "That was one of the biggest focuses for the team having come from PSP and jumping directly to PS4.
"The first game was more than anything a launch platform to build upon. And as I mentioned in the past, The Order was never written as a one-off story. There is a lot more to tell as you can see from the way the game ends. We of course have aspirations for the future of the IP and our involvement in its growth."
Added Sams: "We would love to be part of building The Order as a franchise. It is an IP that we created, that we deeply love and that we believe in. We cannot say more than that regarding The Order at this time."
According to Sams "it was absolutely the company's desire to own [The Order]", but "we were at a point in the company's evolution where owning that IP was not possible". Weerasuriya said RAD "knew going in it was one of the conditions of partnering with Sony" - there weren't any surprises - but that the pros of the partnership outweighed the cons.
For Sams, IP ownership is key. "We want to build, own and publish our own IPs in the future," he said. "We are in the process of trying to figure out how we will be able to achieve that goal.
"While we expect to continue in our tradition of making big AAA games, we will not rule anything out at this point," he added.
"Said another way, we are platform agnostic at this point - just like most gamers. Further, our technology now supports multiplatform development. Since the release of The Order, we have been very hard at work to advance our engine and technology to a place where we can deliver our games on PC, Xbox One, PS4 and one other unannounced platform that you will soon find out about."
That "unannounced platform" may be Nintendo's NX console that's been mentioned but not officially unveiled.
Ready at Dawn will undergo some structural changes for the new era. Sams will spearhead a publishing arm of the company down in Texas, while HQ in California will focus solely now on making games.
