The developer of The Order: 1886, Ready at Dawn, has revealed that while they don’t own the IP for the franchise, they hope to be able to work on future installments, as well as own any IPs it develops in the future.
The information came from a recent GameIndustry.biz interview with studio’s newest hire Paul Sams, former Blizzard CEO, and current Ready at Dawn CEO Ru Weerasuriya. Sams will become the new Ready at Dawn CEO, while Weerasuriva will be taking the position of president and creative officer of the studio.
“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,” said Weerasurvia during the interview. “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.”
Whether or not Ready at Dawn will be involved in later installments remains to be seen. While the studio originally wanted to retain its ownership of the IP by both developing and publishing The Order 1886 on its own, it wasn’t able to do so and had to partner with Sony. This led to the studio having to cede the IP over to Sony.
“We knew going in that it was one of the conditions of partnering with Sony, so in that sense, there is no regret,” said Weerasuriya. “With the amount of work we placed in creating The Order as an IP, our initial desire was definitely to retain ownership. But at the time, we also knew that it would take a partner to place focus and effort into all the ancillary work beyond the game itself.”
While there may be no regrets over the partnership, both Weerasuriya and Sams are looking towards retaining the ownership of any future IPs they develop.
“We want to build, own, and publish our own IPs in the future,” said Sams. “We are in the process of trying to figure out how we will be able to achieve that goal.”
The studio is currently going through structural changes which will put Sams in charge of the publishing arm of the company down in Austin, Texas, while the HQ in California will be focusing solely on producing future games.
Chris reviewed The Order 1886, awarding a mediocre 5/10, saying of it that “Ready At Dawn clearly put a lot of effort into their debut title: as a technical showcase it’s highly impressive, and it’s obvious that a lot of time was spent on developing the lore. But the overall feeling you’re left with after finishing The Order: 1886 is one of unfulfilled potential.”
