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Meta shuts down developer Ready at Dawn (Lone Echo, The Order 1886, GoW Chains of Olympus/Ghost of Sparta, Daxter)
- Thread starter adamsapple
- Start date
coffinbirth
Member
That's a weird narrative...like, does Meta have studios making games that are NOT on Quest? As talented as these guys may have been, they chose this path.
CamHostage
Member
Agreed that sometimes partnerships end, but it is kind of crazy that RAD pivoted to VR at the same time that Sony was in need of VR games, yet they still parted ways. The sliding doors scenario of if Lone Echo and Echo Arena were on PlayStation is tantalizing (...although knowing Sony's go-and-halt history with internal VR studio development, it's quite possible that this closure would have instead hairbrush much sooner. )
Also a drag that the Lone Echo series is not on Quest. Making it for PC Rifts made the best product, but it seemed to suffer in visibility and fanbase without being on the most popular VR headset. They did get Echo VR/Arena on Quest, but then shut it down despite a loyal fanbase (who are still running servers of it now. )
Sad end to a hard-working studio.
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CamHostage
Member
BTW, nobody ever talks about their MP game Deformers, which seems like it was a goofy lark. Did anybody play that?
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March Climber
Member
I’m convinced some of you truly think that the state of the entire industry is actually driven by the quality of character models lol.
Bingo.
Wonko_C
Member
That's a weird narrative...like, does Meta have studios making games that are NOT on Quest? As talented as these guys may have been, they chose this path.
Before the Quest they released quite a few AAA and high budget titles exclusively for their Oculus Rift PC VR headsets. (other headsets could play them through some kind of spoofing software like ReVive):
-From RAD: Lone Echo I & II, Echo VR (Echo Combat & Echo Arena)
-From Sanzaru: Marvel: Powers United, Asgard's Wrath I
-From Imsomniac: Stormland, Edge of Nowhere, Feral Rites, The Unspoken
-Other 1st party: Arktika.1, Chronos, Wilson's Heart, Robo Recall, Brass Tactics, Defector, etc.
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Johnny Concrete
Member
Oh wtf, how dare they create a female character I can’t jerk off to!
To hell with them!!
EDMIX
Writes a lot, says very little
lol i'm saying!
Its like, shit man I like the games too, but neither are even in the ballpark of what Stellar Blade or Ronin or Astro Bot or a lot of games Sony has put out.
I think people just fantasize about "what ifs" and always have these rose tinted glasses on. If QD was so good, they'd be putting out massive titles now and if Ready At Dawn was such a solid team, they would not be closed down. I think when you have a team struggle independently post any deal with a publisher, it merely goes to show that publisher was correct to move on.
I hope they all get great positions at solid publishers, but I think many need to relax on exaggerating this team's worth.
The market would 100% reflect that had they had been a solid team legitimately. Solid means you can carry yourself, clearly if you go under, where is the solid in that exactly?
CamHostage
Member
Partly, although It's creative lead Ru Weerasuriya was from Blizzard as were other founders. But yeah, there was an immediate connection to Naughty Dog, and it paid off with them getting to do Daxter first off.
(I was always surprised they pivoted to GoW, thought they do more J&D since they nailed it sometimes better than mainline Jak IMO, but their Kratos adventures were worth it even on a PSP budget.)
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hemo memo
You can't die before your death
Jerk off too? Dude this face will give you infertility.
StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
Probably because the majority of GAAS that are time sinks are solid playing games people like. There's typically not much story, politics, preaching in, mandatory cut scene in most GAAS. Sports, shooters, Minecraft, MOBA, candy crush, deck builders etc.. are all about gameplay loops or MP. Even if there are some preachy angles in it, people just blow by it and get to the gameplay unless it's an obvious one like Concord or some SBI related game.
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What a shitty post.
“Many didn’t consider them an actual developer” is a troll thing to say When they put out some of the best quality work on the PSP, and when they made some of the best VR games out there.
They were a very talented studio. Just had shitty luck in their transition to AAA with the Order 1886 and in navigating the aftermath with Sony.
UltimaKilo
Gold Member
Clearly it wasn’t a “great job” if it wasn’t worth pouring money into them. They were likely bleeding money.
Shame they couldn’t get it together, they had some talent.
FunkMiller
Member
Another great example of how, if you’re a developer, you should never let yourself be bought out by a major corporation, if you want to survive.
hyperbertha
Member
Is a cool setting all that matters? Bloodborne setting is better but with everything else that should come with a game.
I don't understand what this has to do with politics or preaching. Games you buy and finish are not somehow more political or preachy, that's unrelated and not mutually exclusive. GaaS is just as prone to preaching or politics, if not more so. King, the creators of Candy Crush even created a diversity tool that ABK started using across Overwatch and CoD:
King's Diversity Space Tool: A Leap Forward for Inclusion In Gaming
Activision Blizzard has released a blog detailing their Diversity Space Tool: a new system for character design which translates elements of diversity into character attributes to facilitate more diverse character narratives.
www.wowhead.com
It comes down to people not buying games and moaning about reasons not to buy them whereas cheap or f2p stuff just has a better chance at it using a "land and expand" tactic via microtransactions. Candy Crush does well because it's on mobile and f2p. Not because it has a better 'gameplay loop' than Dragons Dogma or FF rebirth or whatever. Even Minecraft started f2p up to v1.3.
xiskza
Member
I'm gay you idiot. Character looks like shit. Maybe you should join your pals at RetardEra
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Red Crayon Aristocrat
Member
When it's one of the coolest settings I've ever seen... yes it is.
There's nothing wrong with the gameplay, it's not the deepest third person shooter but the alt history weaponry was cool, the point of the game however is to actually stop and soak up it's atmosphere, too few games simply give you a lot of interesting stuff to simply LOOK at, if you're the kinda idiot to just rush from point A to point B without ever stopping to actually look at anything then you're missing the point.
Everyone complains about too many bloated, filler packed 80 hour open world games these days, well gee, maybe you shouldn't have freaked out so bad about The Order, the replay value of the game stems from the fact that it's interesting enough to simply want to play multiple times for the hell of it, it reminded me of the PS2 survival horror games I loved as a teen like Silent Hill 3, not the deepest basic gameplay. not very long length, but I would play those games over and over because I simply liked the experience, The Order was like that reworked as a third person cover shooter.
Men_in_Boxes
Snake Oil Salesman
They made a new IP that was linear, single player, high graphic fidelity as the open world, established IP, multiplayer, simple graphics era took off.
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Johnny Concrete
Member
Dude, I can totally relate. I’m also a lesbian, tried to masturbate on that character pic and totally failed!
But they are closing down, so we’ve got them, sis.
Andrea Pessino
Ready At Dawn Game Director
There are just some people out there who never resist an opportunity to insult and diminish. For the life of me I'll never understand why so many have to be angry and negative about everything. Videogames are serious shit, I guess. In any case, no idea what is going on in that shot or how/where it was captured, but that's not representative of Liv at all, in either game.
Liv Rhodes is such an amazing experience in the games. She is a fully developed AI driven character the player interacts fully with, in complete freedom, for most of the game. The amount of tech, experimentation and just brute force work that had to be done to sell that illusion was crazy, but the whole premise relied on the player buying into their relationship with this character. One mistake and the magic trick of making you care for her would collapse.
Recall also that this is almost 10 year old tech, well before the advent of spatiotemporal reprojection and other low level techniques which have since eased some of the burden of rendering in VR (not to mention the huge leaps in GPU power). LE had to run on min spec PCs locked at 90Hz or 120Hz rendering TWICE per frame. It was a struggle to deliver what we did. She is even more detailed in LE2, which pushed the boundary further in many ways. Anyhow, here is a quick clip to give you an idea. The experience in VR is on other level, of course, but at least you can get a sense of the context:
I am incredibly proud of what our team accomplished with these two titles. They are some of my favorite games ever, and a genuine attempt at revealing some of the potential of VR as a medium to expand traditional narrative and mechanical possibilities.
As always, I am sorry to interject here, but I will take this opportunity to express my gratitude for the kind words that many have thrown in our direction in light of yesterday's news - 21 years is a long time, we had a great run and lived through some crazy highs and some of the lowest lows. We still had a lot of fun doing it all - hopefully we learned a thing of two, and each one of the members of our group will bring some valuable experience and ideas to whatever future projects they work on.
Personally, I can tell you one thing: I have been doing this since I was a teen, I am 58 now, and if you think I am done you don't know me at all.
See you all in a few years for something new...
StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
To me, even a GAAS game with a bunch of DEI thrown in isnt so bad because people can skip it. COD can have a million DEI weapon and character skins but makes no difference as I just care about the default solider and care more about killing than staring at skins.I don't understand what this has to do with politics or preaching. Games you buy and finish are not somehow more political or preachy, that's unrelated and not mutually exclusive. GaaS is just as prone to preaching or politics, if not more so. King, the creators of Candy Crush even created a diversity tool that ABK started using across Overwatch and CoD:
King's Diversity Space Tool: A Leap Forward for Inclusion In Gaming
Activision Blizzard has released a blog detailing their Diversity Space Tool: a new system for character design which translates elements of diversity into character attributes to facilitate more diverse character narratives.
It comes down to people not buying games and moaning about reasons not to buy them whereas cheap or f2p stuff just has a better chance at it using a "land and expand" tactic via microtransactions. Candy Crush does well because it's on mobile and f2p. Not because it has a better 'gameplay loop' than Dragons Dogma or FF rebirth or whatever. Even Minecraft started f2p up to v1.3.
SP and GAAS games where you cant avoid it are the ones where a lot of gamers push back.
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Red Crayon Aristocrat
Member
Can I just say that Ready At Dawn is the coolest name a developer has ever come up with? That alone makes me sad they're gone.
Hello there, is there anything you can share about The Order 1886? What do you think the likelihood is now it may continue somehow in the future? Is there any concept art or details for the sequel you can share? Can you confirm a sequel was being worked on?
Thanks for all the good times and I'm sorry you guys never got the credit you deserved.
There are just some people out there who never resist an opportunity to insult and diminish. For the life of me I'll never understand why so many have to be angry and negative about everything. Videogames are serious shit, I guess. In any case, no idea what is going on in that shot or how/where it was captured, but that's not representative of Liv at all, in either game.
Liv Rhodes is such an amazing experience in the games. She is a fully developed AI driven character the player interacts fully with, in complete freedom, for most of the game. The amount of tech, experimentation and just brute force work that had to be done to sell that illusion was crazy, but the whole premise relied on the player buying into their relationship with this character. One mistake and the magic trick of making you care for her would collapse.
Recall also that this is almost 10 year old tech, well before the advent of spatiotemporal reprojection and other low level techniques which have since eased some of the burden of rendering in VR (not to mention the huge leaps in GPU power). LE had to run on min spec PCs locked at 90Hz or 120Hz rendering TWICE per frame. It was a struggle to deliver what we did. She is even more detailed in LE2, which pushed the boundary further in many ways. Anyhow, here is a quick clip to give you an idea. The experience in VR is on other level, of course, but at least you can get a sense of the context:
I am incredibly proud of what our team accomplished with these two titles. They are some of my favorite games ever, and a genuine attempt at revealing some of the potential of VR as a medium to expand traditional narrative and mechanical possibilities.
As always, I am sorry to interject here, but I will take this opportunity to express my gratitude for the kind words that many have thrown in our direction in light of yesterday's news - 21 years is a long time, we had a great run and lived through some crazy highs and some of the lowest lows. We still had a lot of fun doing it all - hopefully we learned a thing of two, and each one of the members of our group will bring some valuable experience and ideas to whatever future projects they work on.
Personally, I can tell you one thing: I have been doing this since I was a teen, I am 58 now, and if you think I am done you don't know me at all.
See you all in a few years for something new...
Hello there, is there anything you can share about The Order 1886? What do you think the likelihood is now it may continue somehow in the future? Is there any concept art or details for the sequel you can share? Can you confirm a sequel was being worked on?
Thanks for all the good times and I'm sorry you guys never got the credit you deserved.
mckmas8808
Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
You are 100% right. Can't believe it didn't happen.
Andrea Pessino
Ready At Dawn Game Director
Thank you! We got plenty of credit over our 21 years, I am not going to complain, and we got plenty of blame too (sometimes well deservedly so
).I shared on this forum before that yes, we were working on a sequel and pitched it:
Digital Foundry: The Order: 1886 Retrospective + PS5 60fps Gameplay
ok... installed... See you in about an hour
There is not much else I can say, unfortunately - I cannot share information about the sequel concept simply because it does not belong to me (legally it belongs to Sony, morally to its creator Ru
). I can tell you that he had a wonderful vision and wrote so much material spanning centuries and going into wild directions. I would have loved to see it, but if it did not happen then the odds of it seeing the light now, in whatever form, seem pretty minimal to me. Thanks again for your support!
Andrea Pessino
Ready At Dawn Game Director
All right, I can share at least one more small thing: the sequel would have definitely had multiplayer, it was part of the design from the beginning. One of the reasons I was working on what became Deformers at the time was because I wanted to explore various approaches to high performance networking in fast action games, with over-the-server synchronized physics. It was one area of tech we never got to build, and that would have been the opportunity. We ended up with Deformers and then Echo Arena, Echo Combat and Echo VR because of that work. Having a MP component and expanded/refined shooting mechanics in The Order would have done a lot to help turn it into a franchise, I think.
Oh well... next time.
Oh well... next time.
HeisenbergFX4
Gold Member
We could have had MP?All right, I can share at least one more small thing: the sequel would have definitely had multiplayer, it was part of the design from the beginning. One of the reasons I was working on what became Deformers at the time was because I wanted to explore various approaches to high performance networking in fast action games, with over-the-server synchronized physics. It was one area of tech we never got to build, and that would have been the opportunity. We ended up with Deformers and then Echo Arena, Echo Combat and Echo VR because of that work. Having a MP component and expanded/refined shooting mechanics in The Order would have done a lot to help turn it into a franchise, I think.
Oh well... next time.
Red Crayon Aristocrat
Member
Oh man, I want to know more so badly!Thank you! We got plenty of credit over our 21 years, I am not going to complain, and we got plenty of blame too (sometimes well deservedly so
I shared on this forum before that yes, we were working on a sequel and pitched it:
Digital Foundry: The Order: 1886 Retrospective + PS5 60fps Gameplay
ok... installed... See you in about an hourwww.neogaf.com
There is not much else I can say, unfortunately - I cannot share information about the sequel concept simply because it does not belong to me (legally it belongs to Sony, morally to its creator Ru
Thanks again for your support!
Spanning centuries and going in wild directions seems to point to some theories I've speculated just going by what's in the original game.
Just to be able to see anything at all from this proposed sequel would be amazing, but thank you so much for the response.
xiskza
Member
A real lezzie would've actually orgasmed over that haircut.
hyperbertha
Member
The setting felt rather generic to me. Werewolves in a Victorian setting gee never seen that before. Silent hill 3 is a storytelling masterpiece, and much harder to play so right there it offers two things the order doesn't. They are not comparable imo.
efyu_lemonardo
May I have a cookie?
Okami Wii was a masterful port, especially considering it was entirely reverse engineered!
RAD had some real talent!
RAD had some real talent!
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Vlodril
Member
I personally loved The Order 1886. Played 3 times too. Still one of the best settings i have seen in gaming. I also really liked Lone echo. One of the stand out vr games i would put it on my top 3. I wanted to play lone echo 2 but i am not sure if its available on quest 3. I tried to play it either on quest 2 or the Reverb G2 (don't remember) but it had some issues with textures loading and i refunded. Great story and characters.
I wonder if it would be feasible for the people that made the company (at least some of them) to pitch a kickstarter project for a new vr or flatscreen game. I feel that the winds have turned in favor of RAD these days.
I wonder if it would be feasible for the people that made the company (at least some of them) to pitch a kickstarter project for a new vr or flatscreen game. I feel that the winds have turned in favor of RAD these days.
yet_another_alt
Member
The Order 1886 was my first PS4 game, the one that I actually bought the system for. And their PSP games never got uninstalled. I'm sure that if I dig it up those game's will still be there.
Haint
Member
There are just some people out there who never resist an opportunity to insult and diminish. For the life of me I'll never understand why so many have to be angry and negative about everything. Videogames are serious shit, I guess. In any case, no idea what is going on in that shot or how/where it was captured, but that's not representative of Liv at all, in either game.
Liv Rhodes is such an amazing experience in the games. She is a fully developed AI driven character the player interacts fully with, in complete freedom, for most of the game. The amount of tech, experimentation and just brute force work that had to be done to sell that illusion was crazy, but the whole premise relied on the player buying into their relationship with this character. One mistake and the magic trick of making you care for her would collapse.
Recall also that this is almost 10 year old tech, well before the advent of spatiotemporal reprojection and other low level techniques which have since eased some of the burden of rendering in VR (not to mention the huge leaps in GPU power). LE had to run on min spec PCs locked at 90Hz or 120Hz rendering TWICE per frame. It was a struggle to deliver what we did. She is even more detailed in LE2, which pushed the boundary further in many ways. Anyhow, here is a quick clip to give you an idea. The experience in VR is on other level, of course, but at least you can get a sense of the context:
I am incredibly proud of what our team accomplished with these two titles. They are some of my favorite games ever, and a genuine attempt at revealing some of the potential of VR as a medium to expand traditional narrative and mechanical possibilities.
As always, I am sorry to interject here, but I will take this opportunity to express my gratitude for the kind words that many have thrown in our direction in light of yesterday's news - 21 years is a long time, we had a great run and lived through some crazy highs and some of the lowest lows. We still had a lot of fun doing it all - hopefully we learned a thing of two, and each one of the members of our group will bring some valuable experience and ideas to whatever future projects they work on.
Personally, I can tell you one thing: I have been doing this since I was a teen, I am 58 now, and if you think I am done you don't know me at all.
See you all in a few years for something new...
I recall in the early days of Oculus that Zuckercuck was reputedly a big fan of the Echo franchise and actually played Arena quite a bit in his personal time. He wasn't known to pay meaningless lip service to other games so it seemed like genuine admiration. I wonder how, out of all Oculus' studios, you guys are the ones who managed to get the axe. Were you by far the most expensive team? Did your presumably long in development Quest game catastrophically fail milestones? How many of the Echo Arena devs did you lose to Gorilla Tag?
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Moriarty1889
Member
I loved the Order 1886. A masterpiece to me. The world, the characters, the story. Graphics that still stand out today. Ashamed we will most likely never get a sequel. The ending of the game setup for the sequel splendidly. This and Driveclub are two of my favorite earlier PS4 games that I still revisit sometimes. Sad that neither will get a sequel.
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Moriarty1889
Member
Yes lots of possibilities indeed. I thought if not directly after the events of the first game or maybe a year after they would possibly go into 1900 to 1920 London. Either a continuation or evolution of the original threat or perhaps something new and more sinister. Intriguing what could have been eh? Sadly, most gaming companies today don’t want to take the risk of making a game that doesn’t sell well and instead bank off successful established fan favorite IP’s. Years ago someone would have taken the chance and we would have gotten a sequel to the Order.
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Pyramid Song
Member
Damn. This sucks.
screw Meta and screw Sony fot not making another The Order game
screw Meta and screw Sony fot not making another The Order game
archangelmorph
Member
Can KRAFTON buy this lot too and re-establish them back as a AAA non-VR dev for PS5?
Beat me to it.
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genesisblock
Member
The Order: 1886 needed more time in the oven. It was a clearly pushed to meet the PS4 release. Sad to say it was bogged down with unskippable cutscenes and walking segments, clearly to pad the games length which is already a short one.
Clear
CliffyB's Cock Holster
Unfortunately it isn't that simple.
If you have a large staff and expenses a month or two's delay in inking a dev/publishing agreement can be fatal. Its all about burn rate. Its ALWAYS been about burn rate.
The way some people couch it, it seems like they think that if a title underperforms a platform-holder like Sony just slams the door in a team's face. Forcing them to scramble and ending up getting bought out. The reality is a lot less emotional; basically both parties in the deal have failed to make the desired profit, and so it makes pretty obvious sense that they get to properly "kick the tyres" on any subsequent deal so as not to repeat the same unsatisfactory result.
Maybe they come back with an offer with reduced funding, at which point the devs have to renegotiate scope or maybe put forward an alternative project... time rolls on sorting all this stuff and money starts drying up.
There are good reasons why most studios die BETWEEN, not during projects.
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