Private Division announces a new game set in the Middle-Earth universe in collaboration with Weta Workshop
Jinzo Prime
Member
Private Division is only a publishing company. Weta Workshop makes movie props. I wonder who is actually developing the game and what scope it will have?
Matt_Fox
Member
Middle-earth is very dear to my heart and has SO MUCH potential within gaming...
With Weta involved we'll be getting the Peter Jackson visualisation of Middle-earth and in truth that visualisation has been so effective and widely seen that it's quite a hurdle to jump for any artist or game designer looking to do something different.
With Weta involved we'll be getting the Peter Jackson visualisation of Middle-earth and in truth that visualisation has been so effective and widely seen that it's quite a hurdle to jump for any artist or game designer looking to do something different.
darth.shrimp
Member
The press announcement makes it sound as if Weta Workshop themselves are developing the game? I didn't even know they had a gaming division, have they any experience in the matter?
www.privatedivision.com
Private Division Announces Publishing Partnership with Wētā Workshop - Private Division
Lord Panda
The Sea is Always Right
What I wouldn't do for a Battle for Middle Earth III.
dottme
Member
The weird part, they say they have a game division since 2014 but I don't see any projects info or anything to sell it on their website.
what have they been doing for all this time?
Deerock71
Very Poor Hoice of Wor
Lord of the Rings football manager styled sim. You play Peter Jackson, and you're making the trilogy all at once. Actually, my head's swimming with all the bullshit you'd have to manage to bring that all together. The end result will be playing the movies you put together, and box office receipts and critic reviews will show you how well you did.
rodrigolfp
Haptic Gamepads 4 Life
Lotr Online 2
oldergamer
Member
Weta is owned by Unity. They are no long only movie related.
CamHostage
Member
Different Weta. Weta Digital sold to Unity; Weta Workshop is still independent, as far as I know. (...However, they share a PO Box, so I don't know how separate they actually are?)
So, Weta Workshop is a creative manufacturing company and does a ton of odds and ends, among those odds being work on games. Weta Workshop does have an interactive division (sometimes called Weta Gameshop, sometimes Weta Workshop Games, mostly just a group from Weta Workshop,) and it has existed since 2014.
https://www.wetaworkshop.com/games/
https://www.wetaworkshop.com/projects-in-depth/category/interactive
This is a small group inside Workshop, though, and the team members float around inside Weta Workshop to other non-gaming projects. (Weta Gameshop was downsized to a degree in 2020; some of those were somehow Magic Leap contractors/employees housed at Weta. I assume now they're staffing back up.)
The Middle-Earth game is its first mainstream home-grown project. In the past, they made a couple concept games for the AR platform Magic Leap One (yeah, that thing...) Beyond those games, according to our own SirKickalot, Weta Workshop did work on LotR Shadow of Mordor and Shadow of War, plus design work on Petroglyph's Grey Goo, and maybe other game contract work we don't know about.
There was news about this project in 2021 and there's a little more context in that thread if you read through both.
https://www.neogaf.com/threads/weta...w-game-based-on-a-major-worldwide-ip.1624563/
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