The Order of Doomsayers

consumed by black bars!

So lately there's been some pretty nasty rumors going around lately about The Order 1886's development team, Ready At Dawn. here's a video to catch you up on the latest conspiracy. I originally left a big comment on it and was ok with that, but I felt I really needed to address things in a bigger way, so I've re-wrote and enhanced my comment into a blog post on the matter. However its probably important you see it first. Watch it? Good, now actually read the dang article/interview that triggered this silly rumor because if you've been keeping up with things and can put 2+2 together, you should be able to figure out how ridiculous the internet is being in its typical we-love-hysteria style of news. Now to be fair the real rumor does claim to know sources, and its very much still possible that something bad went down between the teams. Its just that random rumor aside (which by the way, is coming from a site that seems to love sensationalism), it really doesn't make much sense to have followed up the interview like this, and it kind of bothers me to see people jump to these conclusions even before the rumor itself was made with "sources". So has Sony parted ways with RAD and is The Order franchise in trouble?

I don't buy it, and the people egging it on seem to completely forget some simple things like... this was never a sony owned studio, and that they are expanding. However there's some other weird things to consider. For starters vgcharts (the thing being called out on for low sales) doesn't do digital, which is a worthy factor for The Order 1886. It also sold fast in general. Next bare in mind Sony isn't one of those publishers that demands 4-5 million or death, they only have a couple franchises that meet that high mark and they congratulate 2 million sales for shadow fall (and killzone seems to be staying around 2 million average, and still published with whatever insane budget they're given for those games). This is also the publisher pushing out games like R&C, Sly, and puppeteer that have a reputation of being sent out to sell well under 1 million. Heck they're even giving R&C and sly their own freakin' movies at the lowest point in their career (which is one of the best things to me about 2016)! They also fought pretty hard to save starhawk with multiple deals, discounts, give-aways, and good PR before determining it as a failure and dropping its team. Of course I'm willing to bet The Order was expected to sell more than say puppeteer, but point is Sony is unpredictable with this stuff rather than being another all or nothing publisher that demands the highest of wealth.

Sony doesn't leave games out in the cold so easily

However the 2nd biggest thing to note is that this stuff isn't usually a secret. Whenever a company broke off of sony, or outright died, it was clear. It wasn't an expansion, it wasn't sugar coated, they were kicked off into smaller projects or gone. Starhawk's team got reduced to a tiny mobile team (which is very sad, loved that game). Superbot hasn't been heard from in a while, had layoffs, and DLC of their sony game was given to someone else, this all came out rather quickly and clearly. The guys that made twisted metal are no more and that was that. This stuff isn't some conspiracy being whispered about in the dark corners of a meeting room. Ready at Dawn? They're opening a new studio, talking about tackling multi-platform with some new properties, and are looking for publishers who would allow ownership of their own property, and I haven't even heard of so much as minor layoffs.

Considering this was from a former porting company that just did that and pre-existing IP spin-offs before The Order, I'd say this team is simply trying to find a real place in the industry as a true game developer. I know this'll come as a shock to some people that love their presumptions, but that plan may not have ever including pairing their entire line-up with sony. They worked together, Sony owns the order, but aside from that they're totally different entities doing whatever the hell they want. RAD kind of reminds me of Insomniac really, they're just exploring options and property rights while making games. For the same reason that Insomniac was dubbed "traitors", it seems people are equally as shallow in thought about RAD and would rather dismiss any non-sony/Order related moves as a bad thing. This also justifies their desire to trash The Order 1886 some more. They get to go about assuming everyone thought it was so bad that it has to fail, thus this studio is doomed... right? Well it seems kind of ridiculous to me. The only odd thing is they haven't shifted to work on a sequel yet, which is kind of suspicious compared to how other developers seem to operate.

Now again I'm going to restate I may still be off. I feel like the rumor itself ignores some common sense, and people want to sensationalize a problem where one is barely present, but in the end they could still be right about the one basic idea that The Order 1886 is changing up its ideal future. The Order 1886 wasn't a great game, I said it myself that the game could be good but was a bad value with poor execution, and so maybe Sony really is putting some thought into giving the series to another team. It is true that its also one of the lowest scoring PS4 titles, and considering how badly sony pushed it, maybe they felt burned by that fact and blamed it on the company and have yet to come out on a public speech for it. However even with that in mind I still need to take a stand against the rumor and those egging it on. We're at a point now where people automatically love assuming the worst, where literally saying "we're expanding, opening a new studio, producing multi-platformer games, and have no less than two new IPs coming" is all ignored in favor of saying the studio has crashed with emphasis on how much their last game failed... without having anything to source for that bold claim. There's no reliable sources at all at work here, and if anything some of the stuff coming off of it just defies common sense logic, like insisting the team is in trouble despite being at their most ambitious point yet. ...and yet I have yet to see one other person, even one simple comment, that isn't joining this bandwagon (but maybe I'm not looking hard enough, so eh). Most just use it as another time to call The Order a movie game, or to rant about how they didn't like it. Others just follow the conspiracy, because it sounds like the dramatic evil side of a publisher and without thinking anything more, that sounds good to them. Well sorry, but I'm going to sit out for this one unless something confirms it to be true. No doom & gloom from me yet.

the only doom I see will be at E3