Readyverse Studios, the technology and content studio founded in part by Ready Player One author Ernest Cline, has announced a partnership with Oscar-winning special effects and prop company Wētā Workshop, and has revealed the first visuals for its upcoming “multi-genre” battle royale game, Open.
New Zealand-based Wētā Workshop is of course best known for its work on The Lord of the Rings and Avatar franchises, and will work with Readyverse to “shape the visual and narrative foundation” of Open. Readyverse also announced it’s partnered with Neo Tokyo to bring its IP characters, called Citizens, to Open.
A new look at the world of Open
As announced previously, Open is modeled in part on Ready Player One, in that it will offer a virtual world filled with recognizable IP. Some of the partners that have been announced already include DeLorean, Reebok, and Cool Cats.
Readyverse co-founders Aaron McDonald, Shara Senderoff, Dan Farh, and Cline said in a joint statement that teaming up with Wētā allows the team to create content never before seen in gaming. “It’s an honor to build our vision hand-in-hand with the best,” the team said.
Wētā’s Richard Taylor said working with Readyverse has allowed it to “explore a visually stunning and incredibly immersive world unlike anything we have done before.”
Open is in development now for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S. It’s a third-person battle royale game featuring environments inspired by media nostalgia. It will offer competitive and cooperative play modes, and aims to be a “defining” metaverse game that also incorporates web3 technology to allow for “asset interoperability and digital ownership.”
Readyverse has not released any gameplay footage of Open as of yet, but keep checking back with GameSpot for the latest.
Open is in development at Walker Labs in partnership with Readyverse. People working on the game previously worked at studios like Epic, DICE, Microsoft, PlayStation, Remedy, EA, Ubisoft, and Lucasfilm.
“I was trying to imagine the coolest possible future version of the internet and video games and conflate it together,” Cline said at SXSW this year, as reported by VentureBeat. “And what the future would be like in 30 years. A ton of my experience was with the early days of the Internet, which felt like this new frontier. It was an egalitarian technology that everyone could use and have access to.”
Readyverse isn’t the only company attempting to create a so-called metaverse. Epic Games has been doing this for years through Fortnite, which features all manner of different licensed content from Metallica to Darth Vader and John Wick and Lego. Disney recently invested $1.5 billion into Epic to basically create Disney World inside Fortnite.
“It’s going to take on a life of its own and really quickly transcend what it is today. It’s become very clear over the past few years that we’re in this steep growth curve that’s being driven by that,” Sweeney said of Fortnite’s metaverse ambitions. “This medium is emerging at an astonishing rate, and I think people have no idea how awesome it’s going to be by the end of this decade. But when you look at all the best capabilities of the top game engines, look at all the work being created for top movies in the film industry, all the work of all the car makers and of all the other storytellers and creators of all different kinds of games, and envision what the world is like when all of that comes together into a socially connected united economy which everybody can participate in, that’s going to be a whole new world. And that’s what we’re very excited about.”
