We're not even a week out from the finale of The Wheel of Time season 3, and I'm bereft knowing there won't be a new episode this week. The third season of Prime Video's fantasy show upped the ante in every way, and as we await an official renewal announcement from Amazon and Sony, it can be easy to give in to madness like Rand al'Thor channeling too much saidin and search for any way to stay immersed in The Wheel of Time world.
Of course, there will always be those who offer you a way to do so...but I'd be wary of buying in too thoroughly. Like the slippery ways of the Eelfinn, such promises may not be what they seem.
This week, Variety reported that a AAA open-world RPG based on The Wheel of Time is in the works. Soon we can travel Randland, exploring locales like Andor, Tear, and the Aiel Waste! Or at least, that's the story, and it's easy to buy into that initial hype. But squint at it for a second, and it becomes clear that a healthy bit of skepticism is warranted. You see, this newly announced Wheel of Time game is being produced by iwot games, the newly formed gaming subsidiary of iwot Studios. If you're not familiar with iwot, here's a crash course. The long and short of it is: I wouldn't hold your breath that this will pan out.
What is The Wheel of Time video game that was just announced?
Let's start with the details about this game. iwot Studios is aiming to “build on the global success” of Amazon's television adaptation by launching its own game studio that will develop this game, “spearheading the interactive entertainment pillar of the company’s multi-platform strategy to expand ‘The Wheel of Time’ across film, television, and gaming.”
As for the game itself, iwot Studios CEO Rick Selvage shares some details. “It’s an open-world game, and it’ll be everything with the ‘Wheel of Time.’ Everything that is covered in the books, as well as all the backstory elements of it,” Selvage said. “As we build out the world, it’ll be the entire ‘Wheel of Time’ world, it’s not going to be limited to one area or another or a particular age. Of course, we’ll have opportunity on films, since we’re doing ‘Age of Legends,’ we’ll have a lot of assets from that and marketing opportunities and fan integration and a lot of other things. But it will cover the entire world.”
According to Variety, this new Wheel of Time video game is being "developed wholly in house by the team at the newly launched iwot games, which will be led by Warner Bros. Games vet Craig Alexander." Alexander is the former vice president of product development at Warner Bros. Games, and worked on games like Lord of the Rings Online, Dungeons & Dragons Online, several games based on DC comics, and the mobile Game of Thrones: Conquest game. Alexander sounds plenty excited to work on the project.
“Adapting such a legendary mythology into an open-world RPG is a rare and ambitious challenge,” Alexander said. “It takes vision, scale, and a vibrant creative environment — all of which Montreal provides. I’m thrilled to lead the effort and build a world-class team capable of honoring this beloved world.”
Ambitious is right. The Variety article notes that Alexander is currently hiring a leadership team for iwot games; there's even an application email at the bottom of the piece, should you read it and decide you'd like to go work on The Wheel of Time game. Iwot games is a new gaming studio starting from the ground-up in Montreal, Canada, a city which has a healthy games industry scene. Iwot Studios projects The Wheel of Time video game will run a three-year development cycle before its release.
Now, I play a lot of AAA open-world RPGs, games like Elden Ring and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth and Horizon: Forbidden West and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and far too many others to list. Enough to know that going from a newly formed studio hiring its first employees to the creation of a fully playable game of that sort of scale in roughly three years is so ambitious that it's nigh-impossible. Either iwot is seriously overselling the scope of this game, or it's almost certainly underestimating the amount of time it will take to make it.
This may sound like I'm just being a big old party pooper, but I promise I have a good reason: iwot's track record and history with The Wheel of Time. They purchased the film and game rights to the series back in 2004, but by the time of Robert Jordan's death in 2007, the relationship had soured to the degree that Jordan penned a scathing blog post about how he was looking forward to parting ways with them.
Iwot is a producer on the television show, but that is an Amazon and Sony project first and foremost; iwot has relatively little to do with the actual production of it aside from being the film rights holder. Amazon's Wheel of Time show is an undeniable success, and deserves its flowers. (And as many more seasons as Amazon will give it!) But The Wheel of Time projects headed primarily by iwot Studios are a very different story.
Since the show has taken off, iwot has announced: a trilogy of movies set during the Age of Legends, an animated prequel movie about the White Tower, a Wheel of Time AI companion, a digital trading card game that was really just a Wheel of Time reskin of an already existing game, and now this new AAA video game. As of right now, the only one of those that has materialized is the digital trading card game, which is still in Early Access on Steam with mixed-to-negative reviews. In the days before the Amazon show, they announced a film with Universal that never worked out, as well as a video game to be produced by original Fallout studio Obsidian Entertainment that never happened.
And in 2015, when iwot was still named Red Eagle Entertainment, it created this shotgun "pilot" for a Wheel of Time television show which aired in the middle of the night:
Jordan's widow and editor, Harriet McDougal, said she was "dumbfounded" by this move and characterized it as Red Eagle making a blatant rights grab to keep film rights for The Wheel of Time, which were set to expire literal days after the so-called Wheel of Time pilot aired. Red Eagle proceeded to sue McDougal for defamation, and while the suit was settled privately, the company has never been able to live down the infamy of the ordeal.
Suffice to say, it's best to treat any of these announcements from iwot Studios with a grain of salt until and unless they actually manifest. So as much as I'd love to play this new Wheel of Time video game, I'll believe it when I see it. We've been down this road too many times before.
On the bright side, The Wheel of Time television show just finished airing its best season yet. All three seasons are available to stream now on Prime Video, and they're even better on the rewatch:
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