Alastair Cornish, a game designer who worked on Sleeping Dogs, has suggested that it’s possible for a sequel to emerge down the line, but it would depend on a variety of factors including target market and development costs.
Speaking with FRVR, Cornish, who later served as VP of design at Splash Damage, the creators behind Gears Tactics, said he was disappointed that Sleeping Dogs 2 was cancelled, but wasn’t surprised due to the financial side of things. He did, however, state that it’s possible we may see a revival of the IP in the future, providing we have, as he calls, a bit of “planetary alignment.”
“It was super disappointing because there was a ton of space there and you’ve got a fantastic team,” said Cornish. “The funny thing with teams is that you’ve got to really look at where they’re positioned. Where’s the studio? What are the studio overheads? What’s the rent like?“
How expensive are the teams, and are there competitive studios around there that are driving up wages? And in terms of United Front Games and Vancouver, boy, that was the epicentre of that happening. That’s happened a few times, where a sequel would be possible, but not really at the costs.
People love open world titles. I think it depends on what fidelity you’re going for. It depends on the market you’re targeting. It depends on what tools or techniques have helped bring down, if any, the cost of development. Never say never in game dev, so I think it could happen, but you would need a bit of planetary alignment, right? You’d need really passionate people with a lot of different strings to their bow who are really tight about where they’re spending, really smart about where they’re spending, really honest with themselves about what’s working and what’s not.
Sleeping Dogs was released for PS3, PC, and Xbox 360 in August 2012 and was later remastered for PS4 and Xbox One. Set in Hong Kong, Sleeping Dogs follows police officer and martial artist Wei Shen, who goes undercover to infiltrate the Sun On See Triad gang, with the game combining elements of martial arts combat, parkour, and open world exploration. A sequel was planned by United Front Games but unfortunately the project was scrapped in early 2013.
In related news, Marvel Cinematic Universe actor Simu Liu has been attempting to get a movie adaptation of Sleeping Dogs off the ground for a while now, and last month stated that the project has a ‘real path forward.’ A movie based on the game was originally planned with Donnie Yen attached to play Yen, but that fell through due to lack of progress.