The dinosaur-riding survival game Ark: Survival Evolved is chugging along nicely, with about 40,000 people playing it at this moment (a daily peak of 56,000, according to Steam Charts) and a big new expansion called Aberration set to come out later this month. But nothing is forever, and creative director Jesse Rapczak told DualShockers recently that in the relatively near future, Studio Wildcard is going to start looking ahead to a sequel.
The developers aren't actually working on a followup yet, to be clear: Rapczak said Studio Wildcard has "a bunch of great ideas" for Ark, and it's currently in pre-production on a new expansion that's expect to be out sometime in 2018. But beyond that, it's harder to say.
"I think, you know, as we get down the line, over the next year or two, Ark needs to have a sequel at some point," Rapczak said. "It’s definitely gonna be on our minds about when it’s the right time to something like that."
It will be interesting to see how that prediction holds up. The game industry is heavily dependent on sequels, there's no doubt, but the real question is whether Ark is more akin to Call of Duty and Battlefield, which come and go with near-clockwork regularity, or Team Fortress 2 and League of Legends, games that are starting to look as though they'll outlast the mountains.
Either way, before all of that comes Aberration, with a new movement system featuring ziplines, wingsuits, and climbing picks, and a whole new underground world. It's a big change, but it looks very promising.