"I don't think anyone in the industry can accuse us of not being genuine about what we're doing and why. Which was fine historically, but I'm not sure works in today's world. "There was this veil of secrecy around it. "There was a time, probably ten years ago, where people knew Rare and its history, but they didn't know what it's about, or what it stood for, or who was there," Duncan acknowledges. A lot of that is down to Sea of Thieves, which has seen the company open up to fans in a way the secretive Rare of old would never have. Rare may be enjoying a new golden period, but it's a different studio to the one that made a name for itself with Donkey Kong Country and GoldenEye. Louise O'Connor, Simon Prodger and Craig Duncan It has two teams working on projects for the first time in years, the studio size has expanded and the fans have come back - there's even an unofficial Sea of Thieves festival this summer. Sea of Thieves has just passed ten million players, and enjoyed its most successful month since launch during December 2019. We've actually gone and proven that now."Įight years on, and the narrative around Rare has changed. ![]() "I felt back then I needed to defend ourselves, and say that Rare is definitely not dead and has plans for the future. Now, we are very overt with who we are and what we do. I remember my message to the team was not to take any notice of people who don't know our studio. Studio head Craig Duncan jokes: "I am totally over now. "I don't know if we were having fun making things back then" Louise O'Connor, Rare Then Craig came in, and the priority was about how do we change the culture? How do we make people fall in love with development again? It's a journey that you have to go on over a couple of years." We were so worried about making a thing and challenging ourselves technically, that we paused a little bit with worrying about people and culture. "I think we had stopped worrying about culture, actually. It wasn't because we fell out of love with Rare, but perhaps we had fallen out of love with how we were approaching some of our development. I think we got to the point where we just weren't loving it the way that we could. The big thing about Rare is we have always challenged ourselves to do things that are really hard. "I don't know if we were having fun making things. "I never felt like we went away, but I can understand why we could have been perceived as that," says Louise O'Connor, who has spent 20 years at Rare and is now executive producer on its next game, Everwild. Long-serving employees were moving on and it felt like Rare, which had achieved legendary status following a string of hits in the 1990s, had gone away. Fan sites were closing, with one long-running site openly criticising the company in a parting shot. It came at a time when the company seemed to have lost touch with its audience as it focused on Kinect games. It was a sad read for fans of the studio. Here’s a rundown of everything we thought we’d see-or hoped we’d see-that didn’t make an appearance.Eight years ago, Eurogamer printed the article 'Who killed Rare?' On the other hand, Kotaku sure had a bunch of fair expectations. Activision, Sony, and EA didn’t even partake in this year’s show at all, meaning no Call of Duty: Vanguard, Gran Turismo 7, Dragon Age 4, God of War, or Mass Effect (though we did get a peek at gameplay for EA’s Battlefield 2042 during the Xbox showcase). Deep Silver, the publisher behind series like Timesplitters and Dead Island, also said that it wouldn’t exhibit any games at E3. ![]() Ubisoft said from the jump that we’d see nothing from The Division or the Prince of Persia: Sands of Time remake. Of course, we had some inkling beforehand about which blockbusters wouldn’t show up. But that chorus has been drowned out by the far more deafening din of what wasn’t announced at E3 2021. Over the past five days, video game publishers have shouted announcements for the biggest games from the rooftops.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |