CyberPanda
Banned
Who saved Rare?
“We were so worried about challenging ourselves technically, that we paused a little bit with worrying about people”
Eight years ago, Eurogamer printed the article 'Who killed Rare?'
It was a sad read for fans of the studio. It came at a time when the company seemed to have lost touch with its audience as it focused on Kinect games. Fan sites were closing, with one long-running site openly criticising the company in a parting shot. 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.
"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.
"I don't know if we were having fun making things. The big thing about Rare is we have always challenged ourselves to do things that are really hard. I think we got to the point where we just weren't loving it the way that we could. 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 had stopped worrying about culture, actually. We were so worried about making a thing and challenging ourselves technically, that we paused a little bit with worrying about people and culture. Totally by accident. Then Craig [Duncan, Studio Head] 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."
"It hurts to read stuff like that. I remember my message to the team was not to take any notice of people who don't know our studio. That was probably a bit defensive. Now, we are very overt with who we are and what we do... I don't think Rare had that then. We are in a different place.
"I felt back then I needed to defend ourselves, and say that Rare is definitely not dead and has plans for the future... by that's really just talk. We've actually gone and proven that now."
Eight years on, and the narrative around Rare has changed. Sea of Thieves has just passed ten million players, and enjoyed its most successful month since launch during December 2019. 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.
Louise O'Connor, Simon Prodger and Craig Duncan
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. 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.
"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. "There was this veil of secrecy around it. Which was fine historically, but I'm not sure works in today's world.
"I don't think anyone in the industry can accuse us of not being genuine about what we're doing and why. But equally, we can still have a couple of secrets as well."
Director of Audience and Brand Strategy Simon Prodger says that the fans have largely come around: "Community attitudes have changed significantly over the last few years. As Sea of Thieves has become successful, the smaller Rare audience on social channels has certainly diminished in terms of their requirements over what they want to see next. They've bought into the vision of what Sea of Thieves is. People were very excited about Everwild. We didn't see any: 'Oh it's not Banjo 3'. It's a studio journey that the fanbase has been on as well."
This community focus has not just been in attending events and chatting to players on Twitter. Rare has thrown open its doors, invited fans to pitch ideas, and is even enabling them to create and sell their own merchandise.
"An interesting thing we've done is the stuff with Design By Humans," says head of brand and licensing Adam Park. "That's a site where we receive entirely fan-submitted Sea of Theives t-shirt designs. We get 100 to 200 submitted designs a week. It's not a revenue maker. Nearly all of the money made goes to the people who designed them. We think it's a great place for fans to effectively sell their own vision of Sea of Thieves."
Sea of Thieves hasn't been entirely plain sailing. From the outset, Rare suffered server teething problems and ended up throwing out much of its post-release content strategy. The company then put out a series of major expansions, but that created internal challenges, and now it has switched to smaller, monthly updates.
"Working to get a lot of things together for a big update is hard," Duncan admits. "Building games is hard. We wanted to get into more of a rhythm with Sea of Thieves where we delivered frequently to our players, but also gave our team a more sustainable way of working. It removes some of the peaks and troughs.
"And while we will always try and be ahead of what we want to do, and adapt as things change, it's not the end of the world if we're trying to ship a feature in the January update and it doesn't quite make it, because then it just goes into the February one. Team sustainability and doing things that are right for that team, right for the culture and right for the players, is really important."
"We made games very differently back then," says O'Connor. "I remember my time in the Conker barn. It was just the Conker team and we weren't really with anyone else. It meant I got very close with that team, and we still call each other the Conker team. But what's different now, is we know everybody. We can wander around all of the barns.
"We had this amazing all-hands meeting last Friday. That's when I really noticed how much Rare has changed. A couple of us did a little talk about what we're working on, and the support we got was incredible. It was genuinely caring. Joe [Neate, Sea of Thieves executive producer] is super excited about what we're doing with Everwild, and we are super excited about what they are doing.
"That's the biggest difference. Back in the day, it was quite competitive. We wanted to beat the rest. It's not like that anymore."
Duncan adds: "It's an easy trap to fall into, where 'that's their team, it's not our team'. It's hard to get it so that everybody is invested in everyone else's success. If you can get that right in a multi-game studio, you are onto something really special."
The Sea of Thieves barn at Rare's HQ
During our visit to Rare, Duncan was eager to show us the firm's new mantra on the wall of its boardroom. One that opens with: "Rare create the kind of games the world doesn't have".
All of the people we spoke to at Rare, either intentionally or accidentally, referred to the studio as being about 'new IP'. And to a certain generation of Rare fan, that will be disappointing to hear. To them, Rare is Joanna Dark, Banjo Kazooie and Conker.
And to these fans, Rare is meant to be secretive, and internally competitive. This company seems vastly different to the one Eurogamer was lamenting in its article. O'Connor even admits that it feels like she's been at multiple different studios during her 20-year stay.
Perhaps the Rare of old, in a way, has died.
"Doing new things have always been part of Rare's DNA," counters Prodger. "All we're doing is really formalising that."
Banjo and Kazooie were revealed for Smash Bros during E3 2019
Duncan agrees: "Rare has redefined their future and redefined genres and done different things throughout their history. People who have been with the studio through all these different iterations know fundamentally what makes Rare what it is, and they've been part of this journey. Louise, Jim [Horth], Gregg [Mayles], Paul [Machacek]... they've been as much a part of the Rare transformation as those who are relatively new."
“We were so worried about challenging ourselves technically, that we paused a little bit with worrying about people”
Eight years ago, Eurogamer printed the article 'Who killed Rare?'
It was a sad read for fans of the studio. It came at a time when the company seemed to have lost touch with its audience as it focused on Kinect games. Fan sites were closing, with one long-running site openly criticising the company in a parting shot. 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.
"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.
"I don't know if we were having fun making things. The big thing about Rare is we have always challenged ourselves to do things that are really hard. I think we got to the point where we just weren't loving it the way that we could. 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 had stopped worrying about culture, actually. We were so worried about making a thing and challenging ourselves technically, that we paused a little bit with worrying about people and culture. Totally by accident. Then Craig [Duncan, Studio Head] 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."
Studio head Craig Duncan jokes: "I am totally over [that article] now. A bit.
"It hurts to read stuff like that. I remember my message to the team was not to take any notice of people who don't know our studio. That was probably a bit defensive. Now, we are very overt with who we are and what we do... I don't think Rare had that then. We are in a different place.
"I felt back then I needed to defend ourselves, and say that Rare is definitely not dead and has plans for the future... by that's really just talk. We've actually gone and proven that now."
Eight years on, and the narrative around Rare has changed. Sea of Thieves has just passed ten million players, and enjoyed its most successful month since launch during December 2019. 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.
Louise O'Connor, Simon Prodger and Craig Duncan
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. 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.
"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. "There was this veil of secrecy around it. Which was fine historically, but I'm not sure works in today's world.
"I don't think anyone in the industry can accuse us of not being genuine about what we're doing and why. But equally, we can still have a couple of secrets as well."
Director of Audience and Brand Strategy Simon Prodger says that the fans have largely come around: "Community attitudes have changed significantly over the last few years. As Sea of Thieves has become successful, the smaller Rare audience on social channels has certainly diminished in terms of their requirements over what they want to see next. They've bought into the vision of what Sea of Thieves is. People were very excited about Everwild. We didn't see any: 'Oh it's not Banjo 3'. It's a studio journey that the fanbase has been on as well."
This community focus has not just been in attending events and chatting to players on Twitter. Rare has thrown open its doors, invited fans to pitch ideas, and is even enabling them to create and sell their own merchandise.
"An interesting thing we've done is the stuff with Design By Humans," says head of brand and licensing Adam Park. "That's a site where we receive entirely fan-submitted Sea of Theives t-shirt designs. We get 100 to 200 submitted designs a week. It's not a revenue maker. Nearly all of the money made goes to the people who designed them. We think it's a great place for fans to effectively sell their own vision of Sea of Thieves."
Duncan adds: "And then you get nice moments where if we do something on camera, and we happen to be wearing one, you get people going: 'Oh, Joe was wearing my t-shirt on the last video.'"
Sea of Thieves hasn't been entirely plain sailing. From the outset, Rare suffered server teething problems and ended up throwing out much of its post-release content strategy. The company then put out a series of major expansions, but that created internal challenges, and now it has switched to smaller, monthly updates.
"Working to get a lot of things together for a big update is hard," Duncan admits. "Building games is hard. We wanted to get into more of a rhythm with Sea of Thieves where we delivered frequently to our players, but also gave our team a more sustainable way of working. It removes some of the peaks and troughs.
"And while we will always try and be ahead of what we want to do, and adapt as things change, it's not the end of the world if we're trying to ship a feature in the January update and it doesn't quite make it, because then it just goes into the February one. Team sustainability and doing things that are right for that team, right for the culture and right for the players, is really important."
Another difference between the Rare today and the Rare of yesteryear is how the teams work together. Back in the 1990s, Rare's various development teams were famously kept apart and encouraged to compete with one another. Duncan says that although the Everwild and Sea of Thieves teams are effectively studios in their own rights, they're still invested in each other's success.
"We made games very differently back then," says O'Connor. "I remember my time in the Conker barn. It was just the Conker team and we weren't really with anyone else. It meant I got very close with that team, and we still call each other the Conker team. But what's different now, is we know everybody. We can wander around all of the barns.
"We had this amazing all-hands meeting last Friday. That's when I really noticed how much Rare has changed. A couple of us did a little talk about what we're working on, and the support we got was incredible. It was genuinely caring. Joe [Neate, Sea of Thieves executive producer] is super excited about what we're doing with Everwild, and we are super excited about what they are doing.
"That's the biggest difference. Back in the day, it was quite competitive. We wanted to beat the rest. It's not like that anymore."
Duncan adds: "It's an easy trap to fall into, where 'that's their team, it's not our team'. It's hard to get it so that everybody is invested in everyone else's success. If you can get that right in a multi-game studio, you are onto something really special."
The Sea of Thieves barn at Rare's HQ
During our visit to Rare, Duncan was eager to show us the firm's new mantra on the wall of its boardroom. One that opens with: "Rare create the kind of games the world doesn't have".
All of the people we spoke to at Rare, either intentionally or accidentally, referred to the studio as being about 'new IP'. And to a certain generation of Rare fan, that will be disappointing to hear. To them, Rare is Joanna Dark, Banjo Kazooie and Conker.
And to these fans, Rare is meant to be secretive, and internally competitive. This company seems vastly different to the one Eurogamer was lamenting in its article. O'Connor even admits that it feels like she's been at multiple different studios during her 20-year stay.
Perhaps the Rare of old, in a way, has died.
"Doing new things have always been part of Rare's DNA," counters Prodger. "All we're doing is really formalising that."
Banjo and Kazooie were revealed for Smash Bros during E3 2019
Duncan agrees: "Rare has redefined their future and redefined genres and done different things throughout their history. People who have been with the studio through all these different iterations know fundamentally what makes Rare what it is, and they've been part of this journey. Louise, Jim [Horth], Gregg [Mayles], Paul [Machacek]... they've been as much a part of the Rare transformation as those who are relatively new."
