Rare staff facing possible lay-offs Comments by Robert Purchese

That's a shame for the guys. Microsoft should be ashamed, running a decent developer into the ground, by making it concentrate on games that just will not make any money.

Such a shame. Banjo spent all that time getting his Engineering Apprenticeship and now the recession has meant he can't keep his job. Won't be long before he turns into a drugs and profanity obsessed wreck like his mate Conker.

I heard Pipsy's working the streets now too.

I for one appreciate them not blaming any economic downturn that wouldn't really effect them to this extent. Seems a bit backwards to use less people to do things faster, but if they say it'll work I'm sure they've thought it through.

Always a shame to see anyone being made redundant though, and there's always the danger you could lose someone who did more for the games than anyone though.

>by making it concentrate on games that just will not make any money.

Are you insane? That is the dream of any dev.... having lots of money and make games that you actually want to make without worrying that they won't sell. Rare is in a good position. They are on of the only MGS divisions that have the task to expand the userbase of the 360. They can experiment will all kinds of stuff. (NXE for example).

Hope banjo gets another game

It was kinda sad sometimes in Nuts and bolts, there are a loads of jokes at how badly the game is going to sell :(

Shame if they make a few redundancies, Nuts & Bolts turned out being my fave game of the Xmas rush, twas brilliant. In fact they have produced 5 games on 360 all of which have been really good..

@Dizzy

The dream may be to make games without having to worry about potential returns.
The reality is that the dream can turn into a nightmare.

And I think it is fair to say that they didn't 'experiment' with the NXE. They put in a proposal, like they have to do with every idea, and Microsoft gave them the green light.

>The reality is that the dream can turn into a nightmare.

???????

Rare games have always felt out of place on the Xbox 360 IMO and I can't help feeling that they'd have had a lot more success if they'd stuck with Nintendo and released games for the Wii. Rare were at their creative peak on the N64 and have never achieved the same success or critical acclaim on the Xbox consoles.

Personally, I love their games, they're fun and funny and colourful and very British. They're not always good granted, Grabbed by the Ghoulies was weak and Perfect Dark Zero was a rushed mess but their other Xbox games have been decent if not exactly outstanding. Still they haven't sold very well and that's not good for any games company in the long run...

Going forward

Instant fail!

You could have said in the future OR just had Rare will now focus.... but no, you had to come out with some management bullshit bingo words!

Rare's staff actually were quite happy working on the games they made so far, so stop talking bullshit fella's.

I should add that I do blame Microsoft for not promoting Rare's games properly.

For example, none of their games have had anywhere near the amount of promotion or hype that Gears of War 1/2 or Halo 3 have had. It's no wonder the Xbox 360 is labelled as a hardcore system. Microsoft should be doing far, far more to attract casual gamers to the system to appeal to a wider audience, the sort who might enjoy Rare's games. Gears of War and Halo need little marketing, they'd sell anyway through word of mouth and reviews.

Stupid, stupid Microsoft.

Must use "going forward" in all press releases!! - Marketing c0ck

No-one has enough money to not have to worry about their games selling. As Rare have just found out.

@DFawkes

For a while now I've been trying to explain to people that more bodies doesn't speed up the process. It just creates more cost and actually slows things down (in some cases rediculously so!).

The massive teams seem to have been some strange attempt to justify the rediculous dev budgets for this generation. You ended up with a lead artist, who's vision for the look of the game was the holy grail, then 30 artists effectively copying his work onto the computer screen. You then have a programmer for every section of the game from a sound programmer, then a gui programmer, then a guy who just does animations programming etc. etc. All of whome then have to spend an absolute age integrating their work with each other.

Some devs did the correct thing i.e. the pre-production, production and then post production thing and found that they saved millions on costs. They kept a core team and simply got people in as they needed them, releasing them after their task was done.

At the moment the games industry is still in the stone ages when it comes to production. It's the equivalent of a rock band buying a studio and employing all the studio staff, album cover artists, costume stylists etc. etc permenantly rather than simply hiring them on an as needed basis. Seriously! Companies like EA and activisiton really do have rediculous idle teams all over the place! Simply waiting until their turn at the keyboard comes.

Another Conker game pretty please?

"expanding the Xbox 360 user-base through titles such as Viva Piñata and Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts" and "continue delivering AAA gaming experiences".

Are these mutually exclusive events?

@Dizzy

Redundancy can be a nightmare, no?

@penhalion

That actually makes a lot of sense, cheers :)

Still sucky that people may have to lose their jobs, but I'm guessing there has been a lot of excess staff out there in the larger devs that aren't really needed. Counldn't they just become more efficient and put them to use on other things though?

I was always a huge Rare fan, but I do think they seem to be misfiring at present. They had a great run of games on the N64 (GoldenEye, PD, DKR, Banjo, Blast Corps, Jet Set Gemini) but seem to be having difficulty matching that. Whether that's due to changes in the market and audience, or just that Rare had hit a rich vein of form during the N64 years that could never last. I think actually MGS have been very patient with them. Anyone think EA would have kept them around as long?

"As the entire industry struggles to address the increasing scale and cost of development"

I am always slightly puzzled by that sort of talk. Specifically, people referring to the increasing cost of development as if it is some separate entity, like a dying species or the annual flooding of the Nile.

We are making the games, we are setting the agenda, we are essentially dictating the costs. Its not really a case of struggling to "address" the increasing scale and cost, its a case of having to expand to keep up and not knowing how.

Its a bit of a wakeup call for the industry I think. Making games used to be relatively low budget, and if things didn't work too well you could just chuck more man hours at the problem. We are now finding that things are happening on a scale that won't let us get away with that sort of thing. So we are having to become more organised, but that can only be a good thing in the longer term.

We shouldn't talk in terms of upscaling and increased cost being a problem that needs addressing, but rather a natural evolution of a growing industry. The real problem that needs "addressing" is our ability to get sufficiently organised that we don't waste resources. We used to be able to get away with it, but those days are running out.

Dizzy: He's got a point. They can make awesome games but if they don't sell, sooner or later an investor or a new manager with a different vision will step in and start cutting what is not profitable. They key is obviously making games that you want while still hitting north of break even.

Hang on, Rare are incapable of being "speedy".

Look how long it took them to make Kameo. And that was still shit.

@penhalion

+1

@DFawkes
Seems a bit backwards to use less people to do things faster, but if they say it'll work I'm sure they've thought it through.

I guess their new plan is "work smarter not harder" or maybe they'll "leverage synergies"? ;)

No company ever shrank its way to greatness. Sometimes to profitability but not greatness. This might just be an excuse for Rare to ditch some turkeys, every company has them.

That said, changing the team structure to, for example, create a core tools/technologies group (if they don't have one) so they can create and then use a core tool/technologies/functionality set in those titles might save a lot of time and money with fewer people working on it.

Software engineers tend to want to do everything themselves (well, the interesting things) which is somewhat inefficient, I'm always surprised to learn that companies don't have a core tools/technologies group. Mind you, I've been surprised at the number of companies that don't have anything approaching proper development procedures, maybe I'm still naive.

@Vice.Destroyer
Microsoft should be ashamed, running a decent developer into the ground, by making it concentrate on games that just will not make any money.

Microsoft are picking up the tab on all that and it no doubt hasn't affected their stock adversly, MGS won't be so stupid as to complain that the games they direct them to make (like Viva Pinata) don't do as well as they would like, they know that selling cute to blood crazed teens is a risky and difficult prospect but MS have stated in the past that they're in this for the long haul, look at their dogged persistence in their attempts to build a base in Japan (all those JRPGs): they know that they won't win in Japan this iteration, but maybe next or the one after that.

The reality is that the dream can turn into a nightmare.

Is it the one where your socks come alive and eat your toes? I hate that one. ;)

Anyway on Rare's performance this generation I really liked BK N&B and Viva Pinata, I'd have preferred a "proper" Banjo though.

Could they please concentrate on making a new DK game for the DS?

@seasidebaz

I thought the same too - Rare and Speedy don't belong in the same sentence

@Seasidebaz & sifu james

Name a single other dev that has put out 5 full disc releases this generation? i don't beleive there are any others, and they've done an XBLA release too

Most first party devs have managed 2 full games this gen, some just the one.

So speedy they would seem to be..

A couple of other websites suggested that Rares lay offs wont be as bad since they do a lot of R&D for the 360 and occasionally assist other studios doing first party stuff for Microsoft. (A small Rare team helped Bungie with parts of Halo 3).

Losing jobs in this climate sucks anyway so hopefully the damage wont be too bad.

@BillyBrush:

Kameo was an N64 game. Viva Pinata was too, IIRC. VP2 is VP1 with extras. VP Party Animals is pure tripe. PDZero was awful, and it still took them ages to make. And BK Nuts & Bolts is.... OK, I suppose. Still, took them long enough.

What would it take for somebody at Rare to wake up and say: "Hey! I know! Let's make Goldeneye 2!"?

Bah! Since the Ultimate guys left Rare it's just another games developer - Like when Molyneux left Bullfrog.
& I suspect those guys where cruising along after they sold Rare to Microsoft - They probably just stuck around becasue it was in the contract.

@ BillyBrush

Fair point, I guess that they have put out more then others, unfortunately the games haven't been all that memorable - I'd could only remember PD Zero, BK Nuts and Bolts and Viva Pinata off the top of my head, I actually had to go to their website to look up the others...

@Daikon

probably the Bond liscence, which Activision have

@Baz

Kameo was a 360 game, sure it's development may have started back on Xb, but it is a 360 game...personally with the exception of Party animals which i'd not counted, i think all their 360 games have been good uns, N&B being the best....either way, 6, or 5 cutting one out, is pretty prolific this gen, there's no one else who'se put out that much stuff (Nintendo in house aside), Rare really are in an unenviable position of getting stick from all angles apart from 360 owners who find time to do things other than shooting, which cuts 2/3rds of them out instantly....myself, i likes the Rare of the last few years, much better than the 'cube' years

@BillyBrush - Kameo was originally conceived for the N64 before moving to the GameCube then Xbox and finally appearing on the 360.

Damn you Darren! Beaten by seconds.
F5 saved me some face.

Kameo was a 360 game, sure it's development may have started back on Xb
No, it started on the N64...

And that's the thing. Most of these games were probably going through concept stages while Rare were still Nintendo, and as most of the time making a game comes from design etc they should have been out sooner. I've not been blown away by any of their current gen games, N&B was OK but later on just became a chore to play. Save with VP: Starts off great, then becomes a chore.

I'm not saying that an output of 5 games is bad, it's just Rare aren't exactly quick at making games. Or keeping consistent with their earlier catalogue in terms of quality.

@Sifu

Yep, i think in the current market it would be fair to say not all of the titles have been memorable, you've got to put a bit of that down to the amount of good games nowadays and level of marketing EA, Ubi, and Activision can give their games in addition to the competing first party stuff both MS and beyond. But i'd accept that's quite true.

Quality wise they have been pretty good though and i think given Rare's position of being in the centre of two firing lines and an audience not in tune with their games, it's not horrendous of me to make a dreaded list...see comments re Perfect Dark was awful get bandied about with reckless abandon....assuming we can trust critics, the following averages are not exactly as shameful as some would have you think

all metacritic:

PDZ - critic avg 81%
Kameo - critic avg 79%
Viva Piniata 1 - critic avg 84%
Viva P 2 - critic avg 82%
Banjo Kaz Nuts & Bolts - critic avg 80%
BK - arcade - avg 79%
Party Animals -56%

Soo, apart from the one, it's really 'teh internets' not games reviewers that have decided Rare are off form...sure those %ages don't mean everything, but they mean more than comments threads methinks, and if you can't trust reviewers with Rare games, which games is it you can trust them with? on an even playing field Rare do pretty well imo

Rare didn't do Party Animals anyway, it was done by a third party company in Australia that I forget the name of.

When will publishers, developers, game stores etc accept that in today's economic climate the RRP and actual selling price of new games need to fall massively?

I love gaming, buy a couple of games a month and would love to treat myself to the new AAA release of the moment.

But why pay almost £80 for the privilege when I can pick up a couple of games I missed six months ago for £30 combined instead.

@Kameo

fair enough, it is however still a 360 game, that being the platform on which it was released

...but i get your point, not knowing the exact history of Kameo, it can't have gone into full blown production on N64 and gone through 3 platforms without them basically redoing the whole thing, as in it looks frickin good for an N64 title, and essentially i'm thinking like Duke Nukem forever they must have basically still made a full 360 game there sans having to come up with a game design/story etc...basically aside from sketches i doubt the 360 release bears much in common with an N64 incantation

I really don't think the film model is an ideal solution, the differences in production methodology are far too great to make it an ideal fit.

For a start, there's a far greater need for continuity of staffing in games development than film due to the nature of the medium. Any experienced editor can quickly assemble something workable provided the raw footage is available, integrating code/assets is far more difficult as it involves a whole lot more than arranging elements along a time-line!

No matter how skilled the workforce, presenting them with an unfamiliar code-base, tool-chain, or assets is a major headache. Middleware isn't an ideal solution either as there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all solution, ask anyone who's worked with UE3 and they'll tell you that its level of usefulness really depends on how closely the target project resembles Gears Of War! Midway tried to base their core development strategy around it, and the results were disastrous.

This type of thing has no equivalent in film production. There they don't reinvent the camera every 5 years, which is precisely what happens with games. And that in turn has a knock-on effect on everything else because the vast majority of software is bound to a particular hardware configuration.

"there are a loads of jokes at how badly the game is going to sell"

Those poor developers must have laughed their Credit Crunchies right out of their faces in a fountain of milk.

@ BillyBrush

Good points. I think you're right, it's much more a perception that Rare have lost it, rather then any hard and fast evidence, and it's an image that's not helped by the low visibility of their games compared to others on the 360. But there was no advertising on the N64, and yet Rare games were always as eagerly anticipated as Nintendo's. You knew the game was going to be something special even on initial announcement, and I think Rare haven't come up with a game that has "must have" since the Nintendo days. Perhaps it's because all the games date back to then:

PDZ - Sequel to N64 game
Kameo - Gamecube game ported to 360
Viva Pinata - Development began in 2002 while still with Nintendo.
BK N+B - Sequel to N64 game

Quite frankly I wouldn't have spent much on advertising any of those, as none of those titles really leapt out and said "Next big thing". I hope they've cleared everything out of the pre 2002 cupboard now, as it'll be interesting to see what they develop next. I don't for one minute want them to lose their Britishness, or trying to do a Gears or Halo clone (bye bye Free Radical...) but they need something that really grabs the attention of everyone and has us waiting again. I honestly think if they don't pull that off soon MSG will start handing them titles and just say "make this".

seasidebaz: Rather peculiar comment. Rare usually has 4 or more games in development. I believe that they have released over 2 games each year on average for the past 25 years or something.

Oh and kameo was awesome.

"But there was no advertising on the N64"

Come again? That's rubbish, they where easily one of the most advertised companies.

Only a management asswipe could have come up with something like, downsizing the team while speeding up the dev cycle.

@ Xerx3s

Really? I can't remember seeing much in the way of advertising for Rare games in the N64 days outside of the games mags.

"When will publishers, developers, game stores etc accept that in today's economic climate the RRP and actual selling price of new games need to fall massively?

I love gaming, buy a couple of games a month and would love to treat myself to the new AAA release of the moment.

But why pay almost £80 for the privilege when I can pick up a couple of games I missed six months ago for £30 combined instead."

Shhh! They don't want to talk about THAT. They only want to stop the evil twisted 2nd hand market forever so they can continue selling at a high price......

@Xerx3s:

I know they do, but it just takes them so damn long to bring out. It's all well and good having 4 in development, but when they take about 5 years each to make they're pretty out of date by the time they come out...

Plus, I haven't enjoyed anything post-Blast Corps as much as I enjoyed Blast Corps. And I thought Kameo was rather poo.

Just my thoughts, anyway.