Rare staff facing possible lay-offs Comments by Robert Purchese

I appreciate the humour of putting "continue delivering AAA gaming experiences" in quotes.

Some people still view Rare as though it's made up of the all the people that were around when it was a massive success. It isnt.

This goes for almost all developers -> people come and go. Those that say Rare would be so much more successful on the Wii because of there Nintendo background, hmm. Not sure about that one. Refer to my point about staff turnover. I would not however be surprised to see their titles sell a little better on that format simply due to the style of game they tend to develop.

Shedding people is something I can imagine many continuing to do for a while. It's the perfect time to do so even if they do not financially need to do so. Political spin, bury news day etc. It's fair to say that whenever a studio looks at how large it has become they realise they could do with reducing head-count in certain areas so as to become more efficient. Cutting those that you either don't need or wish you had not hired. Problem is you can often accidentally cut yourself and release some great people without realising it until they are no longer around to make stuff 'happen'.

@GreyBeard

Any film that employs heavy use of CG is in the same ballpark as games, re moving technology. The film industry is huge and varied, so its risky to state that games do OR don't share much in common with it. Neither is really true.

However, that shouldn't really matter. A lot of best practice does not depend on what tools you are actuallky using, but how you arrange them. A film production may use some permanent staff and some "work for hire" contractors, and a game may do too. When it comes to organising such an operation the two share a lot in common, even if the final product is not comparable.

if you are reading this and you didn't buy banjo kazooie nuts and bolts - then shame on you!

shame on me :)

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

To be fair to MS they've already stated multiple times that making money with Rare games is not their first priority, adding diversity to the 360's line-up on the other hand is.

This would be a great chance for DrZoidberg and I to continue our debate about whether or not Rare sucks... but you guys seem to have done it all for us!

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

What's funny and sad about this comment is that they're making the same kinds of games they always have. If you're going to slander MS, try and do a better job than this.

:P

Yeah, rare should make a sequel for blastcorps on xbla. JPR on xbla was awesome so I don't see why that shouldn't be up there.

I appreciate that any job losses are bad, because some people will obviously be out of work, but I think this announcement could actually be good news for Rare. I was worried that, with slightly less than stellar sales of its recent games, MS would weild the Close Down Axe and Rare would go the way of Ensemble. However, it transpires that Rare will be tied even closer to Xbox than before, essentially creating all NXE-style iconography and content, as well as still making games (although perhaps not quite as many as before).

I think Rare are at their best when making "fun for everyone" types of entertainment, and if they can pull out the stops with some cracking avatar-based games and other NXE concepts, as well as making a PROPER AND WORTHY sequel to Perfect Dark, then I for one will be well chuffed.

That being said, I do feel sorry for anyone losing their jobs in this industry!

"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."

I think two things are being mixed together:
1) Increase in scale as a natural evolution of a growing industry which of course increases the cost base but revenue side is also increased;
2) Increase in development cost through ever more complex in-game assets, which are not off-set by increased revenues.

The first one isn't a problem but something the industry has to learn to deal with through increased professionality. The second one is a problem though. Of course there too optimization opportunities exist but it still eats away at the bottom line.

@Les

This is true. I guess what I am thinking is that example 1 is just the way things are when your industry grows, and example 2 is what happens when you aren't set up to deal with that expansion.

I agree that a point comes where the cost of producing something may outstrip the return, and finding the balance (or rather not being able to find the balance) is where the problem lies.

You mentioned increased revenues not offsetting the increasing costs - perhaps one of our issues is that we aren't able to predict revenue as accurately as we would like. Established franchises can probably hit the target more frequently, but I bet Valve had no solid idea how well Half Life 1 would perform, and the same could maybe be said for GTA3 and Halo. Subsequent versions of each of those franchises had huge budgets, but expected sales figures were easier to estimate so the invetment could be justified.

I risk just kind of rambling and thinking out loud at this point, so I'll zip it for a bit :)

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

What's funny and sad about this comment is that they're making the same kinds of games they always have. If you're going to slander MS, try and do a better job than this.


They're making the same sort of games they always have, may be broadly speaking true, but what was implied in my comment is that they are not making the sort of games that make any money, or in other words, appeal to as large a demographic with their content, quality and appeal.

VD: I think that this has more to do with the fact that people are more looking forward to CODMC2 than a new BC or something original. TBF, I think that rare are not blind to this. They have four titles in development, I think that at least 2 aim for the more hardcore market (based on the rumours anyway).

@Vice.Destroyer

I think MS were taking the longer term view with this one, and its not an unreasonable gamble to take.

All console vendors want to sell games, but more than that they want to sell more consoles so that there are more customers out there who can buy games. If all a company does is make games to sell well to their existing audience, they risk waking up one day to find that everyone who wants one of their consoles already owns one and they aren't selling any more.

MS have been stepping slowly in that direction for a while now. Its well known that the 360 has the highest attach rate (games sold per console owner), but their concern is that their console is viewed as "one of the hardcore gamers" and that one day their sales will suddenly drop off (they know this, and the rest of the business knows this, I'm not just pulling it out of the air).

Now there are a lot more non-hardcore gamers out there than hardcore gamers (The Sims and the Nintendo Wii show us just how much dosh can be made when you appeal outside of typical hardcore circles), and naturally MS want to make sure they get a bit of that pie too (whiclst hanging on to their existing and profitable hardcore pie). So they make some games that have what suits might call "strategic value". They don't make money in the short term, but they do widen the appeal of then platform, which in turn (hopefully) makes more money somewhere down the road.

So MS were right to take the approach they did, but equally they are right to keep examining the figures. They probably still want Rare to keep making those sorts of "platform widening" titles, but they are simply re-examining how much dosh they can put into that venture compared to how much they put into things they know will make money in the next two years.

"if you are reading this and you didn't buy banjo kazooie nuts and bolts "


Well my kids didnt buy nuts and bolts.. because they CAN read this.. unlike the text in the demo version of nuts and bolts which was tiny and sped along at 500 miles per hour giving them chance to read 1 or 2 words of each sentence and having no clue what was going on...

Rare needs a reboot

"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. "

Not much chance of that.

There's actually very little chance that Rare "need" to cap anyone.

In my 20yr+ dev career, this is the 4th downturn I've experienced and I tell ya, companies lap it up as a period when they can chuck some of the dead-wood (and you gotta know that there's *always* dead-wood in a dev dept of any size) without worrying that they will look bad when they do it.

IMO, it doesn't happen often enough, one of my major beefs with the industry is the number of feckless mofos that gain employment in it as they drain cash and enthusiasm from the people doing the real work ...

That's not to say that "good" people can't get caught up in it too but that's usually when whole companies go under, not when they're just shedding the usual wankers from the place ...

"They're making the same sort of games they always have, may be broadly speaking true, but what was implied in my comment is that they are not making the sort of games that make any money, or in other words, appeal to as large a demographic with their content, quality and appeal."

Well, they can't have all of their devs making Gears of War sequels. It's like Sony with the LBP devs - a lot of time and thought were put into the game, but it's not exactly something that appeals to a huge audience. The game is one they feel is needed on the console, though.

I'm sure the guys at Rare get paid well no matter what. Well, the ones still with a job at least.

I actually found Kameo really fun & enjoyable, also Viva Patna 2 was quality too!...I hope Killer Instinct, Blast Corps, & another Kameo, plus a proper not rushed squeal to Perfect Dark is next inline for Xb360

Darren, oh Darren, the god that you are, the hero, the saviour of video games, I salute you. What you say makes so much sense, I love your comments, you say it like it is, I just can't fault you.

Sorry, it was Darrell I was talking about in my previous post.

Darren you are full of the smelliest kind of shite, you know fuck all, stick to wanking yourself off.

@bonker

Glad to see your time in the business (considerably longer than me) hasn't dulled your spirit any ;)

My spirit is unquashable :)