The future of Rare

[wraggster]

"I still feel a bit sad with you guys for the article you wrote about Rare being dead," Craig Duncan, the boss of the Microsoft-owned Kinect Sports developer, says at the beginning of our interview, not in an abrasive, confrontational way, but in a genuine, heartfelt way. I listen and believe it did make him sad. No doubt it saddened a few here."Who Killed Rare? (http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-02-08-who-killed-rare)", written by regular Eurogamer contributor Simon Parkin and published a few months after the release of Kinect Sports: Season Two, asked ex-Rare staff the question most who grew up playing the likes of GoldenEye, Donkey Kong Country and Killer Instinct had wondered for some time. It was a question that came with an assumption: if we're asking who killed Rare, then we're saying Rare is dead.The article was published just eight months after Duncan, former development director at racing game specialist Sumo Digital, took over the famed studio. "I took it as, I'll show them, because that's what I do."Two years later, just over three years into the job, has Duncan showed us?"Rare's evolving and it continues to evolve," Duncan says. We're chatting in a nondescript room situated on the first floor of Rare's main building. I'd spent the day playing Kinect Sports Rivals, due out next month for the Xbox One. Duncan spent the day milling about, answering questions, watching the press gang wave their arms, slam their feet, throw imaginary bowling balls and swing make-believe tennis rackets. Now, though, he's answering questions about the past, the present and - crucially - the future."Rare has evolved for 30 years, and it's always been nimble in what it's done," he continues. "It's always done different things. My vision for Rare is it will continue to do different things. We have a bright future. We have a ton of incredibly talented people here."For me it's about, how do I make sure I set Rare up to be as successful as it can be and the team here have the creative space and the backing and the budgets to do what they do best, which is make great games?"Let's talk about comments.I hear a lot of video game developers say they refuse to read comments on the internet. Not Duncan. "I do read the comments," he says. "I just don't react to all of them."Whenever we write about Rare, whether it's a news story about a Kinect Sports related announcement or an investigation into how the culture of the studio changed after Microsoft bought it in 2002 for $375m, most of the comments lament the "death" of the studio - and it's clear why: Rare seems to be the exclusive developer of the Kinect Sports franchise, a franchise built to showcase the Kinect motion sensor, a peripheral most core gamers are at best cynical of, at worst would rather didn't exist.Duncan read our article and thought he'd show us, but the next game from the studio is yet another Kinect Sports title, its third to release in under four years. I'm honest with Duncan: Kinect Sports isn't what core gamers want from Rare."We've always got ideas bubbling," Duncan counters, "and there are always things ultimately we could go and make into the next project, and some of that, we look backwards at the IP we own - and we've got a rich portfolio - and some of it is, people come up with good ideas."

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-03-17-the-future-of-rare