THUMBS
03-18-2014, 12:07 AM
That's just not the first party thing to do, and it's not the Rare thing to do."
An important detail from Aoife's Kinect Sports Rivals preview: Rare's Twycross HQ spans four converted barns, three of which are off-limits because never you mind why they're off-limits, stupid journalist person. What could those barns contain? The lost treasure of Atlantis? The ghost of Don Mattrick? Or perhaps, one of those reboots Rare is often accused of working on - a new Banjo, Perfect Dark or Viva Pinata for Xbox One.
The developer has maintained a determined silence over the past few years as regards the fate of its back catalogue, commenting only that nothing has been ruled out, and seemingly isn't bothered by hardcore cynicism about its more recent work with Kinect. Discussing future projects with Eurogamer at the same event, studio head Craig Duncan would say only that Rare will never revive an IP for the sake of it. You may wish to run your mental magnifying glass over what follows.14256I grew up playing Rare games, much the same as you, much the same as the people posting comments," said Duncan. "We all have fond memories of the games we grew up playing and the games we love. But when we decide what game the studio is going to make, we've got to have more than just that reason.
"And even if - and I'll take Banjo, I'll take a beloved IP such as Banjo - even if we were going to make a new Banjo game, we'd make that because we thought we could do something interesting with that genre on a new platform with something different that's never been done before.
"We would never ever make a remake of a game we made 10 years ago and just put prettier graphics on it and add tick box whatever new features we have on our platform, because that's just not the first party thing to do, and it's not the Rare thing to do."
This ethos applies to Rare's Kinect games too. "I'd even put Kinect Sports in this category: if you think of everything Rare's always done since the dawn of time it's always picked something that is different and it's done it in a different way. GoldenEye did something different in shooters than any other shooter had done. Even Kinect Sports Rivals does something different with Kinect and motion gaming than any motion game has ever done before.
"Everything has got to have that, 'why is this different?' Why is it innovative based on what other games and franchises have done before? If we just took an old IP and retrofitted a new game to it, I tell you what your comments would be, they'd be, they just took the old IP and just did a generic game with it. People might be happy that old IP lives again, but ultimately they wouldn't be happy with what that was.
"We wouldn't just go, we've got a great idea for kart racing, so let's just make a kart racing game and put Banjo in it, because Banjo is an IP we own. If we can't change what a genre is doing or do something that's really going to make people sit up and take notice, and push that quality... that's how we justify doing something - whether that's new or old."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=fvWZfzmRaLwPressed by Eurogamer as to why it's so difficult to innovate within the confines of an established IP, Duncan conceded that "there are many things we've got bubbling from an incubation point of view, and we'll pick the right thing to do.
"The interesting thing from a creative point of view is, we've always got a number of ideas, and we've always got way more things we want to do than we've got people, time, resources and budget to do. I'm super excited about Kinect Sports Rivals and I'm really excited about that launching, but I'm also excited about what's next for Rare, because that'll be an important project in the same way."
Rare isn't a Kinect-only studio, he added - it'll "come up with great game ideas", then "look at the platform that makes the most sense for those game ideas to be on". There's grounds for hope there, at least. Tell me: how much of the above is smokescreen, do you think?
An important detail from Aoife's Kinect Sports Rivals preview: Rare's Twycross HQ spans four converted barns, three of which are off-limits because never you mind why they're off-limits, stupid journalist person. What could those barns contain? The lost treasure of Atlantis? The ghost of Don Mattrick? Or perhaps, one of those reboots Rare is often accused of working on - a new Banjo, Perfect Dark or Viva Pinata for Xbox One.
The developer has maintained a determined silence over the past few years as regards the fate of its back catalogue, commenting only that nothing has been ruled out, and seemingly isn't bothered by hardcore cynicism about its more recent work with Kinect. Discussing future projects with Eurogamer at the same event, studio head Craig Duncan would say only that Rare will never revive an IP for the sake of it. You may wish to run your mental magnifying glass over what follows.14256I grew up playing Rare games, much the same as you, much the same as the people posting comments," said Duncan. "We all have fond memories of the games we grew up playing and the games we love. But when we decide what game the studio is going to make, we've got to have more than just that reason.
"And even if - and I'll take Banjo, I'll take a beloved IP such as Banjo - even if we were going to make a new Banjo game, we'd make that because we thought we could do something interesting with that genre on a new platform with something different that's never been done before.
"We would never ever make a remake of a game we made 10 years ago and just put prettier graphics on it and add tick box whatever new features we have on our platform, because that's just not the first party thing to do, and it's not the Rare thing to do."
This ethos applies to Rare's Kinect games too. "I'd even put Kinect Sports in this category: if you think of everything Rare's always done since the dawn of time it's always picked something that is different and it's done it in a different way. GoldenEye did something different in shooters than any other shooter had done. Even Kinect Sports Rivals does something different with Kinect and motion gaming than any motion game has ever done before.
"Everything has got to have that, 'why is this different?' Why is it innovative based on what other games and franchises have done before? If we just took an old IP and retrofitted a new game to it, I tell you what your comments would be, they'd be, they just took the old IP and just did a generic game with it. People might be happy that old IP lives again, but ultimately they wouldn't be happy with what that was.
"We wouldn't just go, we've got a great idea for kart racing, so let's just make a kart racing game and put Banjo in it, because Banjo is an IP we own. If we can't change what a genre is doing or do something that's really going to make people sit up and take notice, and push that quality... that's how we justify doing something - whether that's new or old."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=fvWZfzmRaLwPressed by Eurogamer as to why it's so difficult to innovate within the confines of an established IP, Duncan conceded that "there are many things we've got bubbling from an incubation point of view, and we'll pick the right thing to do.
"The interesting thing from a creative point of view is, we've always got a number of ideas, and we've always got way more things we want to do than we've got people, time, resources and budget to do. I'm super excited about Kinect Sports Rivals and I'm really excited about that launching, but I'm also excited about what's next for Rare, because that'll be an important project in the same way."
Rare isn't a Kinect-only studio, he added - it'll "come up with great game ideas", then "look at the platform that makes the most sense for those game ideas to be on". There's grounds for hope there, at least. Tell me: how much of the above is smokescreen, do you think?