isiting Rare is always a treat. The staff’s
passion for games is not only plain to
see, but also infectious. We arrive at the
studio just after the launch of Sea Of
Thieves’ Anniversary Update, in the midst
of celebration. As a reward for all their hard
work, the teams are taking some time off
from development to join in on a week-long
‘creative jam’. Everyone is given the freedom
to create whatever they want. There are art
lessons, people coming up with ideas for
future content and groups dressed as pirates
running around the corridors acting out
scenes – pretty much everywhere you look
there are smiles and people being creative.
But this isn’t just a one-off occurrence,
this fun and creative attitude permeates
everything Rare does in developing its games.
This is largely because of Rare’s leader, Craig
Duncan, and we catch up with the veteran
developer to find out what it’s like to run one
of the most respected and creative game
studios in the world.
You had a fairly unorthodox entry into the
world of game development, didn’t you?
Yeah, wow that was some time ago. So I had
no idea what I wanted to do when I left school
and worked in some engineering companies
that made automotive parts. Some of that
was just because of where I grew up, there
was a lot of industry there. I did engineering
for a little while, and when I got into the
world of work I started to piece together how
companies worked and how to work with
a team and thought, ‘Hey, I can do this.’ I
actually just enjoyed work, like, just learning
things real-time, solving problems. Then I
moved to a couple of different companies
where I started to think of myself as a bit
of an engineer, and then joined a software
company. All while doing this, I played games
in the background. I’ve always been a big
gamer, I grew up playing games through
the ’80s and ’90s, but I never really thought
about it as a career. I thought about it as
just a thing I did to de-stress and recharge
from work, and something I did socially
with my friends. Then I ran operations for
a software engineering company around
2000/2001 before deciding it was time
to move on. It was at a time when games
companies were starting to look for expertise
outside of games. Games were becoming
big, multi-million pound, 50-person team
projects. I’d run projects of that kind of size
outside of games, and I managed to convince
Codemasters that everything I’d learnt to do
as a person who ran big projects and teams,
and my passion for playing games, that I
could fit them together. They told me that
every time they hired someone that hadn’t
worked in games before it was a disaster, and
they had doubts that anyone could make that
transition, but I managed to convince them.I also showed that I was willing to learn what
it takes to make games. I joined Codemasters
as development manager in 2003.You then went on to manage other studios
that put out big titles, such as Midway and
Codemasters, but was it at all daunting
coming to Rare, given its legacy?
I guess for me I’m always interested in the
thing I haven’t done before. So the great thing
about Codemasters was that I got to be part
of a publisher that made a lot of great games,
like Colin McRae Rally, LMA^ Manager and lots
of other great games. Midway was always,
‘Okay, I’ve run studios at Codemasters, what
is it like to run studios for another publisher?’
Sumo Digital was that they’re an independent
company. For Rare it was very much, ‘What
is it like to run a first-party studio as part
of Xbox and Microsoft?’ That was the thing I
hadn’t done before, that was going to have
a different dynamic. With regards to Rare’s
legacy, I grew up playing Rare games, I knew
their history. You know, just taking what Rare
was and shaping the future of Rare, that was
something, again, that I was really interested
in. It was more appealing than daunting.You headed Midway Newcastle before
the studio closed down. What was that
experience like?
I think when you see a studio shut down
that you’re responsible for, you feel very
accountable to all the people and you feel
very accountable to finding a solution. I spent
a lot of the time as Midway was closing flying
around the world and meeting up with people
to essentially sell the studio to another
party. It was at the time the banking crisis
was going on around the world, 2008, and
there was literally no money, nobody was
investing. I pushed myself to the physical
and mental limits of what I was trying to do
to find a solution. There was a lot of burnout,
not much sleep, lots of travel, not eating
properly, all the things that I would absolutely
discourage anyone from doing. It taught me
that no matter how hard you work, you can
fail sometimes. When they ended up shutting
the studio down, I wasn’t used to something
failing. I was used to applying myself and
my team and something being successful.
That was hard to swallow. How you treat
people when things are going really well or
really badly is the most important thing. I
feel lucky that I still work with some of those
people today. A lot of that comes down to
that shared experience of coming throughTHE BIG INTERVIEW
We’re told that pets will come to Sea Of Thieves at some point. We can’t wait to get our very own parrotLEFT We
encountered an
actual
Battletoad
during our
visit. He
wasn’t very
chatty, though.
RIGHT Rare’s
studios are
based in a
converted
farm site.058 THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE