Nintendo's WARSAW pact
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I've heard and read in Edge a long time ago, that a primary reasons for people living Rare is that you got pretty much no chance to evolve in the structure if you were not a long time dev from the 80's in the company. That was the primary reason for the Free Radical team to leave. As for the rest of the Ge team, the Zoonami people, they have follow Martin Hollis, which left Rare for whatever reason I do not know.
A big problem Rare is facing, is that they have hired a lot of new guys with zero experience. Half of the SFA team was working on its first game ever I've read on Raretopia :?
A big problem Rare is facing, is that they have hired a lot of new guys with zero experience. Half of the SFA team was working on its first game ever I've read on Raretopia :?
CeiserSöze
Newcomer
wazoo said:
Now this explains a lot...
Qroach, Just because you work in the industry does'nt mean everything you hear is the truth. And it does'nt mean you 'know' everything. I said I could'nt really put a number on it but that several ppl had left. It was reported by a few of the Rare sites like Raretopia and Rarenet.
Also bonovox, a poster at N-sider forums, had stated in more than a few threads at the time. Alot of you dont know that bonovox reported the story (then rumour) that Rare was being sold at least 2 months before it broke news. Of course we all dismissed him at the time but then everyone there who had dissed him apologized cause he was dead on we found out. He's a Euro and he's got a very close friend with a pretty decent position at Rare irc.
Btw I love Rare. I miss the old Rare. There's no question they've still got talent there. But Xbox fanboys are dreaming if they believe Rare is the same Rare that we Nintendo fans grew up with. The facts are YES several ppl left, some key R & D guys and programmers who tore the Gamecube apart for 3 years of work. I know from bonovox that the Conker team and the Perfect Dark teams have left or "were largely affected by the MS purchase". <---his words.
SFA was a good game. Not a great game but a good game for a casual gamer. It was too linear. Too formulaic. A beautiful game btw..still have'nt seen some of the effects like that done on XB and PC. Conker imo was one of the greatest games ever made. Ensconced in my top 10 ever list. I loved every minute of Conker. Way to short but a gret great game. As was JFG. Problem with what happend to Rare was thier consistancy with putting out greate titles on a regular basis. And thier missed deadlines. Remember the MS announcement? Kameo was supposed to be a "spring" release. We old Nintendo fans knw that was bs. Well it's spring..summer is right around the corner..no sign of it. E3 will tell more i'm sure. Rare's first game will prolly make a fall release going by Rare's track record.
I'm just not sure what kind of reception Rare will get on the FPSBox. I mean Kameo? And the new carttoony Joanna Dark? I'm just not sure the PC heavy fanbase of the XB will rush out and buy Rare games like Nintendo fans did. I really dont see them ever putting out a game that moves off the shelves like thier sofware in the past. They are trying to build an audience with the XB that (sales wise) is'nt there yet. However, after some hard work and alot of Bill's $$ I'm sure that Rare is still better than most dev houses out there..just not quite comparable to what they once were.
Also bonovox, a poster at N-sider forums, had stated in more than a few threads at the time. Alot of you dont know that bonovox reported the story (then rumour) that Rare was being sold at least 2 months before it broke news. Of course we all dismissed him at the time but then everyone there who had dissed him apologized cause he was dead on we found out. He's a Euro and he's got a very close friend with a pretty decent position at Rare irc.
Btw I love Rare. I miss the old Rare. There's no question they've still got talent there. But Xbox fanboys are dreaming if they believe Rare is the same Rare that we Nintendo fans grew up with. The facts are YES several ppl left, some key R & D guys and programmers who tore the Gamecube apart for 3 years of work. I know from bonovox that the Conker team and the Perfect Dark teams have left or "were largely affected by the MS purchase". <---his words.
SFA was a good game. Not a great game but a good game for a casual gamer. It was too linear. Too formulaic. A beautiful game btw..still have'nt seen some of the effects like that done on XB and PC. Conker imo was one of the greatest games ever made. Ensconced in my top 10 ever list. I loved every minute of Conker. Way to short but a gret great game. As was JFG. Problem with what happend to Rare was thier consistancy with putting out greate titles on a regular basis. And thier missed deadlines. Remember the MS announcement? Kameo was supposed to be a "spring" release. We old Nintendo fans knw that was bs. Well it's spring..summer is right around the corner..no sign of it. E3 will tell more i'm sure. Rare's first game will prolly make a fall release going by Rare's track record.
I'm just not sure what kind of reception Rare will get on the FPSBox. I mean Kameo? And the new carttoony Joanna Dark? I'm just not sure the PC heavy fanbase of the XB will rush out and buy Rare games like Nintendo fans did. I really dont see them ever putting out a game that moves off the shelves like thier sofware in the past. They are trying to build an audience with the XB that (sales wise) is'nt there yet. However, after some hard work and alot of Bill's $$ I'm sure that Rare is still better than most dev houses out there..just not quite comparable to what they once were.
Goldeni
Did I imply that I know everything? Nobody here does, I certainly don't, but I see the same things happening on a constant basis, people saying things that didn't really happen or painting a bleak picture without any proof to support that theory. From my point of view when people start saying stuff like, "Rare is hiring people without game exeprience and this is going to effect them", I can't help but tell them that since they don't work in the game industry, they don't know how stuff like that really impacts large game companies. The bigger the studio, the more room for less expeirenced employees, the smaller the studio the less room you have.
This isn't necessarily a bad thing as you make it out to be. There are different levels and postions you wouldn't want's someone that was really experienced or talented to fill, since the job may not be suited for them or just a waste of their talents. I can't expect you to know that from the start, since you're coming at this from a different angle. however, the bleak picture you paint isn't really bleak at all. Not to forget there's nothing on Rares website that shows anything like you claim.
Well, raretopia has stated that Rare has 200+ employees and they estimated that at least 150 of them were directly working on the games (and remember that's an estimated number) perhaps that's where you got the 150 number from. still I've seen no articles of people leaving in mass numbers or anything close to what you've said.
I also haven't seen anything that says half of starfox adventures team were working on their first game, the game was in development for 4 years, since nintendo wanted them to turn a N64 game into Starfox for gamecube. Again I believe that's the main reason the game is such a collectathon with lot's of backtracking, since it was originally designed to be on a cartridge. Also, I don't see where you get the idea that they are now hiring people with no game experience since it doesn't say anything of the sort on rares website. FYI, game companies don't always require game experience for employees. They can require them to be educated, but wuoldnt' stop them from hiring some talented programmers or artists. I really don't know where these rumors are coming from but I'm certain they aren't true...
Well we'd heard rumors of the sale on this forum almost a 8 months before the real news broke. So it wouldn't suprise me at all.
See this is exactly what I mean. The conkers team consited of only 16 people from what raretopia has reproted, and all of those people were spread out and working on other projects at Rare.
Two of the founding members from Free Radical were interviewed by IGN and in that interview he states only 5 of free radicals founders had worked on PD at Rare, and that there's only a few ex Rare employees out of the close to 50 employees they currently have.
The Zoonami website also states exactly how many employees they have (only 8 of them) with ONLY two people once working at Rare.
This seems to be another example of people exagerating about what's really going on. Some people online were VERY angry about Rare leaving Nintendo, and said many things like (I think many people are going to leave Rare now) in a effort to make themselves feel better about the situation. Very little of the rumors were based on any fact IMO.
Did I imply that I know everything? Nobody here does, I certainly don't, but I see the same things happening on a constant basis, people saying things that didn't really happen or painting a bleak picture without any proof to support that theory. From my point of view when people start saying stuff like, "Rare is hiring people without game exeprience and this is going to effect them", I can't help but tell them that since they don't work in the game industry, they don't know how stuff like that really impacts large game companies. The bigger the studio, the more room for less expeirenced employees, the smaller the studio the less room you have.
This isn't necessarily a bad thing as you make it out to be. There are different levels and postions you wouldn't want's someone that was really experienced or talented to fill, since the job may not be suited for them or just a waste of their talents. I can't expect you to know that from the start, since you're coming at this from a different angle. however, the bleak picture you paint isn't really bleak at all. Not to forget there's nothing on Rares website that shows anything like you claim.
Well, raretopia has stated that Rare has 200+ employees and they estimated that at least 150 of them were directly working on the games (and remember that's an estimated number) perhaps that's where you got the 150 number from. still I've seen no articles of people leaving in mass numbers or anything close to what you've said.
I also haven't seen anything that says half of starfox adventures team were working on their first game, the game was in development for 4 years, since nintendo wanted them to turn a N64 game into Starfox for gamecube. Again I believe that's the main reason the game is such a collectathon with lot's of backtracking, since it was originally designed to be on a cartridge. Also, I don't see where you get the idea that they are now hiring people with no game experience since it doesn't say anything of the sort on rares website. FYI, game companies don't always require game experience for employees. They can require them to be educated, but wuoldnt' stop them from hiring some talented programmers or artists. I really don't know where these rumors are coming from but I'm certain they aren't true...
Well we'd heard rumors of the sale on this forum almost a 8 months before the real news broke. So it wouldn't suprise me at all.
See this is exactly what I mean. The conkers team consited of only 16 people from what raretopia has reproted, and all of those people were spread out and working on other projects at Rare.
Two of the founding members from Free Radical were interviewed by IGN and in that interview he states only 5 of free radicals founders had worked on PD at Rare, and that there's only a few ex Rare employees out of the close to 50 employees they currently have.
The Zoonami website also states exactly how many employees they have (only 8 of them) with ONLY two people once working at Rare.
This seems to be another example of people exagerating about what's really going on. Some people online were VERY angry about Rare leaving Nintendo, and said many things like (I think many people are going to leave Rare now) in a effort to make themselves feel better about the situation. Very little of the rumors were based on any fact IMO.
Qroach said:
"The Star Fox Adventures team consists of around twenty members. For half of those, SFA is the first title they have worked on while at Rare. The remaining people stem mostly from the Diddy Kong Racing team. Having recently finished the development of its latest game, the team is no doubt in full swing with its next project by now. What kind of game that could be is too early to speculate."
Just picked up from Raretopia article on Rare teams.
I was just commenting on the fact they allocated newbies to a pretty big licence, so it is not a surprise the game has some flaws.
If those guys are newbies, have never worked on any game, it is natural to think they are just-hired-with-no-game-knowledge people. One more time, it is not a problem to hire a guy with no knowledge. It is done all the time in any company in any industrial sector. the problem is when you have a ratio of half of a big project team with no particular knowledge. Add that the other half has only worked on a racing game before, so Rare was hoping that this team will make a marvelous Zelda clone from scratch ???
First title worked on while at Rare, doesn't necessarily mean first title worked on ever. You may be taking that statement out of context. Anyway, I'm not going to continue to argue about ratio of old employees to new employees and how that effects development since you haven't been in game development yourself. There's probably no convincing you...
btw, those so called new employees could have ended up being there four years. obviously they aren't goign to hire people with no game experience to design a game like starfox adventures. Somehting like that would be left to the older staff, team leaders and designers. I still think you're jumping to conclusions.
Starfox was hardly a zelda clone. It wasn't big enough or long enough. Other that how it uses the controller and presents certain things to the player, it's not a heck of a lot like zelda. Also did you even think that nintendo would WANT them to use similar control schemes to keep a consistent feel through all of it's published projects?
A completed but unreleased N64 action adventure game deisgned for a very limiting platform. Zelda has always been more of a action RPG in my opinion.
That because it was borrowed from Zelda... one of a few simularities. still as far as the adventure/story side of the game goes, it's nothing like zelda. It's also too linear.
CeiserSöze
Newcomer
Qroach said:
I have to disagree there. When playing SFA I always felt that it desperately tried to be a Zelda but never actually suceeded: The control scheme, the general setup (embark on a journey to find some extremely important items necessary to save the world), the "new item(s) grant(s) you access to new areas"-idea, the combat system (basically the same Z-targeting approach but sadly so easy it was ridiculous)... it's all Zelda-style. Even the health-display screams Zelda
But somehow I had fun with all the 3D-Zeldas while SFA bored me to the point where I even considered not playing it through. Still sad that it turned out like this, SFA was one of my most anticipated GCN-titles
Fortunately Metroid Prime came around 2 months later and made up for it Soze
Well like i said, there's simularities. I also said that I'm sure nintendo wanted things to be like that to keep things consistent throughout many of thier games.
...but some fo the things you listed like finding extremly important items needed to save the world, and new items granting access to new areas weren't ideas actually invented by nintendo and or introduced in zelda games. You'll find gameplay mechanics like this in a LARGE number of games. However I do admit they tried to keep things consistent with the way nintendo designs games. Which is probabl yhe reason they worked with nintendo so long and nintendo invested in their company.
Well like i said, there's simularities. I also said that I'm sure nintendo wanted things to be like that to keep things consistent throughout many of thier games.
...but some fo the things you listed like finding extremly important items needed to save the world, and new items granting access to new areas weren't ideas actually invented by nintendo and or introduced in zelda games. You'll find gameplay mechanics like this in a LARGE number of games. However I do admit they tried to keep things consistent with the way nintendo designs games. Which is probabl yhe reason they worked with nintendo so long and nintendo invested in their company.
I'm not talking about articles I'm talking about sources whos said ppl left Rare and went to Eurocom, Zoonami, etc. Rare will be fine though. I'm not painting a bleak picture for them. I'm just unsure if the Rare formula for games will be successful on the XB.
SFA was a good game. Casual's love it. It's done around a half a million now. I liked it. Oh and Wazoo how dare you even mention Zelda and SFA in the same sentence!
SFA was a good game. Casual's love it. It's done around a half a million now. I liked it. Oh and Wazoo how dare you even mention Zelda and SFA in the same sentence!
Goldni said:
Rare has survived for 4 consoels generations, not even counting the Spectrum Ages. They will just be fine. In the end, Ms can sell them to sony
It depends where you put success. From GE level to JFG/Conker level, they have pretty much tried all the ladders in the charts :?
Who can deny that SFA is a Zelda clone?
Quincy, have you played the game? The puzzles and gameplay reek of Zelda, despite rarely (if ever) reaching the level of genius displayed prominently in many of Zelda's puzzles. When playing, I kept on getting flashbacks of OOT.. but the puzzles were less inspired this time around. I kind of expected the same feeling from Wind Waker, but despite the familarity.. TWW had its own well-executed puzzles.. and the "familiar" ones were new enough to entertain me.
All in all, I have some fun when I sat down with SFA.. but the last time was earlier this year.
I can't drive myself to beat it. It's just not good enough.. *prays that Kameo is old-school Rare quality*
Quincy, have you played the game? The puzzles and gameplay reek of Zelda, despite rarely (if ever) reaching the level of genius displayed prominently in many of Zelda's puzzles. When playing, I kept on getting flashbacks of OOT.. but the puzzles were less inspired this time around. I kind of expected the same feeling from Wind Waker, but despite the familarity.. TWW had its own well-executed puzzles.. and the "familiar" ones were new enough to entertain me.
All in all, I have some fun when I sat down with SFA.. but the last time was earlier this year.
I can't drive myself to beat it. It's just not good enough..
*prays that Kameo is old-school Rare quality*Similar threads
