Rare Life: Associate Producer
It’s been a while since we did our last batch, but with the games business having blossomed into a hotbed of ongoing recruitment, it seems like a peachy time to bring back Rare’s in-house staff profiles. Hopefully these will prove informative for those hoping to get into a particular line of work, but also entertaining enough to be worth a read for anyone interested in Rare or a general industry career.
In this edition: Mike Wilson, Associate Producer. Produce this, Wilson! Whatever that means.
Rare: What’s your background and how did you arrive at Rare?
Mike Wilson: Arrived at Rare in a car. Drove down from the North of England not long after I finished university where I obtained a degree in Business. As part of my studies, I worked at a cool internet startup in Germany that gave me plenty of community/web experience and helped me secure an initial six-month contract supporting the launch of Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts and Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise. That was five years, two contract extensions and one FTE contract ago, and I haven’t looked back since.
Have you found yourself doing the job you always thought you’d do?
At college I saw myself becoming an Engineer, but two years of Computing convinced me that wasn’t my path into the gaming industry. Working with the community on Nuts & Bolts and Kinect Sports was great, but I was keen to become part of the Production team so when the opportunity arose to move on to Season Two, it was too good to turn down.
What are your main responsibilities on the average game?
Since becoming an Associate Producer, I’ve been focused on defining what features will be included in our games and ensuring those features are delivered to the highest quality. Day to day that includes defining goals for the upcoming sprint, reviewing new builds and discussing the latest Design thinking.
Apr 2013
Rare Does Red Nose Day 2013
Dean from the Rare Events Team writes…
An event like Comic Relief never goes unnoticed at a place like Rare. With it being that time of year again, it seemed appropriate to give everyone a few minutes away from developing awesome games by doing something special. Oh, and to raise some money for a good cause in the process.
After much deliberation by Rare’s own Events Team, it was decided that putting a smile on everyone’s faces required something that crossed all beliefs, social boundaries, races and ages. There was only one thing that fit the bill… appealing to employees’ stomachs in the form of sugary, E-numbery, cakey goodness.
Of course, the Events Team weren’t about to go all Nigella on their own, so the challenge was set for the entire studio to put on aprons, raid the baking aisles at the supermarket and create their own treats to share with cake-hungry colleagues. A small prize and bragging rights would go to the eventual creator of the tastiest effort, judged by in-house chef extraordinaire David.
So at 10:30am on Red Nose Day, Rare’s central hub was a sight for sweet eyes as cakes in abundance filled the room. Cardamom cupcakes, scones (or scones) with jam and cream, chocolate, red velvet, lemon drizzle, cakes shaped like our own Banjo (fittingly, made by Banjo’s creator) and even unicorn ‘leavings’ were there to entice our talented team. Within minutes the entire studio was bouncing off the walls on a sugar high with little but crumbs and an almighty heap of washing-up remaining.
Mar 2013
February Social Frequency
It’s February 2AU – well, it was – and as always, we’ve been driving power to the Rare Twitter and Facebook feeds by running for hours in the big social media hamster wheel down in the maintenance shed. In this way we’ve been able to promote our most recent permanent and contract vacancies, point people towards new Rare staff profiles and start plugging the next wave of Kinect Sports Gems, amongst other things.
We were also happy to have other internet and community content rattling around in the wheel that we could pounce on and broadcast to a wider audience: content including Video Game Pianist Martin Leung’s fine interpretations of Banjo-Kazooie and Banjo-Tooie tunes, Conker classroom art and sculpture, NeoGAF’s wistful ruminations on Wizards & Warriors, Rare Gamer’s Top 5 Unsolved Mysteries and a whole bouquet of features that (kind of) tied in with Valentine’s Day including another Top 5, Jo Dark and a bunch of drunks. Ah, the romance.
Other subjects of our sometimes-related ramblings included cyberpigs with old Banjo NPC names, Twitter milestones, the Harlem Shake, Wreck-It Ralph, improper Texan grammar and a sideways look at the week’s equine news. Also, if you didn’t know, we totally have a pool table.
A rapid escalation of amphibian namedropping saw February dubbed the Month of Battletoads: we had 1UP (RIP) pondering the low profile of Rash & co. amongst other Missing Mascots, Arcade Sushi’s ‘Toads vs. Dragons match-up, reports of a live performance, a couple of mag scans from back in the day, and of course the whole surreal Groupon affair even as the curtain descended on February in all its wonder.
Want to keep on keeping on following us more regularly? Initiate super pursuit mode and chase down the RareLtd Twitter profile or the RareLtd/KinectSportsOfficial Facebook pages. If you don’t, we can’t be held responsible if any of this stuff comes up in a pub quiz. What? How do you know it won’t?
Mar 2013
Rare Life: Senior Test Lead
It’s been a while since we did our last batch, but with the games business having blossomed into a hotbed of ongoing recruitment, it seems like a peachy time to bring back Rare’s in-house staff profiles. Hopefully these will prove informative for those hoping to get into a particular line of work, but also entertaining enough to be worth a read for anyone interested in Rare or a general industry career.
In this edition: David Wong, Senior Test Lead. Testing testing, one two.
Rare: What’s your background and how did you arrive at Rare?
David Wong: When I was at college, I used to make a detour to the local amusement arcade every day rather than actually go to college – I skipped so many lessons that on the day I actually turned up, my lecturer turned round and said “who is that?”.
I’ve always been better at playing video games than doing anything else. My brother actually worked for Rare as an Engineer, and he told me one day that they were hiring Testers. I grabbed the next train down from Scotland and got an interview. My interviewer asked what I thought of a racing game he currently loved, and I basically spent the interview telling him how rubbish I thought it was. That was a very long train journey home as I kicked myself repeatedly for being daft enough to argue with the person trying to give me a job. Miraculously, I still got it, and I’ve been here ever since!
Have you found yourself doing the job you always thought you’d do?
Definitely not. On the one hand, I never dreamed there would be so much work and effort behind getting a video game onto the shelves – it’s pretty crazy actually, and anyone who thinks testers “just play games all day” needs a slap (Easy Dave! – The Management). On the other hand, not ever did I dream that I could be lucky enough to become a Games Tester. I still pinch myself to this day that I’m one of the lucky few doing a job that they really love.
What are your main responsibilities on the average game?
First and foremost, as a Senior Test Lead I’m responsible for making sure new Testers get all the hardware/software/training they need to do their jobs effectively, handling any issues Testers run into that they can’t solve themselves and ensuring everyone knows what they’re supposed to be doing, but after that I have a whole bunch of other responsibilities. Sending builds to our Test Teams and User Research; thinking up ways to increase Test efficiency; acting as backup for our Release Manager; liaising with a whole host of internal and external parties that need to be kept in the loop when trying to produce a game; hosting and attending lots of meetings; training up existing Testers on new processes and new Testers on existing processes; I could go on…
Feb 2013
Rare Life: Network Programmer
It’s been a while since we did our last batch, but with the games business having blossomed into a hotbed of ongoing recruitment, it seems like a peachy time to bring back Rare’s in-house staff profiles. Hopefully these will prove informative for those hoping to get into a particular line of work, but also entertaining enough to be worth a read for anyone interested in Rare or a general industry career.
In this edition: Ian Bolton, Network Programmer. If you make sure you’re connected…
Rare: What’s your background and how did you arrive at Rare?
Ian Bolton: I joined Rare as a graduate after studying Computer Science at Bath University. My course was four years with the third year spent on placement at a software company in Bradford-on-Avon. It was here that I gained an interest in network programming after working on client/server C code for communicating with the hardware that tested telephone lines.
Have you found yourself doing the job you always thought you’d do?
I always thought I would be a programmer after gaining an interest in computers from an early age, but I did not think I would specifically be a computer games programmer. Despite my love of games, the games industry looked too difficult to get into and I chose to do Computer Science rather than any of the dedicated game programming courses. When I applied to Rare I thought nothing would probably come of it, so when I was given the offer I immediately accepted over another offer I had for a financial programming job in London.
What are your main responsibilities on the average game?
My main responsibilities are usually to oversee the development of the online multiplayer and Xbox LIVE features on a game. This involves maintaining and developing the network code at the game engine level and working closely with the game teams to help meet their requirements for synchronous play. Xbox LIVE covers a wide area and I am usually involved in most aspects of it, for example the matchmaking, parties, invites, voice and video chat, achievements, leaderboards, and rich presence.
Which Rare games have you worked on, and what’s been your biggest achievement?
I have worked on Perfect Dark Zero, Viva Piñata, Kinect Sports, and Kinect Sports: Season Two. My biggest achievement was implementing the online co-operative mode for PDZ on a codebase that was not designed for online play, and having it done for the launch of the game on a new console.
What do you see as the top perk of working for Rare?
The best perk is being able to show family and friends the latest game you have released and which areas you have worked on at Christmas time. Getting free copies of every first party release and discounted Microsoft products is also a pretty good perk!
Feb 2013
January Social Jumpstart
2013! The year we find out what the Mayans were trying to save us from. Seems like a good time to put an end to that AD business and restart the count from 1AU (After Un-pocalypse). So in January 1AU, here’s a rundown of what was circulating through Rare’s ‘channels’.
Beyond spreading the news of a Kinect Sports Gems page update and Ultimate Collection putting players through their paces at an NFL event, we shared a whole stack of pics this month, most notably in the snowy Rare HQ gallery. In fact you could follow the whole (annual) epic snow saga from the first icy morning through a near lock-in to the wintry gallery aftermath. And in the midst of all that was another office shuffle with exciting real-time before and after window shots. Yes! All the red-hot breaking news as it happened! Also cake.
There was plenty of fan activity spanning audio, video, photography, art and cosplay: a celebration of Battletoads‘ music and a YouTube medley of Rare themes, a Field Goal Contest video throwdown, an unlikely Ghoulies/Sports artistic crossover and a snapshot of one fan’s very fine Rare figure collection. And the cosplay? Sure you’re ready? Okay: a re-enactment of Banjo-Kazooie‘s game over scene and a man dressed as a GoldenEye N64 cartridge. Meanwhile Rare Gamer rolled out Top 5 lists themed around Xmas presents, exploitable features and cheat codes while TrueAchievements got cracking on those walkthroughs for Kinect Sports Gems.
Over the course of the month we also mourned THQ and HMV, offered Robin’s flumpet services, dropped some knowledge, learned some new words along with new uses of existing words, tried to subvert a Hollywood film, fought bacterial conjunctivitis and considered developing Xbox Kinetic Tennis Ice Ice Baby Superstar. We kept busy.
Now it’s back to life in the fragile future world of February 1AU, and if you want to keep tabs on how that’s working out for us, we post stuff daily on the RareLtd Twitter profile and at unpredictable intervals on Facebook as RareLtd and KinectSportsOfficial. We also do a monthly summary for THE LIKES OF YOU. Same time next month then?
Feb 2013
Twycross Winter Wonderland
Rare’s 90-acre HQ in the rural English Midlands, custom-built in the late 1990s, is a major asset in terms of recruitment and general working environment. And it always looks especially idyllic with a blanketing of snow, which January has gone out of its way to provide for us this year.
So we rounded up Dale and Bjorn, a couple of dedicated Rare staffers with expensive cameras, shoved wellies on them and pushed them out into the snow with instructions not to come back until they’d taken some nice studio pictures. You can see some of the impressive results above and below, with a couple of less accomplished efforts thrown in from me and, as a bonus, insider peeks at our newly refurbished restaurant and reception area.
Feast your senses! You can almost taste the snow in the air…
Jan 2013
Rare Life: Gameplay Engineer
It’s been a while since we did our last batch, but with the games business having blossomed into a hotbed of ongoing recruitment, it seems like a peachy time to bring back Rare’s in-house staff profiles. Hopefully these will prove informative for those hoping to get into a particular line of work, but also entertaining enough to be worth a read for anyone interested in Rare or a general industry career.
In this edition: James Thomas, Gameplay Engineer. Let’s have it, Trophy Thomas!
Rare: What’s your background and how did you arrive at Rare?
James Thomas: Despite loving videogames from an early age, I got into programming relatively late compared to a lot of others here. I wrote my first “if” during Computing at college and then followed that up with Computer Science at University. Between them they managed to get me up to a decent level, so I was able to put together a ropey FPS demo and send that in to Rare. Although it only ran at four frames per second and featured enemies no more threatening than a series of white triangles, it managed to get me past security and I’ve been here for just over ten years.
Have you found yourself doing the job you always thought you’d do?
Yes. And no. Being completely honest, I wasn’t 100% sure what games programmers did when I first set my heart on cracking the industry. So whilst I have achieved my dream job, it’s been so varied during my time here that I don’t think I could have predicted that.
What are your main responsibilities on the average game?
On my last couple of projects I’ve been involved at a lot of the early planning. This is an honour and a privilege but what it boils down to is a lot of architectural design, pouring thought into large UML diagrams and flow charts that describe just how we will build the game and how all its constituent parts work together. Whilst this may not sound very attractive, it’s extremely beneficial and gives a great insight into what the next few months will contain.
After that initial phase, it’s time to get my hands dirty. My duties lie mainly on the gameplay side of things – sitting above all the system level code and actually coding up the fun bits. For Kinect Sports: Season Two‘s Tennis this involved getting things like the AI and the ball up and running, but also getting a whole mini-game to myself, all of it spent working closely with a Designer to ensure that everything was what had been expected.
Finally, and this goes for everyone: bugs. No matter how well you think you’ve programmed, there will be errors and the last stage of any project is squashing them good and hard so they don’t come back.
Which Rare games have you worked on, and what’s been your biggest achievement?
So far my CV reads: Grabbed by the Ghoulies, Viva Piñata, Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise and Kinect Sports: Season Two.
Jan 2013
