Rare's hiring people, and the people it's hiring could be the humble bricks from which next generation gaming excellence is built. Also, there's probably going to be a Kinect Sports 3, crazy as it sounds.
A principal rendering engineer is sought to help "push the boundaries of innovation in entertainment with some amazing new projects". Key accountabilities include the following: "understand, assess and be capable of implementing real-time rendering techniques made possible by DirectX 11". DirectX 11? But Xbox 360 doesn't support DirectX 11, Rare. So either you're crafting a game for PC, or you're working on a new kind of box.
Rather more excitingly (or depressingly - you choose), the studio is in the market for a new principal producer - also with AAA experience, also for work on "amazing new projects" - who can display "experience around delivering and running online services or free-to-play experiences".
Free-to-play is envisaged by some as the console market's future. Epic's Tim Sweeney told audiences at GDC Taipei that Western disc-based gaming is "far, far behind" Asian business models, suggesting that "some day the virtual economy could be greater than the economy for physical goods."
Not sold? Try this on for size: Rare's also rumoured to be working on a next gen FPS.
Ta, Kotaku.
9 comments so far...
Plamsa wing on 12 Jul '12 said:
Please be a new Viva Pinata or Conker, please.
OXM ETboy on 12 Jul '12 said:
Free-to-play Viva Pinata. Now there's an enticing prospect...
Bubblebeard JS on 12 Jul '12 said:
i may be having a really blonde day, but can you explain free-2-play??
Thos. on 12 Jul '12 said:
Genuine question: How would a free to play Viva Pinata be better than a pay version? I presume you would get a bare bones game for free, then have to make small payments to buy extra plants/scenery/animals. Personally I would much prefer a one-off single payment to own the entire game.
Bezza89 on 12 Jul '12 said:
It was sarcasm Thos I believe. But as a genuine answer I'd assume you'd pay for pretty much everything and would agree it would be awful.
Bubblebeard, I'm not sure myself but free to play is getting the game free, but having to pay to do anything in it, ie - FPS you get a gun but have to pay for another magazine when it runs out of ammo, or paying for armour, or paying for another map, or paying to jump. I've heard it described as pay-to-win.
Peter Molyneux is doing an interesting experiment on free-to-play, trying to see what we'd pay for stuff. Game is called 'Curiosity' and you can pay £50,000 for a diamond pick-axe. He's bonkers, but it should be interesting.
CunningSmile on 12 Jul '12 said:
You basically get the main game for free (usually through download) but then give money over for added stuff in small but regular micro-transactions. It's quite common on a lot of Online Games MMO games, but several publishers have said they are looking into it for other games.
Easy example would be to imagine Skyrim. You get the whole game included, but can only wear basic leather armour to begin with, so get stomped on when ever you go to higher level dungeons. If you want better armour or weapons to give you a better chance you'd pay Bethesda a couple of quid and unlock the iron armour which would only get you so far before you felt the need to pay to unlock the steel armour and so on. The developer is basically hoping you will end up paying more because you won't notice you've made 30 £2 purchases rather than one £40 purchase. What you actually get charged for would vary depending on the publisher, but new equipment or access to new areas (ie buying a key to a dungeon or paying a ferry man to take you to a new island) are common in a lot of existing F2P games while the Head of EA has even said he'd like to charge people per bullet on FPS games.
Bubblebeard JS on 12 Jul '12 said:
Cunning, Bezza,
Thankyou for clearing that up for me, it makes a lot of sense when you used skyrim as an example,
do you really think gaming will shift to that method?? because if it did it would probably put me off gaming all together as i just cant afford a few quid here and there to put a silencer on my pistol.
at least when i have paid £40 for the game i know i get the full package (and can download content to expand my experience not have my experience).
Bezza89 on 12 Jul '12 said:
lol Yeah mine was pretty bad analogy!
I'm not sure if it'll catch on - obviously devs are keen to do it in the sense that they will get rich off it and by saying it's 'FREE to play' they might hook, line and sinker a lot more people into playing - more money. In an age where pirating and preowned really are having an effect on profits - games cost nigh on ten times as much to make probably than 20 years ago, maybe even the same for ten years ago yet the prices remain the same to sell.
But gamers aren't idiots - at least I'm not, and I'll never buy into anything of the sort, not even in ME3s MP unlocks, and look to PMs Curiosity for the results of his insane experiment.
It's gone down well in Korea and China... but they're communists and so probably have never played an actual game like skyrim because the devs control the market *Lol I am exaggerating a little bit.
CunningSmile on 13 Jul '12 said:
The only games anyone's really tried as Free to Play so far have been the big MMOs. They've proved quite popular as all the microtransactions have replaced the monthly subscription that everyone was paying and a lot of players therefore feel they've got a bargain. The closest anyone has tried with a single player was Fable 3 and it's annoying "There are new gifts to purchase" pause menu which I don't think worked too well from a business point of view.
Whether it marks the future of gaming I don't know, but if you'd asked me a year ago whether anyone would accept a monthly subscription for a game on top of Gold I would have laughed, but how many subscribers does CoD Elite have? At the very least I think we may see elements of Free to Play sneak into online MP for the big franchises.