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Perfect Dark 2 has been canned from XBOX 1 and is going over to XBOX 2.
Sabre Man Stamped has been canned from XBOX 1 and may not even be made for XBOX 2.
Kameo looks like its not going to be finished and may be canned.
Ghoulies has just been launched, sales are not to good and it should have been canned.
conker ? small little rodent ? when are you going to learn ?
Piñata is going to be a game that you get free on the XBOX 2 hard drive. You put seeds in a virtual garden and water them and watch them grow. The more games you buy the bigger your garden gets. Nice idea I think it was SHIGERU MIYAMOTO who came up with the idea for the game cube but didn't bother to implement it as he thought it would be a waste of time.
Please someone from Microsoft go into Rareware and fire all the producers they are all useless and very rich, its not fare on the artists as they are some of the best in the world, but most of them have gone on to better companies as they have lost faith in there team leaders.
http://www.rareware.com/
Someone I know got made redundant the other day, while four of my work colleges where taken off a team and put into a room with menial tasks to do. The tasks were going to be reviewed each month until the management decide they have grounds to fire them.
Do you think Microsoft can sort it out, What do you think?
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this woudnt happen to be because of microsoft stormtrooper shakeup visit this week is it?
repeat after me rarekids "AWESOME"
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Microsoft boys came around rareware today, they seemed happy with what they saw, oh my god. MICROSOFT !! wake up all our games or not even second rate, our games are even worse then "Blinks" and we all know how much you spunked on that game.
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I'd laugh if I didn't know every word of it was true. I too was once a Rare drone until I left. I really really loved the company before I joined. I truely believed that it was a world class company.
It isn't. It pays badly. It's managed badly. People spend a lot of time moaning and bitching about thing. People look out for themselves. This kind of culture doesn't just spring up overnight, it's the result of years of carefully planned activities such as:
Ignoring your staff.
Having a pay raise freeze, and capping the Xmas bonus (6 months before they sold to Microsoft)
Rewarding you based on the length of time at the company or whether you are friends with the top players (or in the case of the PDZ designer, married to them).
Having a half hour lunch. It's in the middle of no-where so you can't do anything during a working week (like visit the bank, or pop into town).
No external email.
No external internet access apart from a team shared "internet" machine.
I too have friends at Rare. I know a few are already making plans to leave. The Rare way though is simply to replace them with 21 year olds straight from Uni that think, like I did, that working stupid hours for Rare is a dream in itself. The dream wears fine pretty quick.
Rare: the classic example of power. It corrupts.
One last tip though. If you are in anyway in control of another employee.....please go on a management training course. Really...do. Because you lack the skills needed to manage. This is not a Rare thing. Lots of people in this industry think that because they're a good artist or programmer that they can be a good manager.
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Here's a thought. Rare...a company with a Nursery for it's employees. Wonderful. That saves a load per month for a lot of staff that have worked there for a long time...and now have a family and children.
Amazingly it was closed....weeks before Xmas last year...why?
Oh yes....to save money.
And to avoid paying the nursery staff Xmas bonuses (staff they took with them on holiday to look after the kids....nice).
And of course because all the Stamper/Tilston children had left (making it soooo obviously pointless).
Oh well....I guess they must suffer the plague of evil employees. Maybe we should set up a new charity....Millionaires in Need.
Give generously...they do have to pay for Steven Stamper after all...the highest paid gardener in the WORLD....
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Please Microsoft storm us as you normally do and get rid of the management before I lose all credibility.
P.S. can rare's so called management stop telling off its staff for posting notes on fat babies, your better off just getting in some professional management who wouldn't stoop so low to see if there staff where posting notes at lunch.
I'm looking forward to the Xmas party but please don't make me dress up in children's clothes again.
Can you also give me a weeks wage at Christmas instead of the usual £250
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You're joking? They've been whinging about postings on Fatbabies?
Typical Rare: moan about the problems rather then try and address the issues. "You better stop being nasty to me or I'l scream and I'l cry and I'll hold my breath until I turn purple".
Problem for me, as an Ex-Rare is I don't actually think the management (I always got on quite well with Betteridge and Bayliss) are arseholes. Really...I don't. I just think they think that because they could run a company with 30 employees....well heck then can run one with 190+. You can't. It's not your fault. No one can. You need a localised management structure. Some guy with a problem is not going to go talk to Farmer about an issue because:
He earns more in a month then you do in about 5 years.
He will completely disregard what you have to say...not becaue he's horrible but because the Rare way got them this far...thus the Rare way is the right way. So they won't listen, and they will tell you so. Without even trying to put it in a nice way.
He (and they) will remember what you said and hold a grudge against you in the future - even if this is just paranoia, it's paranoia brought on by the current structure in place.
Too rich, too quick with little thought about the company outside the director and the choosen few except in terms of "those slacking employees".
It really is a pity because I still love Rare (obviously I'm a masochist), and it breaks my heart to see what is plainly in front of their faces (can't see the wood for the trees come to mind) - that the end....in one form or another, is nigh.
A company best asset period, is it's employees. Not it's IP. Not it's portfollio. Not it's past history. Not it's computer controlled office. Once that's gone then your just left with fanboys, a bad reputation and being laughed at in the industry press. Oh....and of course Microsoft will replace you all.
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Then of course there's the one when he wanted an employee to come to his office, but the employee wanted to listen to then end of song on the radio and said "Just a minute", so now no one can listen to music, even with headphones?
Work should be a partnership. You work best when you work for each other. Rare is more a dictatorship....and every employee knows it...and that's sad.
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You are forgetting that most people who produce art or program on computers became interested in games for there love of the genre "games entertainment".
Believe me, people at rare are doing their own thing every day as there is no direction or passion from there bosses, just a bunch of management, producers and bankers who hate there work force.
I used to love rare games and I though it was great when I got a job there but the fact is the management is useless and there is no system for getting games out on time.
As much as I hate Rare, and the way they treated me for all those years, I don't want to see it go down the pan as it could be such a great company to work for, if only some of the management and there family would stop milking it dry just left.
If they stay then so be it the company will fail, and believe me I know what's about to happen to Rare
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Agreed. Hard work should lead to success. But this simply doesn't apply at Rare.
Riddle me this then: Why was the Lead Programmer of PD Zero (the man brought into salvage what was left of PD after the Free Rads left) basically fired from the company over 1 1/2 years ago? Was the project stalling...no seemed to be very much on time for Xmas '03 release. Was the project impressive? Looked very nice - a massive leap from PD. Was he hard to get along with? He had a reputation for speaking his mind and his staff respected him (and possibly loathed him in equal measure). Was he incompentent? Seemed to be considered one of the brightest at Rare at the time. Was he not working hard enough? Seemed to be working all the hours in the days....and weekends...and this was the beginning of the middle of the project (i.e. no one else in the company bar Starfox was in).
So why was he escorted from the building? Oh yes....I remember. The Art Director and the Designer (married to a Stamper sister) decided that they where being "restricted" too much. If you read that correctly you will instantly know this of a case of too many cooks (see if you can finish the sentence for me?).
How long did it take them to replace him with a lead programmer that had finished a game? Over 1/2 a year.
When can we expect PDZ now (remember I feel it WOULD have made this Xmas previously)? When the Devil has to defrost his car in the morning.
So work hard and get rewarded? Or work hard for 2 years then get kicked out because you told the Designer and Art Director they can't have all their toys in the playpen at the same time?
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It's interesting that the people who are defending Rare here have only just registered to post on FB. Damage limitation anyone?
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....that'll be "BM" you're talking about. I beleive he resigned after being alledgedly threatened by some people at Rare (hmm)... He was a very, very talented guy - one of the best code optimisers out there - But, boy if its the same person, what a right royal pain in the ass - sounds just like that man "Aquam". License my top secret technology.... I need more money.... etc etc
There's a couple of people at the office that worked indirectly with him - they said PDZ was absolutely jaw-dropping on the GC - and these are some smart renderer people, and now it looks like a sack of shit.
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I am also an ex-rare art drone.(why do I feel like im at an AA meeting)
I wouldnt dream of wasting any time or energy mud slinging.Save your energies for something you love. But I would like to say a few words about my experience there, for anyone who would wish to hear.
It is sad to say the unpleasant things said in this thread are all true....
I joined as so many do fresh out of college young naieve and enthusiastic.
I really love art and I can quite honestly say it was my reason for living. But after only a few short years the atmosphere had transformed me from a happy go lucky grinning idiot into a paranoid hate filled animal. In the end I realised the job had actually managed make me hate the art that was once my reason to live. To me it seemed that rare preys on the impressionable and insecure, promoting an atmosphere of back stabbing and paranoia.So strange and isolated in its own little league of gentlemen type world.
Despite this I can honestly say I met some fantastic people there.Especially the artists I had the pleasure of working with and I will always be grateful for all they taught me.(thanks guys) Finally I think i am grateful for the other lessons that rare taught me the hard way.
Having the strength to stand up for myself and leave. Ill never be anyones doormat again. I can smell bulls**t from miles away.Never waste a minute of your life bitching, (or calculating how the bonus scheme works)
because in the end they are both futile exercises.Dont become a prisoner of your own greed.(it takes two to participate in a bonus scheme)
For the lucky ones unencumbered by circumstance, my advice would be "just leave" You`ll soon discover how small twycross really is.
As for my advice for rares future... Sack the managment and hire some of the other monkeys from down the road.They`ve sold more PG tips than you`ll ever sell games, and they could hardly do any worse?
Finally Id like to say my story has a happy ending, I have regained my love of art and joy in life. I discovered I dont need that ferarri to be happy.(but I would still like one)To my comrades still trapped in Twycross detention camp, my heart goes out to you.Start digging that tunnel chaps.
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True, but you must lay the blame at the whole PDZ team for, and indeed Rare. Lots of people write code there that no one else gets involved in, and gets checked when people leave. I can think of 5 seperate examples of this of the top of my head.
The problem with BM was that he allowed to get away with writing too much of the important stuff with out distributing it around the programming. Admittedly given the experience (or lack of it of the rest of the team - none had finished a game) this is no massively suprising, but it shouldn't have been allowed to happen.
I can't really imagine the rest of id (not that BM is anywhere near this level) turning round to Carmack and saying "Can you make it a little less technical....just is case you get run over or something?".
This kind of thing is still the fault of management - either they knew he was running the team on his own and did nothing about it (lazy) or they didn't know what was going on (incompetence).
I don't really know which is worse.
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Rare did look at Renderware....but that company suffers from the worse case of "not written here" syndrome I've ever seen. It's not the Rare way (r).
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