Rare Open To Working With Other Studios On its Franchises

When you’re a game developer, you’re fond of taking care of your “babies,” or the franchises that you grew and nurtured with each successive game release. Handing them off to another game studio can be painful, but sometimes necessary to give them the proper growth. You just have to make sure it’s the right studio.

Rare Ltd. knows this. The team has been working for years on a number of big hits but considering that it’s been so busy with Sea of Thieves and its post-release content, it can’t work on everything.

The team has done pretty good work selecting Double Helix Games (and later, Iron Galaxy) to work on its Killer Instinct fighting game for Xbox One. But Rare studio head Craig Duncan, speaking with IGN Unfiltered, reiterated that it’s all about finding the right studio to team up with.

He noted that finding “the right team” and “right creativity” is incredibly important. In fact, it gets pitches for video games and linear media quite often. “Rare has this 32-year back catalog of heritage and IP, and while I wouldn’t say we were Disney or even Nintendo or Sega or any of the other kind of long-term IP stalwarts in our business, people ask us to use stuff,” Duncan explained.

“It’s absolutely not out of the realm of possibility, but now only does the ‘why have to be right, but the team, and the people and ‘who’ have to be right. Rare is the guardian of Rare’s IP.”

We have seen franchises that weren’t used to full extend in the past. For example, the appearance of Conker the squirrel in Project Spark did entertain some fans. But others wanted something that was more his speed, ala Conker’s Bad Fur Day.

But Duncan remains optimistic about finding the right partners for the right license. “Who knows what the future holds?” he said.

You can see the full interview here. He brings up some great points. And now he has us longing for a Battletoads sequel handled by the team at Yacht Club Games, the guys behind Shovel Knight. Hey, why not? They proved they can handle the ‘Toads already with a boss fight in the Xbox One version of Knight. And E3 is just around the corner…

Meanwhile, you can check out Rare’s latest work on Sea of Thieves now for Xbox One and Windows PC.