Rare Ltd. - Culture

Culture

Unlike some other software developers, Rare gained a reputation for being a very secretive company. The approach to their office buildings, located in Manor Park near Twycross, is monitored by a number of cameras. Web video shows have been granted access in recent years, such as Eurogamer in November 2006, The 1UP Show and GameSpot UK's Start Select in May 2008. Internally, they are quite divided and operate in a slightly different way to other software houses. According to Tim Stamper:

Rare has a different philosophy. We don't really have much contact with other game development companies and we just do things the way they've evolved. We try to employ people who are great games players and games enthusiasts and they're really interested in seeing the other games we're developing in the Company, so it's really a group of games enthusiasts all working together to produce the best games they can - that's Rare.

—Tim Stamper, Video Games Daily interview, February 2003

More recently, Rare has denied a fan site, MundoRare, from filming a documentary about their studios, at MundoRare's own expense. The film was meant to celebrate Rare's 25th anniversary, and would have been distributed over the Internet and Xbox Live. Rare, however, denied permission to shoot this film, claiming it was not "on message". This led to controversy about Rare's current direction with Microsoft, as well as the shutting down of MundoRare, claiming that the site could not support Rare's new direction.

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