There are precisely three things of note about the sleepy English town called Twycross. In no particular order: Twycross Zoo, which attracts approximately 500,000 visitors a year to see one of the finest assemblies of primates in the country. Second, it’s near the Bosworth Battlefield, where 13,000 men were attracted to fight in the last real battle of the War of the Roses. Third, Rare Ltd., which Microsoft so loved that it cut a $375-million check to possess it utterly.

The offices of Rare -- rarely seen by the public.

When it comes to discussing Rare, that row of zeroes is both unavoidable and unfortunate. On the one hand, why should a gamer even be thinking about this stuff? Yes, Microsoft got more kick-per-dollar from buying Bungie at a 10th of the price, but should that matter to anyone other than suited men in the accounts division? The games are what matters.

But here, Rare has seemingly faltered, too. Xbox 360 launch titles Kameo: Elements of Power and Perfect Dark Zero sold well, but were generally considered average by critics. Conker: Live and Reloaded and Grabbed by the Ghoulies weren’t even considered that. The clever Viva Piñata again showed the studio’s deft touch, but it never escaped the shadow of the epic blockbusters, and too many gamers never stuck around for its deep play experiences due to its hyper-colored kids’ clothing.

Viva Piñata showed that Rare still had something — but was it something the 360 owner wants? And why does the forthcoming Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts risk turning away new fans with its cute stylings, and risk alienating old fans who won’t endure a seemingly radical reinvention of their old love?

But the biggest question is this: What is Rare thinking, and why are they thinking it?

The “Y” in Twycross

It’s searching for those answers that brought us to their rural headquarters. There’s an odd exoticism to Twycross; Rare’s simple low-rise building is a jewel mounted in the countryside. Rare is the one developer where you have to wait for ducks to waddle clear before heading up the driveway. It’s about as English as a place can get.

A picturesque pond provides inspiration at the Rare campus.

So why is one of the biggest developers in the country all the way out here? “As a creative company, we found the environment was very conducive to being creative,” says Mark Betteridge, studio director. “It’s great to be able to look out of the window and see rolling green hills, a beautiful environment, and wildlife. It’s built so we can do our best creative work.”

To understand Rare best, you have to understand why it even exists. And no matter who you ask, you’ll get variations on the same answer: Rare develops things that Microsoft’s other studios can’t or don’t. “There’s no doubt that Microsoft has some fantastic games that have sold millions of units,” Betteridge tells us. “But we need to look above and beyond those to get to 50 million, 100 million boxes.” The more the Xbox sells, the more Microsoft needs the “softer” edge of Rare, to reach new people with new gameplay experiences. They’re a company with an enormous history that they seem to have little interest in actually plundering. It has to be new. “The moment you stop doing that, you’re stuck with the customer base you’ve got, and we start spinning them around and around without looking above and beyond,” says Betteridge. “It’s got to come from new projects, new approaches, new interfaces, and the way you play games. And that’s what interests us as much as anything at the moment. Banjo looks fantastic, but [its looks] are not what we’re about.”

The Goldeneye Thing

When you arrive at Rare, you wonder if they’re a company that’s actually overshadowed by their bigger projects. All those multimillion sellers must loom large. In reality, the studio is philosophical and realistic about its own history. “There’s always a distortion because of things like GoldenEye,” says Viva Piñata 2’s lead programmer, Will Bryan. “You have this massive success, but you’re never going to be able to live up to the imagined highlights of your previous achievements, to people’s imaginings of how GoldenEye was.”

Actually, Rare seems trapped not by its history, but by its philosophy. The company tradition is to happily create quietly experimental, family-friendly gameplay coupled with an enormous generation of ideas. In other words, the studio has a pathological dislike of repeating itself. The Viva Piñata Team, for example, can’t see doing a third one soon. Sav Fileccia, lead programmer on Nuts & Bolts, suggests that if Microsoft hadn’t bought Rare and preserved its creative freedom, they’d have been picked up by a third-party publisher and would be on Banjo 5 by now. “Some people want more of the same, same, same, over and over again,” adds Gavin Price, Banjo's multiplayer designer (seen here at the right). "As soon as they finish one FPS, they want another one to play all the way through.”

There are worse things to be trapped in than a steadfast belief in constant creativity — and if the Rare folks find themselves in tune with the zeitgeist again, it’ll be worth it for everyone. Perhaps that’s the fundamental difference between the purchases of Bungie and Rare: With Bungie — a maker of fine games beforehand, to be sure — Microsoft was primarily buying a game it wanted. With Rare, it bought an institution, a philosophy.

The team also stands behind its less popular games, including the studio’s first Xbox release, Grabbed by the Ghoulies. “It was something different,” explains Bryan. “We’d just been bought out from Nintendo, and we were going onto Xbox, which was always seen as the FPS platform at the time. We’re all proud of it and would happily play it. People probably wanted Banjo 3."

For Rare, the game’s reputation has over-calcified into a dogmatic word-of-mouth. “I’ve no metric for this, but a lot of the people I see talk about Ghoulies on forums talk about it as if it’s supposed to be a bad game," says community manager George Kellion. “As if they’ve heard many people talk about it badly, but they might not have had much direct contact with it at all.” Generally, the situation is treated with Rare’s typical sense of selfdeprecating humor. In Banjo, there's an early sight-gag of trash bins packed full with copies of Grabbed by the Ghoulies. "We always joke 'What shall we do next?'" says Brian. "Ghoulies 2." Obviously.

The Family Business

And there’s a nagging doubt that the diminished sales may be partially due to different audiences. Rare’s belief in a friendly exterior that hides hardcore depth may be more convincing on a Nintendo machine, where years of Miyamoto games have indoctrinated the fanbase to that approach. “There’s definitely a lot of people who’ve said that if [Rare’s post-2002 output] was released on a different platform than it was, it would’ve been received a lot better than it has been,” says Fileccia. “Maybe. It’s true, we have been maligned, but whether that’s unfair or not, I can’t really comment.” And as to whether Rare has lost its magic touch? “Well, it’s up to us to change everyone’s opinions again,” offers Price. “Let’s get on with it. Everyone just thinks, ‘Keep our heads down, make great games.’” Internally, they consider Viva Piñata a turning point, noting that for a game that supposedly “hasn’t sold well,” it shows up as having been played on 1 million Xbox Live accounts.

More gorgeous, creativity-stoking scenery at Rare.

But through all the belief, there’s a sense — weighted by their lack of a blockbuster — that the studio may be out of time. Not losing a race against deadlines, but stuck in another era, away from the current trends in popular gaming. “Maybe we’re the vanguard,” suggests Justin Cook, lead designer of Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise. “That might be true,” offers Bryan. “I think we want gaming to be broader and bigger. You can’t do that by telling other people that and then making shooters and mature titles. That we’ve slipped into the genre thing is a lapse, and we need to drag it back.”

“In effect, it’s an investment,” explains Cook. “We’re trying to make more games for more people. If you’re looking at it coldly, the bigger the audience, the more likely we are to sell more games. But I personally just think there’s a lot more that games can offer that we haven’t really touched upon. When we have more people interested, it won’t be so bad taking a risk on a game style that isn’t popular, as there might be enough people to support it. And you can’t ask people to do that — you have to set an example.”

Mind Games

In other words, the key concept isn’t “kids” — it’s “family.” While no one’s arrogant enough to make the claim about themselves, the Rare folk do talk admirably about Pixar appealing to pretty much everyone. That’s their task and their aim; the problem remains making a game that’ll force a whole new generation to buy into it.

Games like Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts support Rare's core values.

Our visit boils down to one simple, direct question: What are people missing? And why have they got Rare wrong? “You get these people who are fanboys of the Xbox or PS3 or whatever,” says Gavin. “There seem to be fewer people now who just want to play good games, no matter what platform they’re on, or what genre they belong to. That’s what we’re trying to do — make great games. And if you’re a gamer and play our games, then we’d like to think you’d have a good time. I guess we’d just challenge people to play the games with an open mind, and see how they get on.”

So that’s a leak. Microsoft’s new essential peripheral for Q4: An Open Mind. And that’s the one thing that really would improve gaming.