Inside Rare’s new solar-powered Barn X
About a year ago, one of Rare's fans noticed something on Google Maps.
The Xbox developer's offices are at the heart of Manor Park, a huge area of land surrounded by trees, ponds and greenery, which the studio fully owns. It moved there in 2001 and the complex is made up of a central building and four barns – A, B, C and D.
Then last year, Google revealed the existence of a fifth barn, and one substantially bigger than all the others. What is the Sea of Thieves studio up to?
Last week, we got the privilege of visiting Barn X, Rare's new purpose-built, sustainable office that studio boss Craig Duncan describes as "the workspace of the future".
Not to disappoint fans, buy Barn X isn't hiding some super secret Rare game. Nor has the studio been expanding substantially (Duncan says they typically add between 10 to 15 new hires a year). Rather, the new mass timber building is home to the game teams working on the upcoming Everwild, the ongoing Sea of Thieves, plus the firm’s engines and services teams.
"We have a bit of everything in Barn X," Duncan explains. "We have art, we have tech, we have game teams… but we have flexibility.
"We will have the engine team here that will be working with our project teams on all their needs. We will have our services team who will be watching the Sea of Thieves telemetry in real time, and will want to speak to designers and producers literally across the floor. Think about Barn X as 'hey, how do we bring all the teams who need to work together in one space' and then we can use other spaces to do something a bit more bespoke."
Indeed, when Rare’s current studio was first built, each of the barns would house a different team working on a different project, like a Viva Pinata or a Conker or a Perfect Dark. But today, games teams are substantially bigger, and so it was no longer possible to get everyone working on Sea of Thieves in the same building. Barn X is about bringing those teams closer together.
"We have some great spaces, the grounds are
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