On Sea Of Thieves' Fifth Anniversary, Rare Says It Still Has A Point To Prove
From its unconventional progression system to its trailblazing launch on Game Pass, Sea of Thieves has already told an impressive story, but Rare isn't raising sails anytime soon.
By Mark Delaney on
For players, Sea of Thieves is celebrating its fifth anniversary today, March 20, 2023. But for Rare, it's been nearly a decade since the team first started working on what would go on to become one of Xbox's most important IPs of its modern era. Studio head Craig Duncan, creative director Mike Chapman, and lead designer Shelley Preston may not be comfortable putting the game on such a pedestal, but it's hard to deny Sea of Thieves is a milestone for not just Rare, but Xbox, too.
It helped usher in Xbox Game Pass, which today is central to everything Xbox does. It's also brought in more than 30 million players across two Xbox generations, cloud, and PC, boasts a community of passionate fans that virtually live in-character as their pirate avatars, and is marketed on things like E3 banners and virtual showcases right in between mascots such as Master Chief, Marcus Fenix, and the latest Forza cover car. Despite the team's success, it's only now that those I spoke to have taken a moment to look back on the game's voyage to date.
«As a studio, we don't really reflect back that often,» Duncan told me during a meeting with the team. «Everything's always like, 'Okay, we've done that now, it's done, what's next? What's the thing beyond that? Where do we want to be in a year's time? Where do we want to be in two years' time?' That's just the mode we're in.»
It wasn't until they were making a documentary about the game, revealed today as Voyage of a Lifetime, that the team finally stopped to catch their breath and reflect on what's been
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