Sea Of Thieves – treasure chests, but no loot boxes

GameCentral talks to one of the leads behind Rare’s new online adventure, about microtransactions and pet parrots.

CLICK HERE FOR OUR HANDS-ON PREVIEW OF SEA OF THIEVES

CLICK HERE FOR OUR INTERVIEW WITH MIKE CHAPMAN ABOUT SEA OF THIEVES’ END GAME

Now that it’s barely more than a month from release, there shouldn’t be that much more to learn about Sea Of Thieves – Rare’s ambitious new online co-op adventure. But while you may well have played it during the recent closed beta there’s still much to be announced about new features that will be added after launch, and how the game will seek to use microtransactions. Or to put it another way, whether it has loot boxes. And that’s one question, amongst many others, we were able to ask executive producer Joe Neate when we met him at a recent studio tour of Rare HQ…




GC: So, now that you’re number one on Twitch you must feel validated about the whole concept behind Sea Of Thieves.

JN: Fundamentally, yes! It was something we felt massively confident about, but the day before the beta started we had Phil Spencer here, and Matt Booty – who’s now the new head of Microsoft Studios. We went out to dinner and Phil asked, ‘Are you nervous about tomorrow?’ And I was like, ‘No, but I should be, shouldn’t I?’ But ultimately, it’s out of your hands once you flip that switch on.

But we felt so confident with the experience we had, and that so many people had resonated properly with it, so we just sat back and watched the videos. And it was mind-blowing in terms of the stuff that came out.

GC: I noticed in the titles of the videos, in your little PowerPoint show, that the big question most people still raise is ‘What do you actually do?’ Do you think that uncertainty is the main obstacle to attracting people to the game?

JN: Honestly, I think… it’s a unique game. I can’t just go, ‘It’s this crossed with this’. And I think that’s its strength. Ultimately, it’s a co-op adventure game that you can go out and do all of the kind of pirate-y things that you’d expect. But you’re in a shared world with other players, and it’s the emergence of the world, the emergence of the mechanics, the emergence from encountering other players that makes the game unique. That makes every story different. And the best way for people to understand that is to watch people play. Well, actually the best way is to play it. [laughs]

GC: It does make me think of something Amy Hennig from Uncharted said a few weeks ago, where she said the reason people don’t make linear single-player games anymore is not that people don’t like them but that they just watch them on Twitch. Could that be a problem for you, that they watch the game but don’t buy it?

JN: No, because our game – and I’m not talking about what other games don’t have, I want to talk about what our game does have – is the possibilities. When you’re watching somebody play Sea Of Thieves you’re not watching what you’re gonna be doing, you’re watching their adventure. You watch it and then you think, ‘What could I go and do in that world?’ You’re not just going, ‘Well… that’s the story is it?’



When I look at the amount of people that were driven towards playing the game by the NDA lift on the beta, we had the most people play it ever out of a similar-sized player base.

I know, for a fact, that lifting the NDA and making a really fun, watchable experience drove loads more people to come towards our game. I don’t want to be so crass as to talk numbers [laughs] but by every measure of awareness and interest and excitement about people wanting to come and play our game it was a massive success.

And because it’s a different experience every time, because every adventure can be different, because of the whole way the game is designed, you’re not going to get fatigued watching people play this. Instead it might give you a spark of creativity, the inspiration for something you wanna go and try. That’s the beauty of it and the magic of it.

GC: How much of this was planned? I can almost imagine someone looking at Twitch and then designing something that specifically appeals to it. Which is not a negative thing by any means, especially as shooters are not intrinsically interesting to watch.

JN: Yeah, they’re just competitive. They rely on hard skills. We like soft skills… social skills. And using EQ – emotional quotient.

GC: Oh my good god, the buzz words!

JN: [laughs] It’s from the original pitch, I can still remember it. [laughs] But seriously, people being good socially and being good in a group, and being good at helping each other, is as important in our game as any other skill. And coming in to have a good time socially, and bonding with players, is what we want people to do.


GC: So did that pitch come before any thought of whether it would be fun to watch?

JN: I’ll show you, this is Gregg Mayles’ Twitter. This was before it was even ‘creating stories together’. There you go: Group Shaped Narrative!

Nearly 4 years ago, a clumsily titled concept envisaged a different type of multiplayer game where players would create 'experiences that are entertaining to watch'. Today we'll start to find out whether #SeaOfThieves has achieved this pic.twitter.com/vblR45ywF7 — Gregg Mayles (@Ghoulyboy) January 24, 2018

GC: [reads] A different type of multiplayer game where players would create experiences that are entertaining to watch.

JN: These are literally the black and white slides that we had for our very first vision, before it was pirates, before it was anything else. We just felt that… we loved watching games like that. DayZ [pronounced Day-Zee] was a great example, or Day-Zed or whatever.

GC: I remember calling it DayZed with an American developer once, and he absolutely refused to understand what I was talking about it. I’d never heard it said out loud before, so I didn’t realise. So instead I convinced him we call the rapper Jay-Zed.

American PR guy: [laughs]

JN: [laughs] You’re always being contrary, David!

GC: I wouldn’t mind, but the DayZ guy is a Kiwi. He should know the Queen’s English! [laughs]

All: [laughs]

JN: But, honestly… there was a video called the Gentleman Bandit – you can go and watch it on YouTube now – of a new player encountering an experienced player. And the experienced player basically robs him at gunpoint. But then he feels really bad about it, because the guy’s going, ‘I’m new, what am I doing? Can’t I come with you?’ [laughs] And he’s saying, ‘No, I just robbed you!’ And that video was in our original pitch doc.


Because this is a growing thing, right? This watchable nature of games. And that that’s how it helps games grow, and helps people get interested in them. And it lands the excitement of what a game can be. And so before we pitched Sea Of Thieves to our exec leadership within Xbox we wondered, ‘Will they get this?’

And so we actually included five examples from other games of what we mean by stories. One of which was that DayZ video, one was an EVE Online story about a massive betrayal over years – which was only a written story but still as interesting and fascinating.

But we had to say, ‘No, we don’t want to make one of those games. This is our opportunity to make a game like this that’s broad and accessible, and is a fun and welcoming multiplayer experience without the rough edges and the harshness of a permadeth system or playing for 60 hours in EVE Online and hoping you don’t get jumped immediately. So we wanted to take what was special about those games and bring this stuff to a broader and new audience – especially on console.

That was always our goal, but I think now our strategy was very forward-thinking. And the growth of it has surprised even me in terms of the watchable, shareable side of things.

GC: It does all sound like a very sinister mix of marketing buzz words and corporate manipulation, and yet I have to admit the game is actually really enjoyable and unique.

All: [laughs]

GC: But thanks to Battlefront II and others, games as a service is already getting a tarnished reputation amongst some gamers. I don’t think you’ve ever said anything about the darker side of that, about microtransactions and loot boxes?

JN: Nope, we haven’t. But our approach to Sea Of Thieves and the games as a service conundrum is… we’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this, and so our goal for launch is we’re trying to deliver the best game experience we possibly can. All our focus is, ‘Let’s deliver a great game, a great set of features, a great experience that works no matter how many people come in’. And so for launch there’ll be two ways to come into the game, one of which is buying it and the other is Game Pass. And that’s cool, so that’s your avenue into Sea Of Thieves, at the beginning.

So our focus for the launch period – the first month or two months – is really about, ‘Let’s just ensure people are having a great time, that all of our design decisions are being met in the right way, people are behaving in the right way.’ Like, if there’s clamouring for, ‘Hey, you need to address this, you need to fix this, you need to change this’ we can react to that. So we’ve got space in our roadmap and schedule for each team to tackle unknown stuff.

But a few months after launch will be when we really begin our service in earnest. In terms of when we add new, meaningful features to the game. At that point we’ll be moving into our service phase of the game, and it feels like introducing optional ways for people to spend money then is okay. And when we introduce stuff into the game it will be done in the right way for the Sea Of Thieves game experience.

So it will be fun, social, optional things. So, for example, pets. If we introduce pets into the game, the ability to buy a cat…

GC: The word parrot, with several question marks next to it, is on my list of questions.

JN: [laughs] Yes, or a parrot. It’s the kind of thing that will be with you, it’ll come and fly and land next to you or wherever. But it’s something you can pick up and hold because, ‘Oh, it’s a parrot, it’s my pet!’ But then I could also pick up your pet and run away with it for a while.

GC: Surely that’s against the pirate code?

JN: [laughs] It’ll come back, but I’ll put it somewhere else on the ship for a laugh. Or I’ll take it with me up the top of an island, but whenever I let it go it’ll come back to you. It’s a bit of messing around and a bit of social fun, and we’ll test it and we’ll see if it works. But what we want to do is things that are funny and add to the fun, social magic of Sea Of Thieves. So we’re never going to sell anything that impacts progression, or impacts power in the game. And you’ll always know what you’re going to buy if you want to buy anything – there’s no loot boxes.

GC: There’s no loot boxes?

JN: Correct.

GC: Good.

Sea Of Thieves – a pirates life can be for everybody

JN: For us, we were like: for launch a great game experience is the focus. As we move into the service and we start adding stuff, we’ve got no intent to do anything that separates players. So we wouldn’t want to be charging for updates and things to the game, because everything we add to the world – we want everyone to experience that. But as a business I want to keep as many people on this team as possible, to add as much awesome to the game as possible.

But judging success as a game as a service takes in a few different kind of inputs. One is monthly active users, whether they’re from people that have bought the game or they’re people that are coming through Game Pass that’s a healthy measure of success for us. And it’s gonna be really interesting to see what that split is. And so that will be one measure.

Any additional revenue once we’ve added the ability to spend money is a measure, but also how many people are streaming and watching and how much we are driving Mixer and everything. All of those things, it’s our responsibility as a first party to support that and drive that. And when I talk about the strategic decisions we made at the start of this project, they’re so aligned to where the Xbox organisation is going right now…

GC: I’m sure Phil Spencer is very pleased with you.

JN: [laughs]

GC: The thing about loot boxes is that they are a terrible thing. If they’re non-cosmetic they destroy the concept of fair gameplay and even if they are cosmetic-only they prey upon the young and those with addictive personalities. And yet if I was a business exec, particularly one that didn’t really care about games themselves, I’d be jamming loot boxes into everything. Because they make a huge amount of money. So why aren’t you using them?

JN: I think we have to look at what’s appropriate for Sea Of Thieves. And I think Sea Of Thieves, at its heart, is a fun social experience. That’s what it’s always been. One of the trickiest things to innovate in, almost, is business. And driving additional revenue. With everything with Sea Of Thieves we’ve looked at doing something different, something new, and something that feels right for us. And I think this should be no different. And ultimately it should be right for our players.

GC: Do you feel that’s a moral decision you’ve made?

JN: [pauses] I just think it’s the right decision for it. I don’t want to cast aspersions on other ways of making money or driving business.

GC: It sounds almost too good to be true almost. Why aren’t you being evil? Why doesn’t Phil Spencer, or any exec at any games company, come along and tell you to fill your game with loot boxes?

JN: I think Phil empowers his teams to make decisions like that, and run themselves as a business. Rare as a studio has its own accountability and its own decision-making and I love that about it.

GC: Did it ever come up, at a corporate level?

JN: I don’t even know to be honest. People want to know what your plan is, and you present it and talk about it in the right way. But it’s about those different threads of what success looks like it. It’s the monthly active numbers… it’s all of these different pieces, it’s not just one. And us going into Game Pass is because we want to drive Game Pass because we think that’s super cool for our players too, in terms of choice.

GC: I’m struggling to find any evidence of corporate evil here. As Witchfinder General I’m failing in my job.

JN: [laughs] Honestly, I feel good about our plans to launch, and our plans beyond launch, and they’re player-centric but they will also lead to us being a success.

GC: I wasn’t trying to trap you there with the moral question. I firmly believe loot boxes are a cancer on gaming, and any company that purposefully decides not to use them deserves praise.

JN: We’ve landed on something that I believe is as positive as asking people to spend money can be.

All: [considerable laughter]

GC: So will the pets and whatever else, will you be able to earn those with in-game currency as well?

JN: A bit. There will be options to earn some of this stuff in some ways. But we’re not quite ready to hit the exact details of how that will happen.

GC: Can you give any indication of how long Sea Of Thieves is expected to last? Are you leaning towards the World Of Warcraft model or Destiny?

JN: As long as people are playing this game we wanna be supporting it and growing it. And as long as it’s making sense, with all of those different lenses on what makes us a successful business. As long as it’s possible, basically. That’s why I’m genuinely excited about the future of where this can go.

GC: The pirate theme alone suggests so many ideas.

JN: We’ve got so many. Honestly.

GC: I was hoping you were taking notes when I first met you, and we were talking about monkey butlers.

JN: Yeah, yeah! [laughs]

GC: Is there a roadmap? Do you know what you’re going to be doing for the next year or two years?

JN: Right now we have a detailed roadmap to the end of this calendar year. ‘Cause it becomes unwieldy to really think beyond that. Because things will change and adjust. But we have a high-level one and we have real clarity of the detail of that first major update. And… you’re meeting Mike next?

GC: Yeah.

JN: He’ll talk about the progression priorities and then you should ask him what the first update is, because it’ll fit into that. But we’ve got all the ideas in the world and I think it will be a mix of us going in and delivering on the themes we think are unique and special, and that are right for the Sea Of Thieves experience. But also taking feedback and listening and having a reactive kind of measure as well.

GC: Is this stuff led by what should be in it because it’s a pirate-y thing or is it led by what should be there in terms of gameplay?

JN: Both. It’s a good question. But also, what gives pirate legends, the most engaged players, new things to go and achieve. What gives new breadth to the emergent awesomeness of the adventure? But all done through our own lens, which is a slightly crooked, wonky lens on games that’s the special Rare kind of sauce. Which is why we’re going to do things that maybe people don’t expect, and they don’t know they want until they’ve got it.

GC: OK, that’s great. Thanks for your time.

JN: As always… it’s been a pleasure.

Formats: Xbox One and PC

Publisher: Microsoft Studios

Developer: Rare

Release Date: 20th March 2018

CLICK HERE FOR OUR HANDS-ON PREVIEW OF SEA OF THIEVES

CLICK HERE FOR OUR INTERVIEW WITH MIKE CHAPMAN ABOUT SEA OF THIEVES’ END GAME

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