u/SpiderFan241

I have a background in Project Management, having worked on capital creative projects. I'm looking to gain employment in the industry and plan to attend Develop:Brighton on 15th July 2026, as a developer contact recommended the event.

I've already booked a few panel talks on topics relating to gaining employment in game development and even booked time in with a Recruiter for a studio that I respect highly.

Is there anything else that anyone recommends relating to the event? Whether it's how to make the most of the event when attending for a single day or if there are any tips about the event itself and talking to people. Also, is there a formal dress code or am I going to get laughed out of the building with a t-shirt with a picture of a 90s gaming mascot on it?

Watched the latest developer update and it feels like there are some really positive improvements and changes. It feels like Rare are actually listening to feedback and making some welcome changes. It's also good to hear that the Custom Seas has been finding its intended audiences, with new game modes being made by the community and the promise of more updates being made for the mode.

What do you all think?

I’m sure someone from the company reads the posts on Reddit, so hopefully this gets to you.

Fantastic news on the dispatch and delivery of Nintendo Switch copies to people in certain territories (maybe just the US so far?). It’s great to see people posting photos of their orders.

I appreciate that you’re probably prioritising US based orders first and only dispatching Nintendo Switch standard editions at the moment, as I imagine that’s the only version you have ready to ship.

I’m sure you’ll have seen a lot of confusion and chatter in this subreddit about people not knowing why they haven’t had confirmation of their Nintendo Switch standard edition copies being dispatched yet, and even more confusion around the PS5, Xbox and Collectors Editions.

I think it would be a great time to give an update on the shipping strategy and timeline, just so everyone knows what to expect. I’ve seen some people say that their Gobbo plushies were sent too but others haven’t had theirs. Some transparency would be much appreciated. If you are holding back items to bundle them with other items when they become available to save on shipping, then I understand that but your customers would like to know.

Cheers!

It’s great to see that people are getting their Switch editions in the mail today. Is anyone who ordered from the UK waiting for theirs to be posted still? I haven’t had any confirmation for any of my ordered items.

There has always been investment in the property outside of the game itself, through comics, novels, merch, etx. But the new announcement of the film being in development makes me think that plans for Sea of Thieves in terms of games is still strong.

Many will call it hopium/copium but it feels like if a movie studio is investing in a brand, it stands to reason that Xbox and Rare are still invested? Does this mean that we will likely get a sequel to coincide with the film? I know that it's early days in terms of film development (unless they've already been working on this for a while now - not likely as the producer has been busy directing Spider-Man: No Way Home since early 2025) but for game development, if a sequel was to release alongside a film that might be 2 to 3 years away, that means they would already be halfway through development.

Rare is a large studio and has been getting support for SoT from another studio. So what has everyone been working on? It isn't Everwild, not at least for the last year, so there are a load of people working on Rare's next project. And with the film announcement, Xbox's commitment to Sea of Thieves as one of their main pillars for community driven games, it makes Sea of Thieves 2 the likely candidate. One of the sources for last week's Xbox studio massacre said that Rare is not even part of those conversations, so it seems like they're safe in Xbox's portfolio for the time being.

What do you think?

I think that most analysts agree that GTA 6 will be the biggest media release to date, beating any other game, film and album release. It feels like now is the time to buy, ahead of the pre-orders going live on Thursday. We will likely get a new trailer with actual gameplay either before Thursday to build hype for the pre-orders more or on Thursday. That will cause a surge in investment as, if the leaks are anything to go by, Rockstar have really raised the bar in terms of graphics, NPC AI and realising a living/breathing open-world. This will get everyone excited.

I'm not an analyst but I'd expect there to be a steady rise in share price and interest as we get the first pre-orders numbers through and then of course when the game releases. But then more growth when the first sales figures go live and then when the first earnings call declares how much Take-Two has made from the initial sales and pre-orders. But the thing about GTA games is that they're consistently selling games and are in the charts for years after their initial releases. So it's hard to imagine at what point the stock would even go down (if at all).

YouTube posted a screenshot saying that Thursday is going to be a busy day for them. They're expecting heavy traffic on their website, pointing to Thursday being the expected trailer drop date. But that is only two days away, people are going to be buying now to get ahead of the surge as much as possible.

And the one thing that many may not have considered is this, maybe because they weren't old enough when GTA 5 was released for the first time or didn't pay attention but... GTA 5 did not release with its online component, that was added to the game months after release. I expect it will be the same for GTA 6. And if people think that the sales figures will be the biggest price driver, they're very wrong. GTA Online (the new iteration) will the bigger money-maker for Take-Two, as people pump crazy money into the in-game currency for cosmetics, weapons, vehicles, properties, etc. So when plans for GTA Online are revealed and when that part of the game goes live, that will be another major contributing factor to the share price and it will be what gives the game steady cash flow long after the release.

That's at least my thoughts, I'm not an expert but I am old enough to have seen every GTA game get released and have seen the massive splash upon their release days and then also how long they have managed to stay in the charts afterwards. Each Grand Theft Auto or Red Dead Redemption game basically only gets de-throned in popularity by it's successor. It feels like Take-Two is as safe a bet as anything. The question would be not whether to buy but when to sell.

Tell me what you think.

It feels as though mascot platformers are truly back (Nintendo fans might argue that they never went away but it certainly felt that way on other platforms between the mid 2000s and mid 2010s), with the recent success of AstroBot, the announcement of a new Spyro game and, of course, last year's remaster of Croc: Legend of the Gobbos.

Naturally, the hope is that the game sold well enough to warrant Argonaut approaching a studio to remaster Croc 2 and then that sells well enough to build a business case for a third Croc adventure!

I'd be interested to see what the fans in this sub-reddit would like a Croc 3 to be, what gameplay features and mechanics would be involved, settings, story ideas, etc.

I'll start off by listing a few things that I would really love to see in a third Croc game:

- Controls that feel as tight and responsive as AstroBot. When you fail in that game, it really doesn't feel unfair, it just feels like a lack of judgement on the player's part.

- Full DuelSense feature usage. I'm going to have to mention AstroBot again because I really feel that at least 20% of the enjoyment and immersion in that game comes from how it uses virtually all of the PlayStation DuelSense's features, from the touch pad, to the microphone and from the gyro controls to the haptic feedback. It's not just part of the gameplay, it also makes the game feel good to play. Not enough games utilise this, even first-party titles. But imagine how good it would be to feel Croc's footsteps change on different terrain types and feel the impact of the tail whips and ground-pound jumps.

- A wide variety of settings. A pretty simple idea, one that most gamers have come to expect now (and one that the original game did well).

- Have a modern draw distance in most levels (but not all). I feel that half of the atmosphere was created by not being able to see too far ahead in most spaces, particularly at night or in dark caves. There would be a way to implement something that artificially obscures the draw distance from reaching too far ahead for creepier levels.

- Couch co-op. Perhaps there is another character that is part of the story that a second player could simply press start and play as. It doesn't have to go too deep but it would be a nice way to enable a second player. I would expect the levels to be more expansive (perhaps less linear too), to give a second player enough to do in helping reach the shared goal.

- Gobbo hub area. When you save Gobbos, they then go to a hub area and carry on with their normal lives. But you can customise them or their dwellings and/or businesses, as an extra thing to do between levels. As a comparison, think of the hub areas of AstroBot (yes, I'm referencing that game again, it's just the new gold standard for platformers now) where you get to interact with all the other bots that you've saved. Or another comparison would be the 'Toy Box' mode from the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions of Toy Story 3.

So there are a few ideas, I'm sure the fans will come up with some great ones in the comments! Have fun!

P.S. On a totally different note. If anyone was familiar with the 1980s UK children's claymation TV show called The Trap Door... I always felt like the world of Croc and the world in The Trap Door were one and the same (unofficially, of course). They both had castles surrounded by nothing but darkness, the stones on the floor and walls looked almost the same and every character in The Trap Door seemed to follow a similar design style that made them feel like they could easily exist in the same frame as any other character from Croc. Just an observation, I'd be interested to see if anyone else had that comparison.

I was listening to the GameInformer podcast for the first time, as they were doing their Summer Game Fest predictions. One of the people in the podcast put out the idea that it would be cool if Rare was bringing back an old IP of theirs, my personal favourite old Rare IP, which is Viva Pinata.

Yes, it seems HIGHLY unlikely that the mid-2000s game series would return, though it did have a good run with a few entries across Xbox 360, PC and Nintendo DS and even its own animated TV series. With the popularity of farming sims and management games these days, it would feel like a good time to bring back the colourful critters.

I played the original again not that long ago and whilst graphically it still looks amazing (I think it was one of the best looking early Xbox 360 games), other aspects have shown their age and limitations somewhat. But we are almost three console generations away from that now, so it would be interesting to see what Rare could achieve with that IP on modern hardware.

If Sea of Thieves really is winding down in terms of content, as people on Reddit, YouTube and comment sections insist, then maybe part of the studio has been working on something else since Everwild was cancelled. IF by some miracle it was true, I'd imagine it would only be in early-stage development but maybe we'd get a tease at Summer Game Fest / Xbox Showcase, as Asha Sharma is trying to win back the hearts of the old Xbox fanbase. I think announcing development of one of the Xbox 360 era's best semi-exclusive franchises would be a good move in the right direction. Though I think a Sea of Thieves 2.0 (dropping Xbox One support to enable scope expansion) would probably be a more likely announcement, though not at Summer Games Fest, I'm expecting literally zero mention of SOT at the event, due to what Drew said a couple of months ago.

Would you like to see Viva Pinata return? What do you think could they do with a modern entry to the series? Would you like a SOT 2.0, untethered by outdated hardware? Or would you just rather get a full on sequel (whatever that would look like)?

I have been out of work since June 2025, I was made redundant as my construction project was completed. I sat client-side, I'm not a contractor. I have an interview tomorrow at the dream place that I have been trying to get a position at since even before I left my previous role.

Understandably, I am incredibly nervous. The role itself is something that I know that I can do, it's technically a tier below what I have done previously but it is a foot in the door at the company and the project that I want to be a part of, though the pay is better than the higher role at my previous employer.

Does anyone have any insight or wisdom that has helped them as an interviewee or that they consider to be important as an interviewer? Any advice, stories or wisdom is most welcome.

Has anyone else noticed that the original Jacob's Cheeselets have been replaced by Mini Cheddar's Cheeselets? The former product was meant to be released to expand the range, rather than replace it. But in my local Sainsbury's and on Tesco.com, the only Cheeselet product available is the two new flavours under the Mini Cheddars branding. Note: Mini Cheddars and Jacob's are both owned by Pladis.

I remember the build up to this film's release in 2013, I must have watched the trailer about 50 times. I listened to the music from the trailer probably twice as much.

The film came out, I watched it, I felt slightly underwhelmed. It didn't hit me the same way that I was expecting from the trailer. I was 22 at the time and I didn't watch it again until a month ago. The film hits VERY differently now. Walter is much more relatable, now that I'm in my mid-thirties and the themes of the film resonate in ways that I did not expect when I started me re-watch a month ago.

I don't often watch films twice in a single year, I've now watched Walter Mitty twice in one month and even though I'd seen it just a few weeks ago, the second rewatch (third watch to date) was not boring. If anything, I picked up on more details.

I've gone from just knowing those two songs from the trailer to listening to the whole soundtrack, even making it my inspirational/creative/productivity playlist.

If you haven't seen The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, I would strongly recommend it. And if you watched it in your early 20s and it didn't quite leave an impression on you, I'd recommend a rewatch.

Ben Stiller has always been a great comedic actor (and he is in this) but there is something much more tragic, emotional and hopeful in his performance at Walter. The supporting characters that support, hinder and challenge him all feel memorable and an integral part of his story. The film's pacing is more relaxed than I think I was expecting when I first watched it, now it feels like every beat and scene has room to breathe, so you can soak it in and be in each moment - which kind of sums up what Sean Penn's character is all about (who is brilliantly impactful for his short screen time).

I'd like to know your thoughts on this film and what resonated (or didn't) for you. And if you have any similar recommendations of films that you revisited and appreciated in a whole new light after some time and life experience.

What documentary recommendations do you have for someone who:

a. Hasn't seen many feature-length documentaries (not series).

b. Doesn't want to watch any with heavy themes (e.g. murder, assault, depression, death, etc.)

They have already seen American Movie and Super Size Me.

Any recommendations are most welcome. I checked out the top 100 documentaries, according to IMDb, and many of them do seem to have commonly darker themes.