○One evening many months ago, Mike Chapman, the creative director of the cooperative pirate adventure game Sea of ​​Thieves, sat down to play the game with producer Joe Neato. This wasn’t just a standard playtest. The players participating online were players who had never played together before. It was a team from Sony Interactive Entertainment. Plans to make Xbox exclusive to the PS5 had just been launched. Now it was time to dive into the details. “We educated them about the game and had thorough discussions about what made the game special,” Neet says. “It was a surreal experience,” Chapman says of the encounter. “Trying to find treasure on the island with another group of platform holders…”

The PS5 launch is set for April 30th, and pre-orders are now open, but this is just the latest step in the evolution of this captivating game. Launched on March 20, 2018, it was the most ambitious project in the long history of the veteran British studio Rare. Marketed as a cooperative pirate adventure, Sea of ​​Thieves provides players with access to a vast multiplayer world of ocean exploration, buried treasure, ship-to-ship battles, and more. The game’s design philosophy was simple but risky: it was a tool, not a rule. Players are equipped with everything they need to embark on their own pirate adventures, including musical instruments and virtual grog, but there is no elaborate story, skill tree, or complex character growth system. The story comes from the players themselves as they form a crew and compete with other pirates for fame and fortune.

After a shaky start plagued by technical issues, Sea of ​​Thieves found its audience and grew. Since that day in 2018, there have been approximately 100 updates and expansions, including adventures based on Pirates of the Caribbean and Monkey Island. New mechanics like commodities and captaincy add depth to the experience, but Chapman believes the key to the game’s longevity lies in ensuring player agency and supporting roleplay. “We provide players with simple tools and allow them to unleash their creativity,” he says. “We’ve done our best to stay true to that.”

Supporting diverse communities is also crucial. “I think it’s part of the hidden work of creating a shared world,” he says. “When adding a mechanic to a game, the mechanic itself may be simple, but you have to consider how it fits into the shared world, what motivates players, and how players with different styles (PvP or PvE) will use it. Whenever we design a mechanic, we think about how it integrates into the world and how it can potentially create a new meta that will thrive for months and years. Our design team is increasingly focused on this.”

So what was it like facing the prospect of publishing a game to a whole new community? “At a leadership level, when I first heard this as a possibility, I was initially excited. Then I thought, ‘Okay. How do we do this?'” says NEET. “The fact that we had already migrated to another platform, Steam, helped us tackle the technical challenges and engage with different communities in different locations.”

“This is the first time in Rare’s 40-year history that we’ve developed on a Sony platform, which is incredible. It was very surreal for us to be presented with a series of slides. But honestly, for our technical team, it was like, ‘Let’s deploy the kit and start experimenting and figuring it out.’ That kind of feeling. I kept it in a secret spot in my studio with a fogged-up window so no one could see. It was more about excitement.”

Nate said Rare was collaborating with co-developers with PlayStation experience, and Sony itself was very supportive, holding regular catch-up calls even when the project was still top secret. The company was ready to dispatch its technical staff whenever needed. “If we had to visit their studio, you guessed it, we had to wear their Sea of ​​Thieves T-shirt,” Neet says.

One of the great benefits of preparing to welcome a new community is that it gives your team a chance to rethink the structure of your game. Season 11 of the game, launched in January, was developed with the knowledge that PS5 players would soon join, so the onboarding system was revamped. Content is now unlocked at a more manageable pace, and a quest board that shows where to find new items that were previously hidden in artifacts and maps offers a more engaging pirate journey. Additionally, Rare is planning to introduce an offline solo mode in its March update. “You don’t need Xbox Live or PlayStation Plus,” says Neate. “If you just want to play solo, you can experience all the content and company advancements in Tall Tales. It’s another way to get hooked on the game before you decide to start.”

However, Rare indicates that while recent efforts have been focused on creating a more user-friendly experience with an eye on the upcoming PS5 community, there are more ambitious plans in the works. “We’ve been expanding the boundaries of the Sea of ​​Thieves experience throughout the last year,” Chapman says. “You can have your own ship. You can join the Pirate Guild. There’s a quest table. A revised tutorial allows you to play Safer Seas and explore all the story content. We’re expanding the game’s boundaries and building on this new foundation. We’ve gained a lot of experience, and it’s crucial to capitalize on it. Enhance your captaincy, strengthen your guild. The upcoming year is all about the sandbox for us.”

Since its launch six years ago, it’s been a long journey, but Chapman and Neet, who have been there from the start, seem as dedicated as ever. “Working on this on a new platform is incredibly exciting,” Chapman affirms. “I believe we’ve positioned ourselves for many more years of game evolution.”