- Seamus Blackley
Seamus Blackley is an agent with
Creative Artists Agency representing video game creators.After entering
Tufts University to studyjazz piano , Blackley switched to study physics and graduated Summa cum Honore en Tesis. As a sophomore, he published his first paper in the "Journal of Magnetic Resonance". After college, he studiedHigh Energy Physics at theFermi National Accelerator Laboratory , until theSuperconducting Supercollider project was cancelled in 1993.Blackley then went to work at Blue Sky Productions, later called
Looking Glass Studios . In addition to work there on "Ultima Underworld " and "System Shock ", Blackley helped to create the sophisticated physics system in "Flight Unlimited ". He is mentioned in the "Flight Unlimited" manual as follows::As far back as 1992, we started looking for new ways to fly on the PC. Seamus Blackley, a physics expert and experienced pilot, had just been hired on at Looking Glass Technologies, and he was well placed to see where the current simulators fell short of what they could be.He was no longer working with the company when "
Flight Unlimited II " was being developed. As a result, the second and third games did not have quite as sophisticated physics (though still arguably better than other games of the time), and the series became more civilian in nature.After Looking Glass, Blackley worked at Dreamworks Interactive as executive producer of "", a physics-rich game published in 1998.
In February 1999, Blackley joined
Microsoft . Originally hired to work onDirectX , he co-wrote the initialXbox proposal, and helped assemble the team that designed and built the device. He then evangelized the Xbox to game developers around the world.Blackley left Microsoft to co-found Capital Entertainment Group with former Microsoft co-worker
Kevin Bachus after his time developing the Xbox [cite web|url=http://www.frictionlessinsight.com/archives/2003/05/interview-with-2.html|title=Seamus Blackley on starting CEG|publisher=frictionlessinsight.com] . CEG aimed to reform the financing models available in the game industry, following the Hollywood studio model, to provide more flexibility and creative control to game makers, and loosen the grip publishers had on control of the game industry. CEG was unable to complete a game before folding in 2004.Currently, Blackley represents video game developers at the
Creative Artists Agency , evolving the position of video games within the entertainment industry.Quotations
*"The scariest thing was […] a bunch of fifty-five year old men, who have never played a game in their lives, decided they’re gonna do a game console and then start talking about the specifications […] This is like a group of men designing tampons or something […] it’s like a very bad idea." [cite web|url=http://dotplan.codesurgeonblog.com/post/28838777|title=Seamus Blackley, anecdote on the birth of the initial Xbox|publisher=codesurgeonblog.com] - Seamus Blackley, Warren Spector's Master Class Video Games and Digital Media, UT at Austin, November 2007
References
External links
* [http://xbox.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,4967/ Seamus Blackley's game credits on MobyGames]
* [http://archive.gamespy.com/articles/march03/dice/seamus/ Seamus Blackley Speech at DICE '03]
* [http://www.frictionlessinsight.com/archives/2003/05/interview-with-2.html 2003 CEG Interview]
* [http://news.com.com/Xbox+marks+his+spot/2008-1082_3-254830.html 2001 Xbox-related Interview]
* [http://www.gamasutra.com/features/19990514/trespasser_01.htm 1999 Gamasutra Post-Mortem on Trespasser]
*Association for Computing Machinery [http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=1077246.1077251 Video Interview with Seamus Blackley]
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