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Seamus Blackley | |
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 Blackley and (pet) Charles in 2021 | |
| Born | Jonathan Blackley 1968 |
| Alma mater | Tufts University |
| Occupation(s) | Video game designer, agent |
| Years active | 1990–present |
| Known for | Flight Unlimited , Trespasser , Xbox |
| Spouse | Caroline Quinn [1] |
Jonathan "Seamus" Blackley [2] [3] (born 1968) [4] [3] is an American video game designer and former agent with Creative Artists Agency representing video game creators. He is best known for creating and designing the original Xbox in 2001.
After entering Tufts University to study electrical engineering, Blackley switched to study physics and graduated in 1990, [3] Summa cum Honore en Tesis. As an undergraduate, he published his first paper in the Journal of Magnetic Resonance. [5] After college, he studied high energy physics at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, until the Superconducting Supercollider project was cancelled in 1993.
Blackley then went to work at Blue Sky Productions, later called Looking Glass Studios. In addition to his work 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. [6]
Following the completion of Flight Unlimited in 1995, Blackley planned to use that game's computational fluid dynamics (CFDs) code to create a combat flight simulator called Flight Combat . [7] [8] [9] However, a new manager at Looking Glass Studios demanded that Blackley instead design a direct sequel to Flight Unlimited as to directly compete with Microsoft Flight Simulator . Blackley refused and was fired, leaving the company in late 1995. [8] [10] [11]
After Looking Glass, Blackley worked at DreamWorks Interactive as executive producer of Jurassic Park: Trespasser , a video game sequel to the film The Lost World: Jurassic Park . Trespasser was designed to use a physics-rich game engine for much of the animation for the game. The game was to have been shipped by late 1997 as part of a deal that Dreamworks had made with a computer chip manufacturer, but the game was only partially completed; the chip deal fell through, and the budget for the game was significantly cut. Though the title was eventually published in 1998, its failure became renowned, and Blackley took full responsibly for its faults. [11]
During press events for Trespasser, Blackley had met Bill Gates, then the CEO of Microsoft. Gates had been impressed with the technical achievements of Trespasser, and he helped Blackley to secure a job at Microsoft in February 1999 as Program Manager for Entertainment Graphics, initially working on DirectX. [12] During 1999, Sony introduced the PlayStation 2, which they marketed as a platform for the living room that would outdo Microsoft Windows and Linux. Blackley said that this announcement raised concerns within Microsoft of how they could challenge Sony. [12] Blackley had already recognized that part of Microsoft's problems for gaming support was the vast number of possible configurations they had to deal with, and their attempts with technologies like DirectX to standardize these. While on a flight from Boston back to Seattle after visiting his girlfriend, Blackley came up with the idea of having Microsoft design its own console, with standardized hardware, and able to tap into a larger pool of hardware resources due to the company's influence as to beat Sony at its own game. [12] This led to the initial Xbox proposal, which Gates eventually approved, and helped assemble the team that designed and built the device. He then promoted the Xbox to game developers around the world. [13]
Blackley left Microsoft in 2002 to co-found Capital Entertainment Group with former Microsoft co-worker Kevin Bachus after his time developing the Xbox. [14] 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 2003. [15] In 2007, Blackley received the P.T. Barnum Award from Tufts University for his exceptional work in the field of media and entertainment. [3]
From 2003 through May 2011, Blackley represented video game developers at the Creative Artists Agency, evolving the position of video games within the entertainment industry. [16] In February 2012, Blackley cofounded Innovative Leisure in order to recruit game programmers from the Golden age of arcade video games to write mobile games. [17] In 2017 Blackley took a post running the research and development team for the augmented reality startup Daqri to explore methods of producing more powerful holograms and in 2018 became the CEO of tech startup Pacific Light and Hologram. [18] [19]
In 2019, Blackley appeared as himself on the 172nd episode of the webseries Angry Video Game Nerd , answering questions regarding development of the video game Trespasser . [20]
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Blackley gained attention for instructional Twitter threads on baking sourdough bread using ancient yeast and historical baking methods. [21]
Microsoft Flight Simulator is a series of flight simulator programs for MS-DOS, Classic Mac OS, and Microsoft Windows operating systems. It was an early product in the Microsoft application portfolio and differed significantly from Microsoft's other software, which was largely business-oriented. Microsoft Flight Simulator is Microsoft's longest-running software product line, predating Windows 1.0 by three years, and is one of the longest-running video game series of all time.
Looking Glass Studios, Inc. was an American video game developer based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The company was founded by Paul Neurath with Ned Lerner as Blue Sky Productions in 1990, and merged with Lerner's Lerner Research in 1992 to become LookingGlass Technologies. Between 1997 and 1999, the company was part of Intermetrics and was renamed Looking Glass Studios. Following financial issues at Looking Glass, the studio shut down in May 2000.
Trespasser is a 1998 action-adventure video game developed by DreamWorks Interactive and published by Electronic Arts for Microsoft Windows. The game serves as a sequel to the 1997 film The Lost World: Jurassic Park, taking place a year after the film's events. Players control Anne, the sole survivor of a plane crash that leaves her stranded on a remote island with genetically engineered dinosaurs. It features the voices of Minnie Driver as Anne and Richard Attenborough as John Hammond, reprising his role from the film series.
Flight Unlimited is a 1995 aerobatic flight simulator video game developed and published by LookingGlass Technologies. It allows players to pilot reproductions of real-world aircraft and to perform aerobatic maneuvers. They may fly freely, race through floating rings against a timer or take lessons from a virtual flight instructor. The instructor teaches basic and advanced techniques, ranging from rudder turns to maneuvers such as the tailslide, Lomcovák and Immelmann turn.
Flight Unlimited II is a 1997 flight simulator video game developed by Looking Glass Studios and published by Eidos Interactive. The player controls one of five planes in the airspace of the San Francisco Bay Area, which is shared with up to 600 artificially intelligent aircraft directed by real-time air traffic control. The game eschews the aerobatics focus of its predecessor, Flight Unlimited, in favor of general civilian aviation. As such, new physics code and an engine were developed, the former because the programmer of Flight Unlimited's computational fluid dynamics system, Seamus Blackley, had left the company.
Numerous video games based on the Jurassic Park franchise have been released. Developers Ocean Software, BlueSky Software and Sega produced various games in 1993, coinciding with the first film, Jurassic Park. In 1997, several developers, including DreamWorks Interactive and Appaloosa Interactive, produced various games for nine different platforms to coincide with the release of the film The Lost World: Jurassic Park.
Flight Unlimited III is a 1999 flight simulator video game developed by Looking Glass Studios and published by Electronic Arts. It allows players to pilot simulations of real-world commercial and civilian aircraft in and around Seattle, Washington. Players can fly freely or engage in "Challenge" missions, such as thwarting a theft or locating Bigfoot. The development team built on the general aviation gameplay of Flight Unlimited II, with more detailed physics and terrain, more planes, and a real-time weather system. Roughly half of Flight Unlimited II's team returned to work on the sequel, supported by new hires.
Paul Neurath is a video game designer and creative director. He founded both Blue Sky Productions and Floodgate Entertainment. He was the creative director of Zynga Boston. In 2014 he founded OtherSide Entertainment, that developed Underworld Ascendant, the third game in the Underworld series.
Brian L. Schmidt is a music composer for various video games and pinball machines.
Jane's Attack Squadron is a 2002 combat flight simulator developed by Looking Glass Studios and Mad Doc Software and published by Xicat Interactive. Based on World War II, the game allows players to pilot fifteen reproductions of that era's military aircraft and to carry out missions for the Axis or Allies. Although it contains dogfights, the game focuses largely on air-to-ground combat, hence the title.
The Xbox is a home video game console manufactured by Microsoft that is the first installment in the Xbox series of video game consoles. It was released as Microsoft's first foray into the gaming console market on November 15, 2001, in North America, followed by Australia, Europe and Japan in 2002. It is classified as a sixth-generation console, competing with Sony's PlayStation 2, Sega's Dreamcast and Nintendo's GameCube. It was also the first major console produced by an American company since the release of the Atari Jaguar in 1993.
Asobo Studio SAS is a French video game developer based in Bordeaux and founded in 2002. The studio is most known for developing video game adaptations of several Pixar movies, A Plague Tale: Innocence, and the 2020 and 2024 versions of Microsoft Flight Simulator. To develop most of their games, they use their own game engine called Zouna, which was originally developed in the 1990s by some of their own employees who used to work at Kalisto Entertainment. It was later further developed by Asobo. The studio's name is derived from the Japanese word "asobō" (遊ぼう) that means "let's play".
Aces Game Studio (ACES) was an American video game developer based in Redmond, Washington, owned by Microsoft Game Studios. It was founded in 1988 under the name Bruce Artwick Organization Limited at Champaign, Illinois, by Bruce Artwick, creator of Microsoft Flight Simulator, Microsoft Space Simulator and also co-founder of Sublogic.
A flight simulation video game refers to the simulation of various aspects of flight or the flight environment for purposes other than flight training or aircraft development. A significant community of simulation enthusiasts is supported by several commercial software packages, as well as commercial and homebuilt hardware. Open-source software that is used by the aerospace industry like FlightGear, whose flight dynamics engine (JSBSim) is used in a 2015 NASA benchmark to judge new simulation code to space industry standards, is also available for private use. A popular type of flight simulators video games are combat flight simulators, which simulate combat air operations from the pilot and crew's point of view. Combat flight simulation titles are more numerous than civilian flight simulators due to variety of subject matter available and market demand.
Danger Close Games was an American video game developer based in Los Angeles. The company was founded in March 1995 as joint venture between DreamWorks SKG and Microsoft under the name DreamWorks Interactive, with studios in Redmond, Washington, and Los Angeles.
The Xbox controller is the primary game controller for Microsoft's Xbox home video game console and was introduced at the Game Developers Conference in 2000. The first-generation Xbox controller was the first controller bundled with Xbox systems for all territories except Japan. A smaller and redesigned variant, called "Controller S", was sold and bundled with the console in Japan. It was later released in other territories and by the end of 2003 had replaced the first-generation controller worldwide. The larger original controller remained available as an optional accessory and was rereleased for the Xbox One after fans requested it back.
Dovetail Games (DTG), a trading name of RailSimulator.com Ltd (RSC), is a British simulation video game developer and publisher established in 2008 by former Electronic Arts executive Paul Jackson, Fund4Games backers Tim Gatland and Charlie McMicking, and a development team from Kuju Entertainment.
Cloudgine Limited was a British video game developer based in Edinburgh. Founded in 2012 by Dave Jones, it focuses on cloud technologies for video games. It was acquired by Epic Games in 2018 and integrated.
Microsoft Flight Simulator is a flight simulation video game developed by Asobo Studio and published by Xbox Game Studios. It is an entry in the Microsoft Flight Simulator series which began in 1982, and was preceded by Microsoft Flight Simulator X in 2006. The game is a return of the series after 14 years, with development beginning six years prior to its release. It was released on August 18, 2020, for Windows, with a virtual reality (VR) version released in December of the same year as part of the free Sim 2 update. Microsoft Flight Simulator is the first game in the series to see a VR and console release, with it being released on the Xbox Series X and Series S on July 27, 2021.
Blackley, 39 … "Seamus" is something of a stage name he earned at Looking Glass. Seamus née (sic) Jonathan …
Seamus Blackley, 34 years old
| Authority control databases: Artists |
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