Picture the scene - a large westminster auditorium, slowly filled with people filtering in carefully. I'm laughing on the inside because I skipped tea and biscuits to get front row seats. The chatter is frantic, as is the rustling of bags, as people are pulling out laptops and pens and paper, drinks, chewing gum, and in one or two cases, a digital camera.

Five minutes in, some Microsoft Staff who accompanied Mr Burton were pushing paper upon us, what turned out to be simple forms that were judging of Burton's lecturing skill, not, as one of the MS staff joked 'student stealing application forms'. The Microsoft lot start trying to fit in with the students, attempting to strike up conversation whilst Burton hooks up his laptop to the projectors.

We are now all hushed, some nervous, some in awe, some, picking their noses. The oldest guy from MS introduces Burton using what was quite clearly a script written for him by a younger person, as the jokes were way past this guy's way of thinking. Burton strolls into the limelight, dressed, quite frankly, like a university student. He would have looked quite inconspicious down in the bar at the student union. Following his walk into the limelight, he takes ten minutes to introduce himself. His name shines up on the screen as part of his powerpoint presentation, somewhat ostentatiously, as the presentation is adorned with both Rare and Microsoft Logos throughout. This intro takes ten minutes, as he describes his place at Rare (Senior Software Developer), Who Rare are (And who they formally were - 'Ultimate Play The Game' - something that sounds like it translated badly from Japanese), and where Rare in the UK is based (Nottingham). He gives a little speech explaining what Rare do, and busts out some facts that most of the crowd find interesting. Rares games all together have sold over 100 Million Copies, in Nottingham alone, they have a workforce of over 200, and they've worked across 22 Hardware Platforms.

Then he gets onto the lecture itself. Effectively speaking, this is a chronological examination of the past 50 years of gaming, unfortunately, crammed into one hour. We start at a little question Burton poses for the audience: 'When do you think the first Electronic Game Was'? Most be assume the Atari Era, mentioning notable consoles such as the Commodore of the Spectrum. After people guess, he more or less shocks the room with the answer - 1958.

The first electronic game, according to Burton, was in 1958, by a man called William Higinbotham (Many of whom found the combination of 'Willy' and the audio form of his surname sounding like 'Bottom' considerably amusing), at Brookhaven Laboratories with a game called 'Tennis for two'. The machine that played this was the size of about 7 wardrobes put together, has less processing power than my current mobile phone, and wasn't even Digital! It was an analogue based game, controlled by two buttons, watching a ball go back and forth, correlating with the rules of gravity, and was viewed on an oscilloscope smaller than my face.

Jumping forward a little, we were shown an example of 'Spacewar' - something that looks considerably like asteroids, but isn't quite. This was made by some MIT geeks trying to bust their way into interactivity.

1971 saw the birth of 'Computer Space', a game by Nolan Bushell, some of you may know as one of the founders of 'Atari'. Computer Space is damn near Identical to Spacewar.. Hmm. In 1972, we see the pong we all know and love. Or Do we? Atari's Pong, wasn't actually Atari's at all. It is claimed by Burton that Bushell and Atari's Co founder, Al Alcorn, copied the idea of Pong, and its mechanics, from 'Tennis', on the barely heard of, 'Magnavox Odyssey', created by Ralph Baer. With Baer having apparently patented his gaming console before even 'Spacewar' came out, it is said by some that Baer could be considered the Father of Gaming. Pong did considerably better though. The first public test was placed in a bar, with Alcorn and Bushell having to be called back hours after because the machine was broken. The cause of this was the money depository box was filled to the brim with quarters. The machine could take no more, whilst hundreds queued outside the bar to play this amazing new game. With this birth of arcade games, Atari started to expand, and other companies, such as Taito (Makers of Space Invaders in '72) popped up. (At this point, we are shown a photograph of some Atari Employees - One has a golden-coloured belt buckle, looking exactly the same as the Apple logo. That's right, Steve Jobs cut his computing tooth at Atari).

With the rise of the arcades, Taito, Atari and Sega seem prominent, specifically in the Arcades, until 1990. Stepping back a few years, Burton starts making mention of the home console that started to rear its beautiful head. Unfortunately, he makes little mention of the 8-bit times, jumping straight into the 16-bit era, and discussing the success of consoles like the Snes and Playstation 1. With these consoles now rivalling that in the arcade, home gaming is really taking off. With the evolution cycle occurring, Burton sates that most consoles are upgraded between 5-7 years to the next generation level. He estimates that today's 360 will be next-gen'ned by 2011 (joking that he hasn't heard anything, or not on the inside track). With Home Gaming becoming more popular, 3rd Party Manufacturers and developers for games started to pop up.

A brief discussion interrupts our history lesson here, debating the idea of 'will mobile gaming ever destroy home consoles, given how technology is advancing'. The Majority, including Burton, disagree. He describes mobile gaming as more of a stasis than an assimilation, and that since Phantom hourglass came out in English, he has no life.

Now Burton jumps into the 'present' part of the lecture. This, admittedly is mainly facts and figures. He discusses different opportunities for businesses such as Web 2.0 & User Created Content, and how Games are officially an Art form, (using 'Into the Pixel' as an example). He makes mention that Bushell's original investment of $500 turned into $3.2 Million (something that has been all but blown on a restaurant franchise), and that the Gaming Industry worth is climbing and climbing. Mainly he discusses the American Market. in '97, it was worth $4.7 Billion. In 2005, that overly quadrupled to $20 Billion, meaning a rate 19%, year on year - That's better than the Current UK Housing Market. He goes on also to say, that some games do better than films, using the most obvious example of the Halo Series.

In our current times, Burton makes note of the Big Boys of the Industry, Mentioning Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo as platform handlers, and EA as a major software handler. He then gives us an Industry Model:

End User --) Retailer --) Distributor --) Publisher --) Platform Holder --)Developer

He explains that each part in this chain takes a cut in the game being sold. Most getting between 5% and 20%, unless your are a small developer, in which case, the Publishers will alternatively, accept your soul as down payment. With all this talk of finance, Burton makes a couple of jokes regarding banks and how they do not like Risk when lending, Especially since on average, one in twenty games will be deemed successful.

Burton doubles back now a little more to the theory of the Next Gen Cycle, discussing how platforms are ALWAYS worked on, even after the release of 'the next big thing', and how the Nintendo 64 had more processing power than the on board computer that landed Apollo 11's mission (The Eagle) on the moon. I'd Trust Nintendo Any day regardless. Burton goes on to say how games make it to the home user, discussing various points about how long a game takes to make, the cost, focus group testing, Marketing options, and Technical Certification. He also goes off on a tangent a little, discussing video game plagiarism, and how nearly every FPS since Half Life 2 has some form of gravity gun..

He now moves onto some misconceptions of the industry, although this is more of little rant about how developers aren't trying to brainwash your child's mind, nor that every programmer drives a Ferrari (something Burton wished he did - the Ferrari, not the brainwashing..). The brainwashing option also leads him to talk about the current Manhunt situation - something I'm sure I don't need to go into depth about here :).

Burton's little outro speech is minimal, making mention of the future of gaming, but he basically uses 500 words to say 50. Condensed, he basically says the the bar is forever being raised, and that the industry of gaming is always looking for new talent. He also makes a cheeky joke that the Americans have the money, but the British have the talent, something most of the room seemed to agree with.

This being the end of the lecture, the crowd applause, and slow filter out towards the refectory towards refreshments and finger food. Somewhat Annoyingly, when people were mingling after, Burton only seemed to socialise with the older people of the crowd.. I didn't see him speak to anyone younger than 30.. when he wasn't talking to people, the Microsoft Cronies seemed to surround him. My Friends and I attempted to ambush him on the way out, but no sooner than I could finish my sentence of 'Excuse me Mr Burton, could you possibly tell me anything about Ban..(jo kazooie three) he simply, and somewhat unceremoniously, said "I'm sorry, but I have a train to catch.", and flittered by with the Microsoft Cronies following closely.


Sorry King3vbo. I failed :(


Admittedly, had he not given me details I was to wait for him to be a little more tipsy, thus to reveal a little more, but even this was admittedly, wishful thinking. I really didn't think he'd leave so soon though. He was on campus little over 2 hours...

That said, if you disagree with anything he's talked about, you can contact him here: nburton at microsoft dot com


Thank you, and Goodnight.