Seamus Blackley

Seamus Blackley published his first paper (first author) in the Journal of Magnetic Resonance as a Sophomore at Tufts University, and graduated Summa cum Honore en Tensis. He went on to study High Energy Physics at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory outside Chicago, while simultaneously teaching classes back in Cambridge.

As a programmer at Looking Glass Technologies (then Blue Sky Technologies), Blackley wrote music for, programmed, or produced several hit titles including Ultima Underworld, System Shock, and Flight Unlimited. Blackley went on to DreamWorks SKG, where he acted as executive producer and eventually met Bill Gates, who sent an e-mail to Blackley's boss commenting, "Microsoft should hire someone like that." While his boss took it as a compliment, Blackley took it as a career directive, and started at Microsoft in February 1999. One month after arriving in Redmond, he wrote a memo suggesting that Microsoft make a game console, and along with three friends (one of which was Kevin Bachus), sold Xbox up the chain back to Bill Gates.

Blackley hosted a seminar on rediscovering the methods of game design.