A quick chat with Rare’s Nick Burton

by Paul on Mar 2nd, 2006

We get to chew the fat with Nick Burton, director of development at Rare, about Kinect Sports and Rare’s future plans.

1. When did you first get your hands on Kinect development kits?

We got hold of our very first kits October 2008 – kits is a bit of a generous word mind you but even early on “Project Natal” was some very cool tech.

2. Is it technology that is easy to work with? We’ve been reading that Kinect can follow up to six people at any one time. Surely that must be very hard to get working, having people walking in and out of Kinect’s view and it keeping tabs on everything?

The technology is very easy to work with, but also something very new and different so you have to think about game design in a totally new way. Kinect tracks up-to six people at any one time but we normally fully track two people at once as this makes things much more simple. However Kinect has an identity system that watches everyone and can keep track of them without any help, it can differentiate you from me without any help.

3. Is there any gossip on what game ideas were being worked on before Kinect Sports was chosen as the project to take forward, and do any of those ideas still hold the potential of seeing the light of day as future releases?

Yes, and yes. Not going to tell you what though.

4. Kinect Sports is a radical departure from what we’re used to from Rare. What was it about Kinect Sports that drove you to take it forward rather than something that the majority would call ‘more traditionally Rare-like’ and how would you address criticisms that it’s just an attempt to outdo Wii Sports?

Traditionally Rare like? What no googly eyes? Look at our back catalogue over the last 25 years and then tell me what’s traditional Rare? Sports though was such an obvious choice as everyone on the planet has a good idea of how they need to move for most Sports so we don’t need to teach the player what to do at all – they just mimic the Sports in front of the TV and the game does the rest – it was a totally obvious choice.

5. What challenges present themselves when designing a ‘controller free’ game? Everyone is so used to having a pad in their hands, so how difficult was it to forget everything you know and start fresh and how do you intend to approach this re-education of gamers within the software? Will it be tutorials aplenty or will we just ‘get it’ straight away?

See our answer in question 4!

6. Within Kinect Sports did you have other sports or events lined up for inclusion? Which ones were they, and how comes they didn’t make the cut?

Oh yes loads of Sports and other crazy ideas but I’m not going to tell you what they are, you never know when we might want to revisit them.

7. How about lag? We’ve been assured that lag is not going to be an issue by the time of release but in some videos we’ve seen there is a tiny bit still evident. Is it something that no matter how much you try it simply cannot be made to exactly mirror your movements without a tiny bit of delay?

The actual time from your image going into the sensor to your Avatars image coming out of the TV as Photons is at the threshold of human perception – I should know as we time it with high speed cameras! I am not going to get into figures but let’s just say the lag in Sports is quite a bit less than in many games using gamepads.

8. A common view held across the internet (not one we agree with we hasten to add!) is that you are only working on Kinect Sports at this time. Can you dispel that rumour and if you are working on other games, can you confirm the number and are they all for Kinect, or are there some traditional “you’ll need your controller” games in there? Are you able to spill the beans on any of them?

Nice try – of course we are working on other stuff, what? Kinect? Gamepad? Toaster? You will have to wait to find out.

Our thanks to Nick Burton for taking time out from his busy schedule to talk to us, and thanks to Ben Talbot over for arranging the interview for us.

Categories: Interviews