Interviews// Rare Senior Programmer, Nick Burton

SPOnG: But this is all for the same team?

Nick Burton: This is all for the one team. I have one desk, I have one... three computers on one desk, two dev kits. It's like the Starship Enterprise at the moment. Hopefully one of those will be going soon. But yes, it's all within one team. I have worked with the same guys now for, well, a couple of the guys I've worked with since I started at Rare... and that's been with the Kameo team as is. But, the teams at Rare kind of inflate and deflate. It works well for us.

So, Banjo at the moment – massively inflated, because it's coming up to completion. Piñata's done, effectively, so that's starting to deflate a bit now. Our team's quite small, (it's) made up of very senior people so, (with) what we're working on at the moment, we don't need a lot of people to inflate it, probably. We might, it just depends on how the project goes. So, in five, six months time, we might start to inflate because they've done with Banjo.


SPOnG: And you're on 'secret project'?

Nick Burton: Yes, enigmatically! (Grins)

SPOnG: Care to say anything about that?

Nick Burton: Nope! I would love to, because it's very exciting, it's a kind of... 'genre' of game is the wrong word. It's a sort of game I really like, and it's something different, as well, which is quite exciting.

I'm doing some things that are different on it, too. It's quite a trade-off. I'm a graphics effects programmer, but I'm doing the audio stuff. It's not just the audio in terms of software, it's all other kinds of things that are going on with the software. It's quite interesting.

It almost feels like you've got a new job. I've just passed my tenth anniversary at Rare, but it's still like, "Monday morning, it's work, what am I going to do?" So, something's right!


SPOnG: So, it's a bit of departure for Rare, too then, 'Secret Project'?

Nick Burton: I'll say this – all of the stuff that we're working on, when things come out people always seem to be surprised. People are like, "Oh, they've done that!" And they were like "Oh! Banjo 3! I thought they weren't going to do that because it didn't come out after Banjo 2 straight away."

Well, you don't have to make sequel after sequel after sequel. You can have a hiatus.

So, you're going to see some new IP from us, you're going to see some old IP from us.

I'm really excited about what we're doing, I'd love to talk more about it, but the thing that you learn when you've been in the industry a long time is, there really, truly is a time and a place.

If you talk about something too early, everybody's like "Oh, it's that again. Oh, I've seen this the last four years. Oh, it's finally coming out." It's better to say, "Let's get it into a shape where it's not finished as in we're happy with it and Microsoft's happy", but say "Even though it's not finished, now we're going to tell you about it."


SPOnG: OK, so you can't say what it is. But can you say when you'll be able to say?

Nick Burton: I'm not going to put a date on it. Sooner rather than later. You're not going to be waiting a looong time, but I'm not going to put a time on it.