Biography – Brenton Burchmore
Lascivio is the latest venture of Sydney-based entrepreneur Brenton Burchmore. It combines his twelve years’ experience in strategic and business management in the Internet industry with a quarter of a century’s experience in organising and running games. This with over a decade of diverse user experience in online gaming places him among Australia’s leading experts in this field.
Brenton’s commercial career in the Internet business dates back to 1996, when he joined Geko, one of Australia’s first ISPs. With eight years in real estate already behind him – he previously ran three real estate businesses including commercial building management and corporate serviced offices – he quickly became a leader in Geko’s management team. He eventually oversaw a full revamp of the company’s financial and support teams before its sale in 1998.
Brenton then joined Activ Australia, another start-up Internet communications provider. Over the next nine years he set up and ran Activ’s business development, technical and project management teams, its financial systems and network infrastructure. He was Activ’s Operations Director, responsible for the profitability of what had become a $9 million business by November 2006, when the company was acquired by Access Providers (ASX: APV). Activ is now a major contributor to its parent group’s profits.
Along the way, Brenton also involved himself in several side ventures with entrepreneur Roy McDonald, working specifically in the areas of lifelong learning and life coaching.
Massively Multiplayer Online Games
Since Activ’s acquisition, Brenton has turned his commercial hand to Massively Multiplayer Online Gaming. With over 10,000 hours of online time in eight different MMO games covering five different genres, he has reached the highest levels of achievement within most of those games.
He has explored most of their content to the extent of reverse-engineering the user experience and game mechanics of each. He has used his spare time in recent years to design theoretical improvements to existing games with an eye to codifying the ‘next generation’ of online gaming.
His own working circumstances and the recent emergence of Alternative Reality Games have given him the resources and impetus to wind back other obligations in 2007 in pursuit of a suitable business venture in the industry.
Gaming Background
Brenton’s experience in role-playing and miniatures gaming has seen him run several role playing campaigns lasting many years and covering many genres. When not satisfied with a published game system, he has engineered and introduced design elements of his own into the campaigns.
In the 1980s and 1990s he competed in many miniatures tournaments, earning National Champion titles five times and many other top-3 places elsewhere.
Through the 1990s he ran 18 major tournaments, including six national championships. Two of these still hold records for the highest attendance figures in Australia. Many of the organisational innovations he introduced are still regularly used today. Others are yet to be repeated and remain stand-outs in the history of tournament gaming in Australia.
As an additional creative outlet Brenton has also written short stories within the game genre. He published three of these stories via the tournament booklet he produced.
Personal
Brenton was born 18 February, 1969 in Sydney, Australia where he has lived throughout his life. His father was a senior business manager and his mother was a teacher of short-story writing. Brenton met his wife Rani in 1996 who is now an Asian business specialist focusing on cultural amalgamation and change management - she speaks seven languages. They live in the leafy outer suburbs of Sydney in a very natural bush setting that he claims “calms the soul and ignites the mind”.
Lascivio is a Latin word meaning to play, to run amok, to be wanton.