American McGee

American James McGee (born December 13 1972) is an American game designer.

Career

McGee began his career at id Software. He worked on such games as "DOOM", "Doom II", "Quake", and "Quake II" in the areas of level design, music production, sound effects development, and program coding. In 1998, he moved to Electronic Arts, where he worked as a consultant on many projects and also created his own game, "American McGee's Alice". After finishing "Alice", he left Electronic Arts and founded his own company, The Mauretania Import Export Company, of which he is the president.

McGee produced the game "Scrapland" with Enlight in 2004, and later released "Bad Day L.A." in 2006 with the same partners. "American McGee's Oz" has been cancelled while other projects are in development. "American McGee's Grimm" has been developed by his design house, Spicy Horse, for the online service GameTap. It is currently being released on Gametap in weekly episodic segments.

Films

Production of the "Oz" game has been put on hold, which McGee attributes to a lack of interest at game publishing houses in new ideas and products without established market names. In order to get a publisher, McGee has decided to sell the game as a film before actually finishing it. He was recently set to write the script for the "Oz" films, which is said to be a trilogy, that would be produced by Disney and Jerry Bruckheimer.McGee spearheaded an attempt to launch a film adaptation of his "Alice" game, but the project collapsed and fell into obscurity for several years. It was finally picked up by Universal Pictures and was set to be released as "Alice" in July 2008. While McGee has had no control of "Alice" and only limited control of "Oz", he is expected to exercise more control over "Grimm".

Personal life

His stated mission is "to create a unified production method for story telling across the interactive and film industries" and of himself, he says, "I want to be the next Walt Disney, only a little more wicked."

Upon inquiry about his unusual name: "My mom was a hippie. I'm not sure how else to put that... She claims a woman she knew in college, who named her daughter 'America', inspired the name. She also tells me that she was thinking of naming me 'Obnard'. She was and always has been a very eccentric and creative person." He has also stated that there is only one other person in the world named "American" and "he was named after me."Fact|date=July 2008

Currently, American resides in Shanghai in the People's Republic of China where he works with Spicy Horse and Vykarian, a game outsourcing company. They are currently producing American McGee's Grimm. Fact|date=July 2008

Works

* "American McGee's Alice" (2000)
* "" (2004)
* "" (2006)
* "American McGee's Grimm" (2008)

ee also

* "Alice", game-derived film
* dredg, "Same Ol' Road" music video directed by McGee

External links

* [http://www.americanmcgee.com/ Official website]
* [http://www.tmiec.com/ The Mauretania Import Export Company]
* [http://www.spicyhorse.com/ Spicy Horse Design House]
* [http://www.vykarian.com/ Vykarian]
* [http://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId=823/ Moby Games' entry on McGee]
* [http://www.primotechnology.com/index.php?art=articles/0905/mcgee/index.htm An Interview with American McGee]
* [http://www.loop.la/noticia.php?noticia_id=23 Interview with American McGee in Spanish]
* [http://sknr.net/2008/06/24/american-mcgee-talks-grimm-and-the-alice-movie/ Skewed and Reviewed Interview with American McGee]