American James McGee (born December 13 1972) is an American game designer.
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Career
McGee began his career at id Software. He worked on such games as Doom II, Quake, and Quake II in level design, music production, developed sound effects, and wrote code. 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 is currently being developed by his design house, Spicy Horse, for the online service GameTap.
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 is 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." Currently, American resides in Shanghai in the People's Republic of China where he works with Spicy Horse and Vykarian, a game outsourcing company, on Grimm.
Works
- American McGee's Alice (2000)
- American McGee presents: Scrapland (2004)
- American McGee presents: Bad Day L.A. (2006)
- Spencer Halpin's Moral Kombat - Interviewee
- American McGee's Grimm (2008)
