American McGee

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

1 Career
2 Films
3 Personal life
4 Works
5 See also
6 External links

[edit] Career

McGee began his career at id Software. He was a level designer for such games as Doom II, Quake, and Quake II. 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 later produced the game Scrapland, and eventually Bad Day L.A. Two of his games have been cancelled, they are American McGee's Oz and American McGee's Grimm.

[edit] 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 will be produced by Disney and Jerry Bruckheimer. Oz the game has been cancelled, and the film more than likely will be too.

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 2007. While McGee has had no control of Alice and only limited control of Oz, he expected to exercise more control over Grimm, but it was unfortunatly cancelled.

[edit] Personal life

Born American James McGee

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 smoked pot. She was a hippie. I'm not sure how else to put that." On his website, American had this to say of the matter: "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."

He also mentions that his inspiration for the macabre tone of Alice comes from his disturbing, dysfunctional childhood. For instance, on American's 13th birthday, his father, whom he had just met for the first time, was "stinking drunk" and assaulted the young American by attempting to gouge his eyes out with the intent of either killing or molesting him. American escaped this event by suggesting they "take both of their cars" to a bar and get drunk. Luckily, the father agreed. Shortly afterwards his father was involved in a car accident. "They got no more than 100 feet away when American's dad crashed into a telephone pole." [1]