American McGee

A**merican James McGee** (アメリカンマギー), born December 13, 1972, is an American game designer and developer who's most popular work consists of American McGee's Alice. He founded The Mauretania Import Export Company in 2000 and also founded his current company Spicyhorse (along with its sub-company of Spicypony). He is also known for working on games such as Doom II and Quake.

American is the creator of Akaneiro, who along with Spicyhorse developed the project into one of the teams largest original projects thus far.

## Career

In 1994, McGee began his career in level design, music production, sound effects development, and programming at id Software; McGee has contributed to the creation of the *Doom* series, Quake, and Quake II. After being let go by Id Software in 1998​, he moved to Electronic Arts, where he worked as creative director on several projects, including *American McGee's Alice*. After finishing *Alice*, McGee left EA to found his first company, The Mauretania Import Export Company.

Partnering with Enlight Software, McGee released the games *Scrapland* in 2004 and *Bad Day L.A.* in 2006. The planned *American McGee's Oz*, which was to be produced in conjunction with Ronin Games, was canceled over financial difficulties at Atari.

In 2007, McGee founded his second game development studio, Spicy Horse and the company released their first title, the *American McGee's Grimm* series, that same year for the online service GameTap, which ran from July 2007 to April 2008.

At the 2009 D.I.C.E. Summit, Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello announced that a sequel to *Alice* was in development for PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 by Spicy Horse. In July 2010, at the EA Showcase in San Francisco, Spicy Horse and EA announced that sequel's title, *Alice: Madness Returns*.

On December 17, 2010, The Mauretania Import Export Company dissolved and all intellectual property was transferred to Spicy Horse. After less than one year after its announcement, *Alice: Madness Returns* was released on June 14th 2011.

Spicy Horse expanded to include another brand, Spicy Pony, to produce digital mobile media games for the iPhone platform. Their first title, *DexIQ*, was released in early December 2009 and was soon followed by *Crooked House* in March 2010 (both had iPad versions released in June 2010). Their third iPad title, *Akaneiro* was released on December 23, 2010.

In June, 2012, American announced that he would be creating a Kickstarter campaign for his latest fairytale title: *OZombies*, which required a $950,000 goal - his largest Kickstarter goal yet. Due to slow/lackluster funds, the project was eventually cancelled. Another Kickstarter for a project called *Alice: Otherlands*, a planned series of short films leading to a theatrical film was announced a few days later. This reached its goal on August 4, 2013, and was officially confirmed. Currently, McGee is attempting to raise fan support for a proposed third *Alice* game, under the working title *Alice: Asylum*, in order to convince EA that enough interest exists to justify the game being made.

## External links

* American McGee at Wikipedia
* American McGee at IMDB
* American McGee at RAWG
* American McGee at Mobygames