Author: Chris McElligott Park

Chris founded Arcen Games as a North Carolina Limited Liability Company in March 2009, after nearly a decade of hobbyist game development. Originally Arcen was a one-man show except for Pablo's music for AI War, but in December 2009 the two of them quit their day jobs and began working for the company fulltime. Chris has had a lifelong fascination with games and game design; he made over sixty fan levels for the classic DOS game Demon Stalkers when he was eleven, and then was hooked. He got into creating content for AOL's Northlands, campaigns for FRUA and Neverwinter Nights, maps for Warcraft II, Duke Nukem 3D, Quake II, and Counter-Strike, and various levels for other titles (GRAAL is one among a half dozen or so). He also coded a number of smaller games over the years, ranging from text adventures in QBASIC to platformers in C#, but never released any of them to the public. The concept for AI War, Arcen's first title, came about because of Chris's longstanding weekly co-op RTS sessions with his dad and uncle. Tired of the uneven AI and lackluster co-op support in most other titles in the genre, Chris decided to create a game that catered specifically to his play group's interests. Other titles the company has released have usually come about from longstanding I-wish-that-existed games that Chris always wanted to play. His professional background is in architecting and programming high-end enterprise applications (primarily document management, ERP, project management, and financial tracking features). He still finds the fact that he gets to make games for a living a bit surreal, even years later. He currently lives in North Carolina with his wife and son.