Mike McShaffry , a.k.a. "Mr. Mike," is a

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game programmer, entrepreneur and

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. He is known as the director of '' Ultima VIII: Pagan''. He graduated from the

University of Houston The University of Houston (UH) is a Public university, public research university in Houston, Texas. Founded in 1927, UH is a member of the University of Houston System and the List of universities in Texas by enrollment, university in Texas ...

and began his

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career working for Origin Systems in 1990. He worked on titles such as '' Martian Dreams'', '' Ultima VII: The Black Gate'', '' Ultima VIII: Pagan'', '' Ultima IX: Ascension'' and '' Ultima Online''. In 1997 he formed his own company

Tornado Alley Tornado Alley is a loosely defined area of the central United States where tornadoes are most frequent. The term was first used in 1952 as the title of a research project to study severe weather in areas of Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Kansas, So ...

. After that, he worked at Glass Eye Games for a while on Casino games, which were notable for being the first games he worked on that his mom enjoyed playing. Mike McShaffrey got his start as a video game programmer when he saw the new Austin, Texas address of Origin Systems on the back of the Ultima VI box, and sent them his resume. The first game he worked on was ''Ultima: Worlds of Adventure 2 - Martian Dreams''. In addition to developing and managing many games, Mike did the voice acting for Nicola Tesla in Martian Dreams, and a character named Gordo in Ultima VII. Since 2003, his book, Game Coding Complete, a comprehensive hands-on guide to developing commercial quality games has been updated and reprinted four times, expanding with each iteration. After spending seven years at ArtCraft working on

CrowFall ''Crowfall'' is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game-real-time strategy game developed by ArtCraft, described as a "Throne War Simulator". It released on July 6, 2021. Its Kickstarter campaign ended March 26, 2015 with a total fundin ...

, as of 2020, he now works as a Cloud Architect at Wave on the servers for Wave's live, virtual concerts.

Charity Work

Big Brothers, Big Sisters of Central Texas - Mike benefitted as a "Little" in 1979, and reengaged with the Austin chapter of the group in 2000 as a fundraiser, recruiting teams for an annual event called Bowl for Kids. “No matter how you choose to use your time,” Mike is quoted as saying, “try allocating a little bit to making the world a better place than you found it.”

Game Contributions

(List from Moby Games developer sheet) * Ultima: Worlds of Adventure 2 - Martian Dreams (1991) - Programmer * Ultima VII: The Black Gate (1992) - Programmer * Ultima VII: Part Two - The Silver Seed (1993) - Programmer * Ultima VII: Part Two - Serpent Isle (1993) - Programmer * Pagan: Ultima VIII (1994) - Programmer, Design team, Director * Ultima Online (1997) - Programmer * Bicycle Casino Games (2001) - Technology Director * Thief: Deadly Shadows (2004) - Programmer * Mushroom Men: The Spore Wars (2008) - Producer * Ghostbusters: The Video Game (2009) - Executive Producer * Food Network: Cook or Be Cooked! (2009) - Executive Producer * Age of Booty: Tactics (2014) - Programmer

Bibliography

* (600 pages) * (850 pages) * (908 pages) * (960 pages) co-authored with David "Rez" Graham

References

External links

Mike McShaffry profile
from

MobyGames MobyGames is a commercial website that catalogs information on video games and the people and companies behind them via crowdsourcing. This includes nearly 300,000 games for hundreds of platforms. The site is supported by banner ads and a small ...

Mike McShaffry's website

Interview with Mike McShaffry 2014

Mike McShaffry's Amazon Author page
Living people Origin Systems people University of Houston alumni Video game directors Video game producers Video game programmers 1966 births {{videogame-bio-stub