Mike O'Brien is the former president and co-founder of ArenaNet and executive producer of its games ''

Guild Wars ''Guild Wars'' is an online role-playing game franchise developed by ArenaNet and published by NCSOFT. The games were critically well received and won many editor's choice awards, as well as awards such as Best Value, Best Massively Multiplaye ...

'' and ''

Guild Wars 2 ''Guild Wars 2'' is a free-to-play, massively multiplayer online role-playing game developed by ArenaNet and published by NCSoft. Set in the fantasy world of Tyria, the core game follows the re-emergence of Destiny's Edge, a disbanded guild ded ...

''. He led the design and content creation teams of the original ''

''. Before co-founding ArenaNet, he worked as a company director and a lead programmer at

Blizzard Entertainment Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. is an American video game developer and publisher based in Irvine, California. A subsidiary of Activision Blizzard, the company was founded on February 8, 1991, under the name Silicon & Synapse, Inc. by three graduat ...

where he developed the

3D rendering 3D rendering is the 3D computer graphics process of converting 3D modeling, 3D models into 2D computer graphics, 2D images on a computer. 3D renders may include photorealistic rendering, photorealistic effects or non-photorealistic rendering, no ...

engine of '' Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos'' and led the development of ''

Battle.net Battle.net is an Internet-based online game, social networking service, digital distribution, and digital rights management platform developed by Blizzard Entertainment. The service was launched on December 31, 1996, followed a few days later ...

''. He also worked on '' Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness'', '' Diablo'' and ''

StarCraft ''StarCraft'' is a military science fiction media franchise created by Chris Metzen and James Phinney and owned by Blizzard Entertainment. The series, set in the beginning of the 26th century, centers on a galactic struggle for dominance am ...

'', where he, among other things, designed and created the MPQ archives used in all Blizzard games after Diablo. Mike O'Brien was featured as one of the most influential people in the

video game industry The video game industry encompasses the development, marketing, and monetization of video games. The industry encompasses dozens of job disciplines and thousands of jobs worldwide. The video game industry has grown from niches to mainstream. , ...

on ''

PC Gamer ''PC Gamer'' is a magazine and website founded in the United Kingdom in 1993 devoted to PC gaming and published monthly by Future plc. The magazine has several regional editions, with the UK and US editions becoming the best selling PC games ma ...

's'' September 1999 cover story ''"Game Gods"''. O'Brien also previously developed an Apple II emulator for Windows,

AppleWin AppleWin (also known as Apple //e Emulator for Windows) is an open source software emulator for running Apple II programs in Microsoft Windows. AppleWin was originally written by Mike O'Brien in 1994; O'Brien himself announced an early version of ...

, and old DOS ASCII game, ''Pyro 2''. In early October 2019, through the official Guild Wars 2 news page, O'Brien announced his departure from ArenaNet and his intention to start a new development studio. He is currently working as a programmer at the studio "ManaWorks".

References

Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Video game programmers Video game designers Place of birth missing (living people) {{videogame-bio-stub