American McGee

In February 2017, McGee started his annual Pirate Jam, which is a pirate-themed Game Jam sailing around Thailand.

In July 2016, McGee announced the closure of Spicy Horse. Inspired by Jacques Cousteau, he is now pursuing the "life at sea;" travelling, making games and doing vlogs across South East Asia on a sailboat. He created a Patreon account to seek support for this endeavor.

"Probably the most meaningful day for me though [working at id Software]... was the day I was fired. I felt a mixture of terror and freedom that was so significant and powerful—it combined together all the good and bad of the years I'd spent working with Carmack, Romero and the others... and kicked me out into the world to fend for myself. The opportunity to work at id during those early years was so unbelievable—and the path it set me on in letting me go has been even more fantastic. I'm sitting here in Shanghai, China still drawing on many of the lessons and experiences from all those years past... it's been an incredible journey which all started with id [Software]."

In 2013, he opened a Kickstarter for a new game, American McGee's OZombie, however due to slow/lackluster funding the project was canceled. 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.

In 2012, McGee was focusing on Free-To-Play games for mobile devices with BigHead Bash, Akaneiro, and Crazy Fairies.

At the 2009 D.I.C.E. Summit, Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello announced that a sequel to American McGee's Alice was in development for PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 by McGee's Spicy Horse studio. In July 2010, at the EA Showcase in San Francisco, Spicy Horse and EA announced that sequel's title, Alice: Madness Returns, released less than one year after its announcement, on June 14, 2011.

On December 17, 2010, McGee's old company The Mauretania Import Export Company was dissolved and all intellectual property was transferred to Spicy Horse.

More recently, McGee's 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 its follow-up, Crooked House, was released in March 2010 (both had iPad versions released in June 2010).

The planned American McGee's Oz, which was to be produced in conjunction with Ronin Games, was canceled over financial difficulties at Atari. American McGee's Grimm, developed by his Shanghai-based game development studio Spicy Horse for the online service GameTap, was released in 23 weekly episodic segments, starting in 2007.

In 2005, McGee left the United States and resided for a time in Hong Kong before moving to Shanghai, where he lived as of 2009. Once in China, he created Spicy Horse, at one point the largest independent Western game development house in the nation, and helped found Blade (formerly Vykarian), a game outsourcing company. They produced American McGee's Grimm for GameTap (now owned by Metaboli) and worked on the sequel to his original Alice game, Alice: Madness Returns.

Partnering with Enlight Software and its founder Trevor Chan, McGee released the games Scrapland in 2004 and Bad Day L.A. in 2006.

After finishing Alice, McGee left EA "in frustration" when the company fired his creative partner R.J. Berg and shut down Rogue Entertainment. In 2002, McGee founded short lived Carbon6, which two years later became known as Mauretania Import Export Company.

McGee directed the 2002 music video for the song "Same Ol' Road" by the band dredg, from their album El Cielo.

In 1998, McGee was fired from id Software. Later, McGee would say that the day he got fired was very meaningful to him:

American James McGee (born December 13, 1972) is an American video game designer. He is best known as the designer of American McGee's Alice, its sequel Alice: Madness Returns, and his works on various video games from id Software.

American James McGee was born on December 13, 1972, in Dallas, Texas to an eccentric mother who was a house painter. He met his biological father only once, at his 13th birthday party. McGee was highly creative and was gifted in mathematics and science. He also took an early interest in computer programming, and was eventually accepted to a magnet school for computer science.