User:Mark Overmars



Mark Overmars is the creator of Game Maker and one of the directors/owners of YoYo Games. He is a full professor at the Institute of Information and Computing Sciences at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. There he heads the Center for Advanced Gaming and Simulation, that performs research in areas such as 3D modelling, animation, virtual characters, simulation, human-computer interaction, adaptive game play, and artistic aspects of games.

Game Maker was not written as part of the work at the university but started as a hobby project. Since 2004 Game Maker was produced and distributed by The Game Maker Company, headed by Mark Overmars and since 2007 by YoYo Games.

Mark has always been interested in computer games. In the eighties he was reviewing games for an Atari journal. He also wrote some games for the Atari ST computer (Super Breakout, Snake, Gobang). Mark really likes the Nintendo Wii and plays most of his games there, although it is rumoured he will soon get an XBox360 as well.