Spicy Horse (simplified Chinese: 麻辣马; traditional Chinese: 麻辣馬; pinyin: Má là mǎ) is a Shanghai-based independent, video game developer started by American McGee in 2007.

History[link]

The studio was established in 2007. It was called a studio "leading the way" in episodic games.^[1][2] It is currently the largest independent Western developer in China.

Spicy Horse employs more than 70 people at their studio in Zhabei District, Shanghai. The company's development process utilizes a "core team" methodology and 100% outsourced art asset production to conserve energy directed at the core competencies of game development.

Products[link]

Their first title, American McGee's Grimm, was released on GameTap in July 2008 in an episodic form and ran through March 2009. It was built using Epic's Unreal Engine 3.^[3]

Spicy Horse developed the sequel to American McGee's Alice for Electronic Arts, titled Alice: Madness Returns.^[4] It is the first console game entirely designed and developed in China for export.^[5] Additionally, they have produced a child-company, Spicy Pony,^[6] for created digital mobile media games for the iPhone. Their first title, DexIQ was released in early December 2009. Their second was a Little Red Riding Hood adaption for the iPad called Akaneiro.

References[link]

• ^ "Gametap announces American McGee's Grimm". http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=14108. 

External links[link]

• Spicy Horse Games official site
• American McGee's blog site
• Spicy Pony
• DexIQ at the Wayback Machine (archived July 9, 2011)

American McGee
American McGee in 2004.
Born	American James McGee (1972-12-13) December 13, 1972 (age 39)
Occupation	Game designer
Known for	American McGee's Alice, Doom II, Quake
Website
www.americanmcgee.com

American James McGee (born December 13, 1972) is an American game designer.

Career[link]

McGee began his career at id Software,^[1] working on level design, music production, sound effects development, and programming in such games as Doom, Doom II, Quake, and Quake II. In 1998, he was fired^[2] from Id and joined Electronic Arts, where he worked as creative director on several projects, including American McGee's Alice (with Rogue Entertainment). After finishing Alice, McGee left EA to found his first company, The Mauretania Import Export Company.^[3]

Partnering with Enlight Software, McGee released the games Scrapland in 2004 and Bad Day L.A. in 2006. 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 twenty-three weekly episodic segments, starting in 2007.

At the 2009 D.I.C.E. Summit, Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello announced that a sequel to American McGee's Alice is in development for PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 by American McGee's Spicy Horse studio.^[4][5] 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.

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).

On December 17, 2010 McGee's old company The Mauretania Import Export Company was dissolved and all intellectual property was transferred to Spicy Horse.^[6]

Films[link]

McGee has written a script for his interpretation of L. Frank Baum's Oz for Jerry Bruckheimer and Disney (seemingly displaced amid pre-production of "Oz: The Great and Powerful",^[7] written by Mitchell Kapner and being directed by Sam Raimi.^[8])

The film rights to Alice were sold to Miramax and Dimension in 2004, before being passed onto 20th Century Fox and then to Universal Pictures the following year. McGee maintains credit as creator and producer of the film project.^[9]

Personal life[link]

McGee has stated his mission is "to create a unified production method for story telling across the interactive and film industries" and of himself, he says, "I want to be the next Walt Disney, only a little more wicked."

Upon inquiry about his unusual name: "My mom was a hippie. I'm not sure how else to put that... She claims a woman she knew in college, who named her daughter 'America', inspired the name. She also tells me that she was thinking of naming me 'Obnard'. She was and always has been a very eccentric and creative person."^[10]

In 2005, McGee left the United States and resided first in the city of Hong Kong, then on Lamma Island, and currently settling in Shanghai.^[11] Once in China, he created Spicy Horse, now the largest independent game development house in the nation,^{[citation needed]} 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.

Games[link]

• 1994 - Wolfenstein 3D, Tester (Atari Corporation)
• 1994 - Doom II: Hell on Earth, Level Designer (id Software)
• 1994 - Doom, Level Designer (Sega)
• 1995 - The Ultimate Doom, Level Designer (GT Interactive Software)
• 1995 - Doom, Tester (WMS Industries)
• 1996 - Quake, Level Designer, Sound Designer, Tools Programmer (id Software)
• 1996 - H!Zone, Co-Producer (WizardWorks Software)
• 1996 - Hexen: Beyond Heretic, Co-Producer (GT Interactive Software)
• 1996 - Final Doom, Level Designer (id Software and Atari, Inc.)
• 1997 - Quake Mission Pack 1: Scourge of Armagon, Level Designer (id Software)
• 1997 - Quake Mission Pack 2: Dissolution of Eternity, Level Designer (id Software)
• 1997 - Quake II, Level Designer, Sound Designer, Tools Programmer (Activision)
• 1997 - Doom 64, Level Designer (Midway Games)
• 1998 - Dominion: Storm Over Gift 3, Sound Designer (Eidos Interactive)
• 2000 - Timeline, Co-Designer, Co-Writer (Eidos Interactive)
• 2000 - American McGee's Alice, Creative Director, Co-Writer, Designer (Electronic Arts)
• 2004 - American McGee Presents: Scrapland, Producer (Enlight Software)
• 2006 - American McGee Presents: Bad Day L.A., Creative Director, Writer, Co-Designer (Enlight Software)
• 2008 - American McGee's Grimm, Project Leader, Creative Director, Co-Writer, Co-Designer (Turner Broadcasting System)
• 2009 - DexIQ, Project Leader, Creative Director (Spicy Horse)
• 2011 - Alice: Madness Returns, Creative Director, Co-Writer, Designer (Spicy Horse) (Electronic Arts)
• 2012 - BigHead Bash, (Spicy Horse)
• 2012 - Crazy Faeries, (Spicy Horse)
• 2012 - Akaneiro: Demon Hunters, (Spicy Horse)

See also[link]

• Alice, game-derived film
• dredg, "Same Ol' Road" music video directed by McGee^[12]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official website
• American McGee's entry at MobyGames
• American McGee at the Internet Movie Database

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (April 2012)

"The Man" is a slang phrase that may refer to the government or to some other authority in a position of power. In addition to this derogatory connotation, it may also serve as a term of respect and praise.

The phrase "the Man is keeping me down" is commonly used to describe oppression. The phrase "stick it to the Man" encourages resistance to authority, and essentially means "fight back" or "resist", either openly or via sabotage.^[1]

History[link]

The earliest recorded use^{[citation needed]} of the term "the Man" in the American sense dates back to a letter written by a young Alexander Hamilton in September 1772, when he was 15. In a letter to his father James Hamilton, published in the Royal Dutch-American Gazette, he described the response of the Dutch governor of St. Croix to a hurricane that raked that island on August 31, 1772. "Our General has issued several very salutary and humane regulations and both in his publick and private measures, has shewn himself the Man." ^{[2][dubious – discuss]} In the Southern U.S. states, the phrase came to be applied to any man or any group in a position of authority, or to authority in the abstract. From about the 1950s the phrase was also an underworld code word for police, the warden of a prison or other law enforcement or penal authorities.

It was also used as a term for a drug dealer in the 1950s and 1960s and can be seen in such media as Curtis Mayfield's "No Thing On Me", William Burroughs's novel Naked Lunch, and in the Velvet Underground song "I'm Waiting for the Man", in which Lou Reed sings about going to Uptown Manhattan, specifically Lexington Avenue and 125th Street, to buy heroin.

The use of this term was expanded to counterculture groups and their battles against authority, such as the Yippies, which, according to a May 19, 1969 article in U.S. News and World Report, had the "avowed aim ... to destroy 'The Man', their term for the present system of government". The term eventually found its way into humorous usage, such as in a December 1979 motorcycle ad from the magazine Easyriders which featured the tagline, "California residents: Add 6% sales tax for The Man."

In present day, the phrase has been popularized in commercials and cinema, featuring particularly prominently as a recurring motif in the 2003 film School of Rock.^[3][4][5][6]

Use as praise[link]

The term has also been used as an approbation or form of praise. This may refer to the recipient's status as the leader or authority within a particular context, or it might be assumed to be a shortened form of a phrase like "He is the man (who is in charge)." One example of this usage dates to 1879 when Otto von Bismarck commented, referring to Benjamin Disraeli's pre-eminent position at the Congress of Berlin, "The old Jew, he is the man."^{[7][dubious – discuss]}

In more modern usage, it can be a superlative compliment ("you da man!") indicating that the subject is currently standing out amongst his peers even though they have no special designation or rank, such as a basketball player who is performing better than the other players on the court. It can also be used as a genuine compliment with an implied, slightly exaggerated or sarcastic tone, usually indicating that the person has indeed impressed the speaker but by doing something relatively trivial.

See also[link]

• Absentee landlord
• Big Brother (Nineteen Eighty-Four)
• New World Order (conspiracy theory)
• Ruling class
• The Establishment
• Power elite
• Corrections officer
• YTMND

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Lighter, J.E. (Ed.). (1997). Random House Dictionary of American Slang. New York: Random House.