Mark Overmars Mark Overmars (48) is full professor in Computer Science at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. He is scientific director of the Center for Advanced Gaming and Simulation (AGS; http://www.gameresearch.nl) a collaboration between Utrecht University, TNO and the Utrecht School of the Arts, covering all areas of game research, ranging from computer science aspects to learning, to art. Mark's research interests focus on virtual environments and games. In particular he is concerned with research on path planning and animation. For more information on his academic career see his academic CV or his list of publications.

Besides his research, Mark has always been active in writing software. In the eighties he wrote a commercial database program for the Atari ST and also a number of games. Later, for the PC, he wrote software to inspire kids. Some of his popular free programs are Drawing for Children, a drawing program for children age 3 and above, and RCX Control Center for controlling the Lego MindStorms robot. Three of his programs, Drape, a visual version of Logo, Motion Planning, a game to teach people about motion planning of robots, and a version of Tangram were published by Sherston Publishing Group in the UK under the name Professor Roberts' ICT Problem Solving Kit.

Mark's most extensive project is the Game Maker program which he has developed since 1999. With this program everybody can create computer games without the need to write a single line of code. It is downloaded over a million times each year and used worldwide for hobby and education. Thousands of games have been created with it, even commercial games. It is also used as a prototyping tool in a number of big commercial game companies.

In 2004 Mark founded The Game Maker Company B.V. of which he is the director. The company has further developed Game Maker and undertakes other activities to stimulate the creation of games for hobby and education. In particular a very successful book was written (The Game Maker's Apprentice) and many lectures have been given.

Since 2007 The Game Maker Company is one of the owners of YoYo Games that further distributes and develops Game Maker and creates a Web 2.0 community for hobby game developers. Mark is one of the directors of YoYo Games.