Mark Baldwin is a long time computer game designer, developer and manager. Previous rumors have debated over the birthplace of Mark. Some place it on the three hundred and twenty-second planet of the Betelgeuse system from which he was stolen away by space gypsies in his second year. However, many years of research have proven that said planet is missing from the system. So the more unlikely possibility that Mark was born in Detroit Michigan in 1952 must be believed.

 

Mark spent a semi-normal life growing up in Michigan, Indiana, Alabama, Japan, Georgia, Germany and Florida. It was during this time that he picked up an interest in strategy games and science fiction of which he claims that he now has nearly a thousand games and tens of thousands of books. College was next on the agenda, where in 1974; Mark received both Bachelors and Masters Degrees in Engineering from Purdue University. It was also during this time that Mark picked up his interest in computers. That was due to the fact that as a freshman, one could avoid taking drafting by taking a computer class.

 

Since Uncle Sam had paid for Mark's four years at Purdue, Mark was obliged to return the favor at SAC Headquarters in Omaha Nebraska. From this, he learned everything there was to know about Soviet ICBMs which has been of absolutely no value in designing computer games.

 

Realizing this failure of value, Mark left life in a blue suit to work on the Space Shuttle Program in Houston Texas in 1979. There he worked on shuttle flights being responsible for all of the ascent flight designs from STS-4 through STS-25. It was during this time that Mark also started writing games for the computer, first amateur, and then commercial.

 

In 1986 Mark left the shuttle program to move to Denver where he started designing computer games full time. Mark has authored or was involved with many games, including Starbase 13, Empire, Star Fleet I, Star Fleet II, D.R.A.G.O.N. FORCE, and Star Legions. In 1991, Mark cofounded White Wolf Productions, one of the top computer game design houses in the country. White Wolf's products include the award winning The Perfect General, Empire Deluxe and most recently Empire II, The Art of War. One innovative work he is quite proud of was the Empire Deluxe Scenarios for which Mark managed to create the first Computer Game Anthology incorporating the work of such notable designers and authors as Jerry Pournelle, James Dunnigan, Don Gilman, Will Wright, Trevor Sorensen and many others.

 

White Wolf closed its doors in December 1995, to allow the principals to move on to different projects. Since then, Mark has been active with the game industry, software industry and the military with various consulting projects and as a board member for the International Game Developers Network (IGDN). In 2001, he took a break from his consulting work to temporarily take the position of Vice President of Product Development for Moto1. Additional projects have included Galaxis and Metal Fatigue in the computer game industry; BalanceLog for the commercial health industry and Sensor Combat and JWARS for the military. In addition he has been teaching computer games and computer science at several colleges and universities finishing up as a Professor of Practice at Colorado School of Mines.