Guido Henkel

Biography

After modeling his first working microprocessor in high school in 1982, Henkel began focusing on programming and formed his first company, Dragonware Games, in 1983. After writing a series of games for the Apple II, Commodore VIC-20 and Commodore C-64, he landed a major publishing deal with ariolasoft, a division of the media giant Bertelsmann, in 1985.

He released Hellowoon: Das Geheimnis des Zauberstabs and Ooze: Als die Geister mürbe wurden through ariolasoft before splitting from the publisher.

In 1990 Henkel formed Attic Entertainment Software with his high school friends Hans-Jürgen Brändle and Jochen Hamma. Attic developed and published a series of games for C-64, Amiga, Atari ST and the PC. In 1992 the company released Die Schicksalsklinge (aka Realms of Arkania: Blade of Destiny) the first computer game based on the acclaimed German role-playing franchise Das Schwarze Auge. The game received high review scores and was an instant hit with hard core role-playing fans around the world and was published in various languages around the world by companies such as U.S. Gold and Sir-Tech.

After a series of more games, including two additional games in the Das Schwarze Auge/Realms of Arkania series, Henkel left Attic in 1997 to move to the United States.

He joined Interplay Productions’ role-playing division Black Isle Studios, where he produced the universally acclaimed Planescape: Torment. In addition, he worked on Fallout during this period and he became the initial producer of Bioware’s Neverwinter Nights in the early design stages of the project.

Henkel left Interplay in late 1999. He started working on DVD Review, a movie-related online magazine, during the ascent of DVD as the emerging home video format. In his position as the co-owner and editor of the magazine, he reviewed hundreds of movies and covered the industry with editorial features and interviews. In this capacity, he also contributed numerous editorial articles and reviews to print magazines such as Medialine and Sound & Vision.

In 2001 he briefly returned to the games industry by joining a start-up company called eMusement as vice president. The studio was signed by Japanese powerhouse Squaresoft, makers of the Final Fantasy games, to develop an original massively multiplayer online role-playing game. However, after six months and an internal restructuring of Square, the project was canceled and eMusement shut down operations.

Henkel developed and published a series of mobile games in 2002 to 2011, working directly with carriers at the time, specializing on Qualcomm’s BREW platform. During this period Henkel also served on the Board of Advisors for the Game Developers Conference and acted as the chairman of the advisory board for the mobile summit of the conference in 2010.

2010 Henkel turned to writing and began publishing his Jason Dark: Ghost Hunter series of supernatural mysteries.

Henkel became the first writer to ever have his fiction writing published in Fangoria Magazine, when editor Chris Alexander asked Henkel to write an exclusive five-part serialized story. The short story Food for the Dead appeared in the magazine from issue #302 to #306 in 2011.

Jason Dark: Ghost Hunter

Short Stories

Non-fiction

Games

Music