Name Mark Randel Role Game programmer | ||
Occupation Game programmer, Game producer, CEO Education University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign | ||
Organizations founded Terminal Reality | ||
Mark Randel is an American game programmer and the founder, principal technologist, and majority owner of Terminal Reality. Randel was the lead programmer of Terminal Velocity, Monster Truck Madness, BloodRayne, its sequel, and Ghostbusters: The Video Game.
History
Mark Randel began programming commercial software at age 15, but it wasn't until 1991 that Mark entered the computer game industry when he teamed with game programmer Bruce Artwick to write add-on products for the just released Microsoft Flight Simulator 4.0. This led to Mark becoming the co-designer and lead programmer for Flight Simulator 5.0 and designing the next generation flight technology standard. This technology is still in use today by Microsoft in various Flight Simulator releases.
After leaving the Bruce Artwick Organization in mid-1994, Mark and Brett founded Terminal Reality in October 1994, which required Mark leave Chicago where he had just finished up on his BSE and MS in electrical engineering from University of Illinois. The goal of Terminal Reality was to exploit texture mapped 3D game engines, with only $1,000, and working out of Brett Combs' home. During that time they were developing their first release, Terminal Velocity, and pulled together $120,000, received advances on the game and were basically able to avoid giving up ownership and primary decision rights to venture capitalists. After that first year Randel's company generated $1.2 million and nearly doubled it the second year with $2.1 million.