Chris McElligott Park

Founder and Lead Designer at Arcen Games, LLC.

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I'm not a novelist anymore, and I'm not trying to be one. So I'll kindy opt not to write about myself in the third person. If you want that sort of thing, you can head to wikipedia to find out more about my professional work.

About my name -- it changed. I was born Christopher Michael Park, and went by the name Christopher M. Park in most of my professional work for the first 38 years of my life. Friends have always known me as Chris Park, and aside from credits screens that's how fans and colleagues have addressed me as well. As you may have gathered, the professional name I go by now is Chris McElligott Park (my full name is Christopher Michael McElligott Park).

After my first marriage fell apart 15 years in, I took stock of what was important to me and wound up in a much better fit. I married for the second time in 2020. My wife Kara is an established physician with publications, and it really didn't sit well with me that potentially she was going to be the only one altering her name.

Back when I first made this site, in my mid-20s, I talked a lot about how my childhood ambition was to become a published novelist before entering college. That seems like ancient history. As I have always noted, I completely missed that target, but kept up with things as a freelance computer artist at seventeen (hey, one magazine), a Certified Novell Administrator at eighteen (that's so irrelevant now), the Chief Technology Officer of a small SaaS software company at twenty-four (okay, I'm still proud of that), and a the owner of a small independent games development company at twenty-six (sure, that's basically where wikipedia starts as far as my existence goes).

The first time around I got engaged in high school, and it did last for 18 years. My perspective is a wee bit different, now. I started out in computer science at NC State University, but that was miserable and out of date at the time, so I switched and instead got my undergraduate degree in business administration from Saint Leo University. A lot less prestigious of a school, but the actual education was invaluable and Arcen probably wouldn't exist without it.

The second time around, marrying a physician with an MD, two Master's Degrees, and two Fellowships rather puts things into perspective when it comes to my own education. And she was UNC to Duke. It makes me really proud, at any rate, the work that she does -- and it's given me a lot of perspective on maintaining my own work-life balance, which had basically gone to all-work for most of Arcen's existence.

I have two wonderful kids, Christopher and Yvonne, one biological and one step, but they're both just "our kids" for Kara and I. They both have sat down and helped with opinions and thoughts at various points on several of my projects. It's adorable, and, surprisingly, actually helpful. I try to keep a steady stream of reading in scientific news so that I have new things to tell them about when they're in their listening moods. The idea of being a dad was actually one of the most important things to me from an early age, and despite losing track of that along the way, partly because of life circumstances at the time, I'm quite happy with how things are in 2020. Even with a pandemic.