Stephen H. Clarke-Willson, Ph.D.

ArenaNet

Bellevue, WA — 4/2024 – present

Game Director, Guild Wars

• Full-time steward of the original Guild Wars, after several years splitting time between this role and Vice President, Technology
• Led launch of Guild Wars Reforged, the franchise's first mobile release, on iOS and Android — featured by Apple in the App Store
• Continue active content delivery on a 20+ year old live game, including new content on the mobile platform post-launch
• Maintain and modernize back-end systems supporting the game, while resolving long-standing technical issues and quality-of-life requests from a two-decade-old community

NCsoft

Bellevue, WA — 3/2019 – 4/2024

Vice President, Technology

• Support Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2
• Lead Platform Team
• Lead IT
• Integrate ArenaNet processes/procedures with larger NCWest organization

ArenaNet

Bellevue, WA — 10/2005 – 3/2019

Studio Technical Director (Head of Engineering) — 5/2013 – 3/2019

• Lead technical development at ArenaNet (110 engineers)
• Improved Guild Wars 2 uptime from 99.5% to 100% (last three years) while shipping new content every two weeks
• Integrated IT into studio development
• Lead team (39 programmers) that developed new engine technology for ArenaNet
  1. Excellent software engineering – all systems run independently
  2. Fast iteration, including dynamic rendering pipeline (HDR/PBR) specified in XML
  3. Support for massive streaming worlds
• Lead resurgence of Classic Guild Wars with increasing revenue YoY

Server Team Lead — 2/2009 – 4/2013

• Lead team that developed restartable, dynamically updatable, multi-threaded, asynchronous, near-real-time, continuously running, error free highly optimized support servers for Guild Wars 2.

Server Programmer — 10/2005 – 2/2009

• Develop restartable, dynamically updatable, multi-threaded, asynchronous, near-real-time, continuously running, error free highly optimized support servers for Classic Guild Wars.

Above the Garage Productions

Sammamish, WA — 5/2004 – 10/2005

Game Technology Developer

• Thread-safe multiprocessor execution profile tool for Gas Powered Games
• Downloadable music system (payment system, database, file server, embedded C++ DRM player, etc.) using Microsoft DRM technology
• Integrated downloadable music system with Guild Wars and Artistry Entertainment to provide sales of additional music for Classic Guild Wars
• Music layout for Classic Guild Wars

Amaze Entertainment

Kirkland, WA — 1/2000 – 4/2004

Vice President and Executive Studio Director — Adrenium Games Studio

• Developed Adrenium Games as a new studio within Amaze Entertainment focused on console development (PS2, Xbox, GC)
• Responsible for hiring and reviewing 70+ full-time staff across Adrenium and Black Ship studios
• Responsible for managing core technology group, which developed a fully general, cross-platform game engine (no middleware), which Activision rated in the top 5% of engines they had seen
• Responsible for game development process across design, art, programming and sound/music
• Developed Azurik: Rise of Perathia for Xbox launch (Microsoft); Samurai Jack for PS2, GC (Sega); Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events for PS2, GC, Xbox (Activision)

Head of R&D — Black Ship Games

Digimon Rumble Arena 2 (PS2, Xbox, GC)

• Responsible for product development within Black Ship Games, an Amaze studio that focused on console development for Asian publishers

Cavedog Entertainment

Bothell, WA — 3/1998 – 12/1999

Sr. Lead Client Programmer

Total Annihilation, Total Annihilation: Kingdoms, Amen: The Awakening (PC)

• Interface programming and project management for 'Boneyards' online matchmaking system for Total Annihilation and Total Annihilation: Kingdoms
• Lead Developer for Kingdoms 2.0 upgrade which resulted in 2x-7x performance improvement over version 1.0 (and the entire project only took five weeks!)
• Compatibility programming for Amen: The Awakening graphics (ported DX6 implementation to roughly 20 different video cards)

Above the Garage Productions

Sammamish, WA — 8/1994 – 1/1999

Game Technology Developer (Consulting)

• Developed new 32-bit game engine (SuperSet™) for Windows
• Programmed all low-level game services using Microsoft Direct3D, DirectSound, DirectInput; complete collision and motion system; scripting language; integrated game layout editor
• Developed multiple applications using the SuperSet engine for multiple clients
• 3D Hardware Analysis: in-house experience with all major 3D accelerators (some that never shipped) including 3Dfx Voodoo 1/2, Rendition V1000 and V2100, Oak Technology Warp 5, PowerVR 1&2; ATI Rage I/II/Pro; S3 Virge (VX/DX/GX/GX2), Nvidia Riva 128, TNT, TNT2, and others (basically everything through DX6)
• Consulting: Intervista Software - Direct3D and S3 graphics implementation (complete conversion from D3D Retained Mode / Immediate Mode in six months to S3 hardware) for VRML 2.0 Browser (millions of copies distributed by Microsoft with Internet Explorer 4.0)
• Other clients included Virgin Sound and Vision, DreamCatcher Interactive, Extreme Audio Reality, Cavedog Entertainment

Virgin Interactive Entertainment Inc.

Irvine, CA — 1990 – 1994

Vice President, Worldwide Product Development

• Expanded product development staff from four producers, three programmers, and one artist (total eight staff) to 180 staff worldwide in three locations (Irvine, Las Vegas, and London)
• Additionally supervised $10M in external product development worldwide
• Gross (wholesale) sales increased from approx. $30M to $180M in 3½ years
• Key products produced by the internal studios included Disney's Aladdin for Sega Genesis (4.0M units), Disney's Jungle Book for SNES and Genesis, and Demolition Man for 3DO, a groundbreaking product incorporating specially shot, live footage of Sylvester Stallone and Wesley Snipes
• The internal studios in Irvine, which I supervised, accounted for about half of all revenue generated, worldwide
• Instrumental in the acquisition of Westwood Studios
• Supervised budgets at Westwood Studios

Producer / Executive Producer

• Products produced or executive produced included "Global Gladiators" [Product of the Year award from Sega], "The Seventh Guest" [1.5M unit CD-ROM virtual reality game], "Cool Spot" [one of the five highest rated games ever according to Sega's own rating system, approximately 1M units worldwide]; "Double Dragon" [a defect-free product (no A, B, or C class bugs) according to Sega's own testing]; "Monopoly Deluxe" for Windows and DOS [several hundred thousand units]; and many others

PDA Engineering (Patran Division)

Costa Mesa, CA — 1988 – 1989

Software Architect

• Software architect for Patran-3 MCAE (Mechanical Computer Aided Engineering) software system
• Designed all high level module interfaces for 3-D MCAE system portable across five workstation vendors (SGI, Dec, Sun, HP/Apollo), including vendor-specific accelerated graphics processing, and interface to SQL database system
• Also project manager for "Core" (portable I/O, Graphics, GUI and Database) subsystems (total system size: 2M lines of code)

Northrop Research and Technology Center

Hawthorne, CA — 1986 – 1988

Research Scientist

• 3-D modeling and image processing for Advanced Technology Bomber ("Stealth") target acquisition on SGI equipment
• Served on Corporate Software Practices Committee reporting to the president of Northrop Corporation, which surveyed software development practices over all seven Northrop divisions

Contract Programming

While pursuing Ph.D. — 1981 – 1986

• Free-format editor for DayFlo free-form database system (C/PC); tiny Basic interpreter written in Tiny C (plus assembly language) for Z80; Ada Library manager for Irvine Compiler Corp.

Lab Manager, UC Irvine

1977 – 1981

• Maintain mini-computer lab for Department of Information and Computer Science, UC Irvine, and implement various projects for the department, including: port of UCSD Pascal P-System from PDP-11 to Lockheed SUE computer (completely in binary – no source changes); maintain Varian 620 hardware; Lockheed Sue hardware; Distributed Computer Operating System (DCOS) link hardware; various Unix systems; port of "F" editor from MLisp to C (which became basis of DayFlo database editor); Lisp programming; Pascal programming support for various classes; Ada parser in Lisp; Dec-10 programming…

University of California, Irvine

• Ph.D. in Computer Science; specializing in Software Engineering; thesis: "Persistent Prototypes"
• M.S. in Computer Science
• B.S. in Computer Science (cum laude)

"Applying Game Design to Virtual Environments"

• Chapter in Digital Illusion: Entertaining the Future with High Technology, ed. Clark Dodsworth, ACM Press/Addison-Wesley, 1998, pp. 229–239. ACM Digital Library
• Reprinted by Gamasutra (now Game Developer). Game Developer

• "Guild Wars Microservices and 24/7 Uptime" — GDC 2017. GDC Vault
• "Guild Wars 2: Scaling from One to Millions" — GDC 2013. GDC Vault

• "How ArenaNet Is Modernizing Guild Wars Without Remaking It" — Forbes, 2026. Forbes
• "My Guild Wars Reforged Interview With ArenaNet" — YouTube, 2026. YouTube
• "'The Game Can Render At Over 400 FPS': 20 Years On, Guild Wars Is Better Than Ever" — TheGamer, 2025. TheGamer
• "ArenaNet 'Problem-Solver' Stephen Clarke-Willson Talks About Guild Wars After 20 Years" — Game Rant, 2025. Game Rant
• Game Developer Podcast, Ep. 56 — spooky MMO networking stories with Robert Neckorcuk, 2025. Game Developer
• "The Two Developers Keeping Guild Wars 1 Alive" — Kotaku, 2018. Kotaku
• "Interview: Dr. Stephen Clarke-Willson (Virgin Int. VP of Product Dev.)" — Sega-16, 2006. Sega-16