International Game Developers Association names game executive Jen MacLean as interim chief

Jen MacLean, a 25-year veteran of the video game industry, is the new interim executive director for the International Game Developers Association (IGDA), the world’s largest nonprofit group serving game developers. MacLean has already been serving as managing director for the association’s charitable arm, the IGDA Foundation, and will continue in that role.

MacLean started as a play tester at MicroProse, which J. W. “Wild Bill” Stealey and Sid Meier founded in 1982. The company made simulation and strategy games, including Civilization. She went on to work on the Games Channel at AOL and was an executive for games at Comcast. She was CEO of 38 Studios, the ill-fated venture by baseball star Curt Schilling, who wanted to build a massively multiplayer online role-playing game to compete with World of Warcraft. More recently, she served as the president of StoryArc Media, a kid-focused entertainment company that Jeff Kinney, author of The Diary of a Wimpy Kid series of books and movies, created.