After completing WinG, he moved to Microsoft's entertainment division where he wrote the rendering engine for the real-time globe display in the Encarta World Atlas.

Hecker's research and development effort on Spore is widely regarded as a major step forward in procedural character animation and rendering.

[13] Following Spore's release in late 2008, some players believed that comments Hecker had made in Seed Magazine[14] indicated that he had been primarily responsible for the game's lack of hard scientific backing.

[17] Hecker was laid off from Maxis in late 2009,[1] and is currently working on the "indie" game SpyParty, which was released as an early access title in 2018.

[18] On December 4, 2013, Microsoft announced that Hecker's studio, Definition Six, was one of many indie game developers to join the ID@Xbox program.

Hecker's other side projects have included acting as editor of Game Developer Magazine and serving on the editorial board for the Journal of Graphics Tools.

Lamenting the lack of innovation in gameplay, he has pushed for alternative markets and models for small-scale video game production.