He is best known for launching development studio New World Computing in 1983, making his design debut in 1986 with Might and Magic Book One: The Secret of the Inner Sanctum.

He attended grade school at Lycée Français de Los Angeles and his collegiate alma mater is UCLA, where he started as a pre-med student and graduated with a degree in computer science.

Their first title was the medieval fantasy Might and Magic: Secret of the Inner Sanctum—one of the first role-playing games to feature detailed drawings of both indoor and outdoor locations.

In 1990 Van Caneghem released King's Bounty, the forerunner of the Heroes of Might and Magic series of seven games which feature turn-based, fantasy-themed conflicts in which players control armies of mythical creatures.

[8] In 2006 Van Caneghem left NCSoft and launched Trion World Network, headquartered in Redwood City, California, after securing more than $100 million[9] in investment capital from Time Warner, NBC Universal, GE and Bertelsmann.

Van Caneghem left Trion in 2009[11] and joined Electronic Arts where he headed the video game giant's Command & Conquer brand.

[14] In 2014, Caneghem founded VC Mobile Entertainment (VCME) with the goal to produce and publish iOS and Android games.