David Doak is a
Northern Irish video game designer. Originally from
Belfast, he later moved to
England, where he studied at
Oxford University on biochemistry specialty
and worked as a
research scientist.
Doak began his video game career working with
Rare where he provided network support for ''
Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong's Double Trouble!'' and helped develop the critically acclaimed ''
GoldenEye 007'' and ''
Perfect Dark'' for the
Nintendo 64. His facial likeness and name were used for a
non-player character
A non-player character (NPC), or non-playable character, is any character in a game that is not controlled by a player. The term originated in traditional tabletop role-playing games where it applies to characters controlled by the gamemaster o ...
in ''GoldenEye 007'', a scientist named Dr. Doak. Several of the guards also bear his likeness.
Doak and video game composer
Graeme Norgate left Rare in 1998 to start
Free Radical Design. From there he worked on the video game series ''
TimeSplitters'' and two other video games called ''
Haze'' and ''
Second Sight''.
Doak left Free Radical - now known as
Deep Silver Dambuster Studios
Deep Silver Dambuster Studios Ltd. is a British video game developer based in Nottingham, England. The studio was set up by Deep Silver on 30 July 2014 to take over the development of '' Homefront: The Revolution'' from Crytek UK, which was clos ...
- in 2009 and set up his own
Nottingham-based studio, Zinkyzonk, which would develop games for
Facebook. The company evolved from his defunct studio Pumpkin Beach. Zinkyzonk released its first game, Gangsta Zombies, on 11 July 2010 in partnership with
Jolt Online Gaming
Jolt Online Gaming was an online gaming company hosted in Ireland. Its main site provided news, reviews, and interviews concerning upcoming games on consoles and computers, while its gaming network Jolt Online Gaming Network hosted and published f ...
. The company was dissolved in April 2013.
Since 2016, Doak lectures at
Norwich University of the Arts.
On 19 May 2021,
Deep Silver
Deep Silver is an Austrian video game publisher and a division of Plaion. Eugenio Vitale serves as the director of games development for Deep Silver.
History
Deep Silver was announced in November 2002, with their first release to be '' Anarc ...
announced the reformation of Free Radical Design with David Doak and Steve Ellis as studio heads to make a new ''TimeSplitters'' game.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Doak, David
Living people
Alumni of the University of Oxford
British biochemists
Businesspeople from Belfast
Rare (company) people
Video game designers
Year of birth missing (living people)