David Doak is a

Northern Irish Northern Irish people is a demonym for all people born in Northern Ireland or people who are entitled to reside in Northern Ireland without any restriction on their period of residence. Most Northern Irish people either identify as Northern ...

video game Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, controller, keyboard, or motion sensing device to generate visual feedback. This fee ...

designer A designer is a person who plans the form or structure of something before it is made, by preparing drawings or plans. In practice, anyone who creates tangible or intangible objects, products, processes, laws, games, graphics, services, or exp ...

. Originally from

Belfast Belfast ( , ; from ga, Béal Feirste , meaning 'mouth of the sand-bank ford') is the capital and largest city of Northern Ireland, standing on the banks of the River Lagan on the east coast. It is the 12th-largest city in the United Kingdom ...

, he later moved to

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

, where he studied at

Oxford University Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to th ...

on biochemistry specialty and worked as a

research scientist A scientist is a person who conducts scientific research to advance knowledge in an area of the natural sciences. In classical antiquity, there was no real ancient analog of a modern scientist. Instead, philosophers engaged in the philosophic ...

. 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 ''Perfect Dark'' is a first-person shooter developed and published by Rare for the Nintendo 64 video game console in 2000. The first game of the '' Perfect Dark'' series, it follows Joanna Dark, an agent of the Carrington Institute research ...

'' for the

Nintendo 64 The (N64) is a home video game console developed by Nintendo. The successor to the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, it was released on June 23, 1996, in Japan, on September 29, 1996, in North America, and on March 1, 1997, in Europe and ...

. His facial likeness and name were used for a non-player character in ''GoldenEye 007'', a scientist named Dr. Doak. Several of the guards also bear his likeness. Doak and video game composer

Graeme Norgate Graeme Norgate is a British video game music composer who has composed music for a variety of video games developed by Rare. His first project at Rare was writing music for the Game Boy game, '' Donkey Kong Land''. He also contributed to the s ...

left Rare in 1998 to start

Free Radical Design Free Radical Design Ltd. is a British video game developer based in Nottingham. Founded by David Doak, Steve Ellis, Karl Hilton and Graeme Norgate in Stoke-on-Trent in April 1999, they are best known for their '' TimeSplitters'' series of ga ...

. From there he worked on the video game series '' TimeSplitters'' and two other video games called ''

Haze Haze is traditionally an atmospheric phenomenon in which dust, smoke, and other dry particulates suspended in air obscure visibility and the clarity of the sky. The World Meteorological Organization manual of codes includes a classificati ...

'' and ''

Second Sight Extrasensory perception or ESP, also called sixth sense, is a claimed paranormal ability pertaining to reception of information not gained through the recognized physical senses, but sensed with the mind. The term was adopted by Duke Universit ...

''. Doak left Free Radical - now known as Deep Silver Dambuster Studios - in 2009 and set up his own

Nottingham Nottingham ( , locally ) is a city and unitary authority area in Nottinghamshire, East Midlands, England. It is located north-west of London, south-east of Sheffield and north-east of Birmingham. Nottingham has links to the legend of Robi ...

-based studio, Zinkyzonk, which would develop games for

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Mosk ...

. 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 Norwich University of the Arts (NUA) is a public university in Norwich, Norfolk, United Kingdom that specialises in art, design and media. It was founded as Norwich School of Design in 1845 and has a long history of arts education. It gained ful ...

. On 19 May 2021, Deep Silver 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)