David Doak is a designer of video games hailing from Belfast in Northern Ireland. He was a member of the design group at Rare and participated in the creation of both GoldenEye 007 and Perfect Dark. In 1998, he departed Rare to establish his own video game company, Free Radical Design, where he served as its director. While he was in charge, the company put out a number of games, notably the TimeSplitters franchise.
During the summer of 2006, he made an agreement with LucasArts for Free Radical Design to develop Star Wars: Battlefront III. Even with a sequel in its early stages, development was still in progress when LucasArts underwent significant shifts in leadership, management, and overall strategy in early 2008. According to Free Radical's leadership, LucasArts put Battlefront III on hold for several months before ultimately cancelling it. Doak found the situation very difficult, calling it "the most depressing and pointless thing" and the reason for a "nervous breakdown" that led him to leave Free Radical around that time.