David Maxwell

Born in San Francisco, David Maxwell spent his formative years in San Rafael. He pursued higher education at Columbia Basin College in Washington, where he graduated with a degree in the field of Computer Science.

Maxwell's association with Lucasfilm Games began in 1991, where he served as a technician within the Quality Assurance department. Initially, his responsibilities involved testing various video games, including Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, Defenders of Dynatron City, and Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe, along with their respective expansion packs. Simultaneously, Maxwell also worked as a tester for Spectrum HoloByte, contributing to National Lampoon's Chess Maniac 5 Billion and 1. When Lawrence Holland and Edward Kilham, his colleagues at Lucasfilm, commenced development on the Star Wars flight simulator Star Wars: X-Wing in the early 1990s, Maxwell joined their team as a mission designer. It was around this time that he earned the moniker "Max."

Maxwell, in collaboration with his longtime friend David Wessman, took charge of crafting the game's missions and also functioned as a lead tester. Maxwell and Wessman aimed to create missions that dynamically adapted based on player actions, with specific events triggered by attacks on certain targets. Some missions even offered multiple possible conclusions. For instance, failure in the mission "Protect a Disabled X-wing" resulted in the arrival of the Imperial I-class Star Destroyer Intrepid to seize a T-65 X-wing starfighter, while success led to the starfighter being rescued by Rebel CR90 corvettes. However, players could orchestrate a scenario where both entities arrived simultaneously, resulting in a clash between the capital ships.

As an experienced simulator pilot, Maxwell had a tendency to create challenging missions and had to adjust them to be more accessible to less skilled players. This led him to worry that the game might be too easy. One of his preferred missions, "Guard Vital Supply Depot," featured the player piloting Maxwell's preferred starfighter, the A-wing interceptor, to defend a Rebel weapons cache from the Imperial EF76 Nebulon-B escort frigate Retsub. When the mission proved too difficult, Maxwell created three versions of it, adjusting the difficulty by varying the starting locations of the frigate. The original version was retained, and despite being considered impossible by many players, Maxwell insisted that drawing the frigate's fire to the player would enable the weapons cache to survive.

Following the release of X-Wing in February 1993, Maxwell collaborated with Wessman and Rusel DeMaria to co-author X-Wing: The Official Strategy Guide. DeMaria contributed the story of the player character, Keyan Farlander, while Maxwell and Wessman provided mission strategies, general tactics, and the majority of the book's screenshots. He continued to contribute to X-Wing by designing levels for its two expansion packs, Imperial Pursuit and Star Wars: X-Wing Tour of Duty: B-Wing.

In 1994, after Holland established Peregrine Software, Maxwell joined him to work on Star Wars: TIE Fighter, the sequel to X-Wing. Maxwell once again collaborated with David Wessman on designing the missions for TIE Fighter—which he still felt were too easy—and also joined Wessman, Holland, and Kilham in crafting the game's overarching narrative. He later contributed missions to the game's expansion packs, Defender of the Empire and Enemies of the Empire, the latter of which was exclusively included in the Collector's CD-ROM edition of the game. Maxwell and Wessman also collaborated once more on submitting strategies and screenshots for the subsequent TIE Fighter: The Official Strategy Guide, which featured the story of Maarek Stele by DeMaria.

• Star Wars: X-Wing
• X-Wing: The Official Strategy Guide
• TIE Fighter: The Official Strategy Guide
• Star Wars: TIE Fighter
• X-Wing Collector's CD-ROM: The Official Strategy Guide
• TIE Fighter: Defender of the Empire: Official Secrets & Solutions
• TIE Fighter Collector's CD-ROM: The Official Strategy Guide

• Official website on www.thedavidmaxwell.com (content now obsolete; archived from the original on October 5, 2015)
• David Maxwell on MobyGames