David Maxwell was born in San Francisco and spent his early years in San Rafael. He did his higher education at Columbia Basin College in Washington and graduated with a degree in Computer Science.
Maxwell began working with Lucasfilm Games in 1991 as a technician in the Quality Assurance department. His early work with the company involved testing 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 its expansion packs. Maxwell did not work exclusively for Lucasfilm, working also as a tester for Spectrum HoloByte around this time, where he was involved with National Lampoon's Chess Maniac 5 Billion and 1. When fellow Lucasfilm developers Lawrence Holland and Edward Kilham began working on the Star Wars flight simulator Star Wars: X-Wing early in the 1990s, Maxwell joined their team as a mission builder. Around this time he acquired the nickname "Max."
Working with his longtime friend David Wessman, Maxwell was responsible for designing the missions in the game, and the two also served as the lead testers. Maxwell and Wessman attempted to make the missions progress differently based on what the player did. To this end, certain events were triggered specifically by players attacking certain targets. Some missions also featured multiple endings. For example, failing in the mission "Protect a Disabled X-wing" resulted in the arrival of the Imperial I-class Star Destroyer Intrepid to capture a T-65 X-wing starfighter, while winning saw the starfighter rescued by Rebel CR90 corvettes. However, it was possible to do the mission in such a way that both would arrive simultaneously, resulting in a battle between the capital ships.
David Maxwell and David Wessman
As an avid simulator pilot, Maxwell tended to make difficult missions and had to learn to make them more approachable for less experienced players—this led him to be concerned that the game would prove too easy. One of his favorite missions, "Guard Vital Supply Depot," saw the player using Maxwell's starfighter of choice, the A-wing interceptor, to defend a Rebel weapons cache from attack by the Imperial EF76 Nebulon-B escort frigate Retsub. When the mission proved too difficult, Maxwell implemented three versions of it, varying the difficulty by having the frigate start in different locations. The original version remained and, though many players considered it impossible, Maxwell maintained that drawing the frigate's fire to the player would allow the weapons cache to survive.
Following the release of X-Wing in February 1993, Maxwell worked with Wessman and Rusel DeMaria to write X-Wing: The Official Strategy Guide. The book featured the story of the player character, Keyan Farlander, as written by DeMaria. Maxwell and Wessman contributed mission strategies and general tactics, along with most of the screenshots in the book. He continued his involvement with X-Wing, designing levels for the game's two expansion packs, Imperial Pursuit and Star Wars: X-Wing Tour of Duty: B-Wing.
After Holland formed Peregrine Software in 1994, Maxwell joined him there in working on the sequel to X-Wing, Star Wars: TIE Fighter. On TIE Fighter, Maxwell once more worked on designing the missions—which he still found too easy—with David Wessman, and also joined Wessman, Holland and Kilham in developing the overall story for the game. He later contributed missions to the game's expansion packs, Defender of the Empire and Enemies of the Empire, the latter only included on the Collector's CD-ROM edition of the game. Maxwell also worked with Wessman once more in submitting strategies and screenshots for the subsequent TIE Fighter: The Official Strategy Guide, which also 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