William David Volk
| William David Volk | |
|---|---|
| Born |
December 16, 1956 New York City |
| Occupation | Computer Game creator publisher and Inventor |
William David Volk (born December 16, 1956 ) in New York City, New York is a mobile game developer and publisher. He is the Chief Creative officer at PlayScreen, a mobile game publisher credited with creating Blackjack Anywhere video game on the Apple Watch.
Volk has worked extensively with Activison, he designed the (M.A.D.E) game engine and is technical producer of Leather Goddesses of Phobos 2: Gas Pump Girls Meet the Pulsating Inconvenience from Planet X!, Return to Zork, The Manhole, Rodney's Funscreen among other adventure games.
Volk graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1979 with a BA in Physics and Astronomy. He later carried out graduate work in Physics and Computer Engineering at The University of New Hampshire. From there he moved to Avalon Hill Game Co. where he started the quality assurance division for the Microcomputer Game Division at Avalon Hill. from 1979-1982 where he created the games "Conflict 2500", "Voyager 1" and "Controller"
In 1983, he left Avalon Hill Game Co. and was employed by Rising Star where he created the "ValDraw CAD" (computer aided drafting) system for QX10 & Z80 personal computers and later became the Vice President of Development of Aegis Development where he authored some of the first Mac games, "The Pyramid of Peril" and "Mac Challenger" in 1984-1985. During that time, Volk also created the "Draw" and "Draw Plus" drafting programs for the Commodore Amiga.
In 1988 he moved to Activison where he became the Director of Technology, eventually becoming the VP of Technology in 1991. At Activision he was head of the team that produced the first entertainment CD-ROM title, The Manhole (based on the Cyan Hypercard game title). Volk created the game engine behind the Return to Zork as well as much of the user interface design. While at Activision, he invented and was awarded U.S. Patent #5,095,509 on March 10, 1992 which enabled IBM personal computers to reproduce digitally sampled audio.
During his time with Activison, he designed the (M.A.D.E) game engine. M.A.D.E. was originally created for the DOS version of The Manhole and was used on the DOS Floppy and CD-ROM versions, the NEC 9801 version and the FM Towns version as well as LGOP2, for the Return to Zork and Rodney's Funscreen.
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