David Wessman David " Wotan " Wessman is a , who worked as a at LucasArts before joining Totally Games and becoming one of the mission builders on the video game s " " and " " . He later worked as the gameplay and story lead on " " and " " . After leaving Totally Games , Wessman was a lead or senior designer on a variety of games before entering academia in 2008 . As a in game design he has taught at the graduate and undergraduate level at a variety of schools around the world . He is currently a lecturer at NHTV Breda University of Applied Sciences in The Netherlands . Biography . An avid player of all types of games , but especially video games , David " Wotan " Wessman began working in the in 1991 , taking a job as a at LucasArts , then known as Lucasfilm games . During his time at LucasArts , Wessman tested the " " and " " , along with Lawrence Holland ' s " " , and its . In 1992 , Wessman joined Holland ' s independent development team , ( which would eventually become Totally Games ) as the internal test lead for " " , a " Star Wars " flight simulator the team were developing for LucasArts . He was joined by fellow tester and longtime friend David Maxwell . Together they both took on additional writing and mission building responsibilities and transitioned from being testers to being developers . The overall story of the game was developed by lead developers Lawrence Holland and Edward Kilham . Wessman and Maxwell were otherwise able to design their own scenarios , creating more than twice as many missions as were were required and selecting the best ones from those available to include in the final game . One of Wessman ' s primary concerns was ensuring that all missions could be beaten — when player ' s failed , he provided a debriefing to offer tips on where the player went wrong . Following the release of " X - wing " in February 1993 , Wessman worked with Maxwell and Rusel DeMaria to co - author " " . The book featured the story of the player character , Keyan Farlander , as written by DeMaria . Wessman and Maxwell contributed mission strategies and general tactics , along with most of the in the book . When the team began working on " X - wing " ' s 1994 sequel , " " , Wessman moved into working full time on mission design . He continued to work with Maxwell to design missions for the game and the pair again contributed strategies to the subsequent " " . Wessman remained with Totally Games until 2000 , acting as the gameplay and story lead for 1997 ' s " " and 1999 ' s " " . Also , in 1999 David was the developer of two paper wargames . The first , " War of 1812 " , was published in Strategy & Tactics magazine issue # 207 in 2001 . It won the Charles S . Roberts award for Best Magazine - Published Boardgame . The second , " When Dragons Fight : If China Invades Taiwan " was published in Command Magazine issue # 54 , also in 2001 . It won the Charles S . Roberts award for Best Modern Era Boardgame . In 2000 , Wessman started work at , becoming lead game designer on the Xbox launch title " " . He left in 2002 , and in 2003 moved to , to work on " " for , before returning to the later that year to work as a senior designer on " " for . In 2005 , he moved to to work on PlayStation Portable game " " and moved once more in 2007 , taking a senior design position at in , . While at Destineer , he worked on a training simulation for the U . S . Intelligence Community that was intended to evolve into a commercial entertainment product , as well as design consultation on " Six Days in Fallujah " . In 2008 Wessman began a new career teaching game design as a at the in , where he focused most of his efforts revising the curricula to reflect real world industry practice : team - based and project focused . In 2011 he led a student team to win the SaveEarthGame competition with a resource management simulation called " Tellus : Save the Earth " . In 2013 - 14 he taught at University of California , Santa Cruz as well as Cogswell Polytechnical College . As of February 2015 he is a lecturer at NHTV Breda University of Applied Sciences in The Netherlands . He has consulted on curricula and been a guest lecturer at schools such as the , Stanford University , , and the Jilin Animation Institute in Changchun , China . As a founding member of the San Francisco chapter of the , he is still an active member of the game industry and frequently speaks at industry conferences , including the and the .