James "Jim" Walls (born November 30, 1940) is an American video game designer and former police officer. He is notable for having designed the successful Police Quest series of adventure games for Sierra On-Line. Walls served as a California Highway Patrol (CHP) officer from 1971 to 1986, but retired after being involved in a shooting. He met Sierra president Ken Williams, who wished to create an adventure game in the police procedural genre. Walls, though inexperienced with computers, offered his policing experience. During his career at Sierra, Walls designed the first three Police Quest entries and Codename: ICEMAN. After leaving Sierra in the early 1990s, Walls joined several other game developers, including Tsunami Media in 1992 and Westwood Studios in 1996, before retiring in 2003. In 2013, Walls planned to develop Precinct, a spiritual successor to Police Quest, but the crowdfunding campaign failed. Early life Walls was born on November 30, 1940 in Kingsburg, California. For much of his life, he lived in Kingsburg, Richmond, Berkeley, El Cerrito, and Coarsegold, with frequent visits to family in Fresno and Oakhurst. Walls began his career as an optician in Fresno, working for various optometrists and ophthalmologists. Around 1969, Walls met the husband of a co-worker, who was one week shy of graduating the CHP Academy. While speaking with him, Walls was overcome with the man's enthusiasm for his new career and sought a career for himself in law enforcement, joining the CHP Academy and graduating in December 1971. Police career Walls joined the California Highway Patrol in 1971, assigned to the Van Nuys neighborhood of Los Angeles, though he had numerous other assignments across the state. In January 1984, while conducting a traffic stop, Walls was involved in a shootout with a parolee. Though he survived the incident, Walls began to experience trauma relating to the shootout, and in 1985, Walls was placed on "4800 time" (the CHP's term for administrative leave) to evaluate his condition. Walls officially retired from the CHP in 1986, after 15 years of service. Video game career Sierra On-Line While still on administrative leave in 1985, Walls' then-wife Donna, who was a hairdresser in Oakhurst, introduced him to Ken Williams, co-founder and then-president of Sierra On-Line. Williams would frequently visit Donna's salon for a haircut, and he would converse with Donna and Walls. During one such conversation, Williams discussed how he wanted to produce a police procedural