Kenneth Silverman (born November 1, 1975) is an American game programmer, best known for writing the Build engine used in Duke Nukem 3D, Shadow Warrior, Blood, and more than a dozen other games in the mid- to late-1990s. Once considered the primary rival of John Carmack, Silverman started work on the Build engine sometime before his first semester at Brown University in 1993, under a contract with Apogee Software. Prior to this, Silverman created Ken's Labyrinth, which was later completed and published by Epic Games. Ken has previously been CTO and co-founder of Ardfry Imaging, LLC responsible for the PNG Compression tool PNGOUT. Currently, Ken is founder and Chief Computer Scientist at VOXON, makers of the Voxiebox holographic 3D arcade game system.