Dean Hall (game designer)

Dean "Rocket" Hall (born 14 May 1981) is a game designer from Oamaru, New Zealand. He is known for being the designer of the ARMA 2 mod DayZ. He was nominated for the Online Innovation Award at the GDC Online Awards 2012. Hall was a Commissioned Officer of the Royal New Zealand Corps of Signals in the New Zealand Army and attended survival training in Brunei where he came up with the basic idea for DayZ.

Early life and education

Hall grew up in Oamaru, New Zealand, and attended Waitaki Boys High School. He played role-playing games with fellow New Zealander Chris Butcher, who later became the Technical Director at Bungie working on Halo and Destiny. Hall started video game development on an Amiga personal computer that his parents purchased him as a child.

Military service

Hall served as a commissioned officer in the Royal New Zealand Air Force for five years, completing a degree at the University of Otago under a Defense Scholarship. In 2009 Hall re-enlisted in the New Zealand Army and was posted on an exchange program with the Singapore Armed Forces. Hall was inspired by his efforts on survival training and in using video games as a method to train soldiers in the emotional reactions they may face, including him pitching the concept to leadership within the Army. When interest was not shown, Hall stated he decided to add zombies and release it publicly.

Hall was posted to the Singapore Armed Forces on an exchange program during which he completed his survival training in Brunei. His experiences on this trip formed the basis for his ideas with the development of the mod. Hall was not used to the diet during his period of deployment, and this became a further problem as the training progressed. He ran out of food during the survival component eventually resorting to trying to eat rotten fish and ferns. By the end of his training, Hall weighed 25 kilograms less and required surgery to repair his injuries.

Video game career

After leaving the air force, Hall was employed as a producer at Sidhe Interactive in Wellington, New Zealand and worked on Speed Racer: The Videogame. He later created DayZ, a zombie survival horror mod for the ARMA 2 tactical shooter game by Bohemia Interactive. Hall briefly left the industry to return to the army before returning for a contract at Bohemia Interactive on ArmA 3. After the success of the mod, Hall started work at Bohemia as an employee in the position of Project Lead of the standalone version of DayZ. In November 2014, he left Bohemia Interactive to create his own studio, RocketWerkz, and announced the debut title Ion at E3 2015.

Views on the video game industry

In 2012, Hall stated that the seventh generation of game consoles were at the end of their lives, and that this had resulted in the PC providing more innovative games for the market. Hall believed this would result in the next generation of consoles competing for the ability to cater to this desire for innovation as seen on the PC. Hall has also been critical of the traditional publishing model for video games, turning down many offers to publish DayZ and asking what value publishers provide in a modern context. Hall was quoted as suggesting that publishers are becoming "irrelevant", citing Minecraft as an example of this.

Personal life

Mountaineering

Hall is an accomplished mountaineer, having climbed Mount Cook in New Zealand. In May 2013, he summitted Mount Everest, making him the 42nd New Zealander to do so. He has stated that his experiences mountaineering have also formed part of the inspiration for his game design work.