Tom Hall: A Pioneer in Video Game Design

Career

Hall attended the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he earned a B.S. in Computer Science. In 1987, Hall worked at Softdisk Inc., where he was both a programmer and the editor of Softdisk, a software bundle delivered monthly. Along with some of his co-workers, John Carmack, John Romero and Adrian Carmack, he founded id Software, having always dreamt about the possibility of making videogames for a living. During the subsequent years, he served as creative director and designer there, working on games such as Catacomb 3-D and the Commander Keen series, of which he was the lead designer, then Wolfenstein 3D, Spear of Destiny, and Doom.

After some disputes with John Carmack and John Romero over the direction to take with Doom, Tom left id Software in August 1993 to join Apogee, a company that had become well renewed in the market for its highly successful shareware distribution philosophy, and came to be known as 3D Realms in later years. Tom was the game designer for Rise of the Triad, produced Terminal Velocity, and helped in varying degrees on Duke Nukem II and Duke Nukem 3D as well. He also worked on the Prey engine until August 12, 1996, when he left Apogee.

In November 1996, Hall co-founded Ion Storm with former id Software colleague John Romero. During the years at Ion Storm he produced the critically acclaimed Anachronox, a sci-fi themed adventure game with prominent role-playing elements. The company also produced the 2000 Game of the Year, Deus Ex, in which Hall voiced several characters. He and Romero then founded Monkeystone Games, a company with the goal of producing mobile games in the new mobile industry. He designed Hyperspace Delivery Boy!, which was released on December 23, 2001, with programming by John Romero.

He and Romero joined Midway Games in 2003, and Monkeystone closed in January 2005. Hall also left Midway early that year and did independent game consultation work out of Austin, Texas, until in February he joined a startup company called KingsIsle Entertainment based in the same area.

Hall left KingsIsle Entertainment and joined Loot Drop on January 1, 2011. Along with Loot Drop, he unsuccessfully tried to crowdfund a game called Shaker on the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter during October 2012. Hall later tried to crowdfund another game on Kickstarter, Worlds of Wander, which was also unsuccessful in reaching its goal.

In March 2013, Hall joined PlayFirst as Principal Designer.

In 2020 and 2021, he worked as a designer on the virtual reality tabletop RPG Demeo, published by Resolution Games for the Oculus Quest hardware.

Dopefish

Hall is the creator of the Dopefish, a green, dimwitted fish in Commander Keen episode IV. References to it have appeared in other video games, including the Quake series, Rise of the Triad, Daikatana, Duke Nukem 3D and Max Payne since.

Voice work

Hall provided the following voices for the computer role-playing game Deus Ex: Morpheus, a sentient AI; Howard Strong, a ruthless and cruel MJ12 operative; and Walton Simons, the nano-augmented Director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). He also voiced the project director in Deus Ex: Invisible War's opening cutscene, and PAL-18, Councilman Willis, Dr. Hush-Hush and Eddie the Chew in Anachronox. He was also the voice and likeness of the main antagonist of Rise of the Triad, El Oscuro, voiced the Death Monk enemies from the game, and earlier he voiced some of the characters in Wolfenstein 3D, including the female character Gretel Grösse.

Personal life

Hall suffered a stroke on Tuesday, April 13, 2010. He was in rehabilitation until April 21, when he was released. He was married for eighteen years to Terri Hall, who died on May 2, 2021.

Games