Tom Hall--the web search

The thirst for knowledge about Kingsisle's second project is incredibly strong, yet no one knows much at all. Because the lockdown on information about the second project goes beyond incredibly strong . . . it's like diapermancer strong.



I went on a small hunt of my own . . . similar to what Evil Theurgists did the other day. It was funny to see him take the blurry graphic and try to work it out because I did the exact same thing. Great minds think alike!

In my searching I also became much more acquainted with "THE MAN IN CHARGE" aka Tom Hall, whose tweets are hilarious. None of which say anything about the second project.

Working backwards here, I found his tweets from his blog, tomtomtom.com, once again . . . pure genius can be found here. Once again, not a spot of information on the second project.

Working more backwards, I found his personal website from going to wikipedia, which has a great entry on him.

You know after reading that wikipedia entry, I'm pretty sure we'll see the dopefish somewhere in the next game . . . we have to! I mean, dopefish seems to make and appearance in most of his games, but not all of them though. Take a look at this game list from a bio page on Tom Hall.

I dug up this great picture of him in collegiate graduate robes here from when he gave a lecture at the game education summit.

I know he's talked before at GDC and other summits (one in particular called We Have No Lives: RPGs, Players, and the Future), but most seem to be old links. (If you find more links to Tom Hall, please post them in the comments below)

One more link from me . . . I also dug up how Hall actually left production of Doom (one of the greatest games of all time) over creative differences. You don't have to follow this link, but I'm going to provide a quick pull out quote from that article:

"In the initial development of Doom, a determination was made as to what direction Id’s games should take. This decision resulted in founding member Tom Hall leaving Id Software. Carmack and Romero felt that Hall’s creativity was coming into conflict with gameplay.

As creative director, Hall was insisting on continuity in the storyline and trying to give the game a plot. As Romero would later say, 'You don’t need much of a storyline if your game is good.'

'The game designer shouldn’t be making a world in which the player is just a small part,' echoed Carmack. 'The player’s the boss; it’s your duty to entertain him or her.' In the midst of this debate and other creative differences, Hall left Id to become project manager at Apogee."

So, much to all of our delight he had absolutely nothing to do with Doom the movie, AND, I think his "creative differences" also ensures us that we will have a solid storyline with the second project. Right? I don't think I'm digging too much there. That's probably all I need to know about the second project in the end. :-)

Happy Dueling