Tom Hall has made games from 30 years, working on titles from Doom to Wolfenstein 3-D and Diner Dash. Now he is joining VR game maker Resolution Games.
Tom Hall is a versatile game designer with more than three decades of experience. He has worked on hardcore games such as Doom, Duke Nukem, Rise of the Triad, Wolfenstein 3-D, and Anachronox. But he has also shown interest in the broader craft of making games for other platforms, and that’s why he worked on the Diner Dash mobile games at PlayFirst and more recently at Glu Mobile.
Now he is shifting his focus to virtual reality games, as he announced this week he is joining Resolution Games, the Stockholm, Sweden-based company headed by Candy Crush Saga co-creator Tommy Palm. Hall joined as a senior creative director, and he is happy to work on games that are de-stressors, or those that take the stress out of life.
Hall started out his career at id Software as one of four cofounders who made legendary first-person shooter games for the PC. He left to join Ion Storm as a cofounder and rode that company through its rise and fall. His colleague from the id days, John Carmack, became the chief technology officer at Oculus and pioneered mobile VR before moving to a consulting role last fall.
Hall’s endorsement of VR comes at an interesting time as VR has struggled to find its footing. Initial sales are far below what advocates hoped around 2014, but the passion for VR abides and headsets such as the Oculus Quest are selling out during the pandemic. I talked with Hall about the arc of his career and why he was drawn to VR and augmented reality games.
Resolution Games has 66 people and it has published VR games including Bait!, Acron: Attack of the Squirrels!, Angry Birds VR: Isle of Pigs, and Wonderglade. It is working on Cook-Out: A Sandwich Tale and Blaston.
Here’s an edited transcript of our interview.
GamesBeat: Tell me about what’s been going on. You left Glu not long ago.
Tom Hall: Yeah.
