So, uh, imagine for a second that you are stranded.
Like... deep in a punishing completely unforgiving
jungle right a total nightmare scenario exactly
and you are starving and i don't mean you know
not just the kind of starving where you wanted
to skip a meeting to grab lunch i mean genuinely
physically depleting to the point where your
body is literally consuming its own muscle mass
just absolute desperation yeah you're so desperate
for sustenance that you resort to foraging for
ferns chewing on bark and eventually uh you actually
find yourself choking down completely rotten
fish just to keep your heart beating. It sounds
horrifying, right? But what if I told you that
this exact brutal crucible of human suffering
is directly responsible for the creation of one
of the most defining genre -shifting video games
of an entire generation? It's a crazy connection.
It really is. Welcome to the Deep Dive. We are
thrilled to have you joining us today as we explore
the life of Dean Hall, who the gaming community
mostly knows as Rocket. The creator of DayZ.
That's the one. He's the New Zealand game designer
who basically birthed an entire genre. And our
mission today isn't just to read off his resume.
We are going to look at how intense real -world
physical extremes and a pretty massive rebellious
streak fundamentally disrupted a billion -dollar
entertainment industry. It is such a fascinating
trajectory. When you look at his life, I mean,
the analytical takeaway here is how deeply personal
and profoundly painful experiences can completely
rewire the way we interact with digital media.
You have this constant duality with Hall, the
mud -soaked survivalist on one hand and the high
-tech meticulous coder on the other. It is exactly
what makes his impact so unique because he brought
the raw... trauma of the physical world directly
into the safety of our living rooms. OK, let's
unpack this because we have to start at the beginning.
Let's look at his early days growing up in Oamaru,
New Zealand. Right. Small town life. Yeah. Attending
Waitaki Boys High School. Now, you might picture
this quiet, remote upbringing, but there was
a massive concentration of future gaming talent
brewing right there at a single table. That's
almost unbelievable. Hall spent his time playing
tabletop role playing games with another kid
named Chris Butcher. And if you play video games,
that name is huge. Oh, absolutely. Butcher later
became the technical director at Bungie. He worked
on absolute juggernauts like Halo and Destiny.
It is a remarkable coincidence. He was essentially
rolling dice and playing RPGs with the guy who
would go on to build the technical architecture
for Halo. Talk about a crazy butterfly effect
in a small New Zealand town. But it also speaks
to the environment of creative problem solving
they were immersed in. For Hall, his technical
journey didn't just stay on the tabletop. His
foundational coding skills actually started on
an Amiga personal computer. His parents bought
that for him, right? Yeah, when he was just a
kid. And the Amiga in the late 80s and early
90s, it was essentially a dream machine for a
kid wanting to tinker with digital worlds. I
always hear developers of a certain generation
rave about the Amiga. Because unlike standard
PCs of the era, it had incredible graphics and
sound capabilities right out of the box. It was
a creative sandbox. It allowed someone like Hall,
at a very young age, to get hands -on with programming.
to understand the architecture of digital spaces.
He could actually see his ideas come to life
on a screen without needing a massive studio
backing him. It planted that seed early on. Exactly.
He realized he could build his own worlds. But
he didn't just graduate and jump straight into
indie game development. This is where his career
trajectory takes a massive, really surprising
pivot. He goes the complete opposite direction.
He does. Instead of heading off to a tech hub
or a major studio, Hall joins the Royal New Zealand
Air Force. Right. He serves as a commissioned
officer for five years. And during that time,
he even completes his degree at the University
of Otago under a defense scholarship. So you
have this creative world building kid who suddenly
transitions into a highly disciplined, rigid
military structure. And that tension, that push
and pull between rigid structure and creative
freedom that becomes the defining theme of his
entire life. You see a deeply restless career
pattern emerge from here on out. Because he doesn't
stay in the Air Force. No. After his five years,
he leaves the military and finally enters the
gaming industry. He gets a job as a producer
at Sight Interactive in Wellington. This is around
2008. And he's working on a licensed title, Speed
Racer, the video game. Which is such massive
whiplash. Oh, totally. You go from being a commission
officer in the Air Force to producing a colorful
high -speed arcade racing game tied to a family
movie. It's jarring. But it seems the gaming
industry at that moment just wasn't enough to
hold him. Or maybe he missed the physical demands
and the high stakes of the military. Because
very briefly, after the Speed Racer project in
2009, he feels the pullback to the armed forces.
He re -enlists. He re -enlists, this time in
the New Zealand Army. as a commissioned officer
in the Royal New Zealand Corps of Signals. And
if we connect this to the bigger picture, this
constant ping -ponging between the strict life
-and -death stakes of military service and the
imaginative world of game development perfectly
set the stage for his masterpiece. Because he
was gathering a very specific set of skills.
Exactly. Skills needed to build something no
one else had even thought of yet. And that brings
us back to that terrifying jungle scenario I
asked you to imagine at the start of our deep
dive. Here's where it gets really interesting.
In 2009, while serving in the Army, Hall is posted
on an exchange program with the Singapore Armed
Forces. Right. And as part of this exchange,
he is sent to complete a survival training course
in Brunei. And this was not just a weekend camping
trip with a safety net. Not even close. We really
need to emphasize the grueling nature of this
deployment. This wasn't a simulated exercise
where a helicopter comes to grab you the second
you feel a little uncomfortable. No, the stakes
were very real. Paul was not used to the local
diet during his deployment. And as the training
progressed, that became a massive liability.
During the survival component of the training,
he completely ran out of food. He was pushed
to the absolute brink of human endurance. To
the point where he's eating raw ferns. Trying
to, anyway. And eventually resorting to rotten
fish. The physical toll was devastating. By the
time the training concluded, Hall had lost 25
kilograms. That is roughly 55 pounds of body
mass. Just gone. In a matter of weeks. Furthermore,
he suffered injuries during this time that were
so severe they literally required surgery to
repair once he was finally out. That is horrifying.
I can't even fathom losing that much weight that
quickly while trying to survive in a jungle.
Your body just starts eating itself. It's a level
of physical depletion most of us will thankfully
never experience. But the core takeaway here
isn't just the bodily harm. It's the psychological
insight that was born from it. His perspective
completely changed. This was Hall's profound
aha moment. While starving in the jungle, he
realized that the true challenge of survival
wasn't merely a physical test of enduring hunger
or pain. It was primarily an emotional test.
Because the mind breaks before the body does.
Exactly. It was about desperation. paranoia,
decision making under severe duress, and the
raw emotional reactions a human being experiences
when they are pushed to the absolute edge. Right.
Because when you are starving, your brain doesn't
work the same way. The person next to you isn't
just a fellow soldier anymore. There might be
competition for the last piece of food. You lose
all societal norms. He realized that existing
military training didn't actually capture that
specific unhinged panic. So he wanted to use
video games as a method to train soldiers for
these exact unpredictable emotional reactions
to severe stress. It's brilliant, really. You
use the immersive power of a video game to simulate
the emotional weight of a life or death survival
situation. A virtual pressure cooker? Yeah. So
Hall takes this concept, which was literally
born in the mud of Brunei, and he pitches this
emotional survival simulator directly to the
leadership within the New Zealand Army as a training
tool. And what happens? Irony of ironies. The
army completely rejected the pitch. They showed
zero interest. None. And you have to wonder why
they rejected it. From an analytical standpoint,
traditional military doctrine is built on structure,
following orders, maintaining discipline. Hall
was pitching a simulator about what happens when
discipline completely breaks down. He was pitching
chaos. Yes, a simulation of desperation and chaos.
It was probably just too unstructured and emotionally
chaotic for a rigid military training program
to adopt at that time. So the Army says no, but
he doesn't just give up and go back to his day
job. What's fascinating here is his reaction
to that rejection. A lot of people would have
just shelved the idea, maybe considered it a
failed experiment. But Hall had just survived
starvation in Brunei. A bureaucratic no wasn't
going to stop him. Not a chance. Instead of giving
up on the simulation, he decided to take this
hyper -realistic, emotionally taxing survival
model, add zombies to it, and release it directly
to the public. And that decision birthed the
mod that changed everything. Hall eventually
took a contract job at Bohemia Interactive to
work as a playable content designer on their
military simulator game, Arma 3. Right. But while
he was there, he started working on a side project
using the previous game's engine, Arma 2. This
side project was Daisy. Now, for anyone who might
not be deep into PC gaming terminology, What
exactly do we mean when we say he built a mod?
So a mod, which is short for modification, is
when a developer or a fan essentially hacks into
the existing code of an already released game
to change the rules, the graphics, or the mechanics.
You're remixing the game. Exactly. Hall took
the very dry, realistic military shooting mechanics
of Arma 2, stripped out all the standard military
objectives, dropped players into a massive 2
.25 square kilometer map, and added zombies.
But the zombies weren't even the scariest part.
Not at all. The scariest part was the other players.
I want you to imagine the gaming landscape at
that time. Most games were highly polished power
fantasies. They held your hand, they gave you
clear objectives, and if you died, you just respawned
at a checkpoint five seconds earlier with all
your gear. There was no real consequence. None.
Then along comes Hall's Day Z mod. It was raw.
It was punishing. He introduced something called
permadeath. If your character died, you lost
absolutely everything you had gathered over hours
or days of playing. Every single item. Gone.
You had to worry about starvation, blood loss,
and disease. It was the exact emotional simulation
he had pitched to the army repackaged for gamers.
It completely rewired player psychology. Gaming
moved from a power fantasy to a vulnerability
simulator. You could be walking through the woods
for three hours. finally find a can of beans,
accidentally break your leg falling off a small
ledge, and have to beg a passing player for a
bandage. And that passing player might help you,
or they might just shoot you to take your beans.
The paranoia was intensely real. Hall had successfully
digitized the desperation he felt in Brunei.
And the cultural impact was immediate and massive.
Released in February 2012 as a mod, it just skyrocketed
to mainstream success. People were buying Arma
2 solely to play Hall's DayZ mod. It was driving
the sales of the base game. It was. It was even
nominated for the Online Innovation Award at
the 2012 GDC Online Awards. This overwhelming
grassroots success effectively forced Bohemia
Interactive's hand. He went from a rejected military
pitch to leading the development of a game that
had millions of players obsessed with the sheer
brutality of his design. It's an incredible vindication
of his idea. But Hall wasn't just disrupting
game mechanics. He was actively challenging the
business status quo of the gaming industry at
the time. Around 2012, he was very outspoken.
He publicly stated that the seventh generation
of consoles were at the end of their lives. He
was calling out the hardware stagnation. Yes.
He argued that this hardware stagnation had resulted
in the PC platform providing the actual innovative
games for the market. Because PC developers could
push updates instantly and experiment with crazy
ideas like DayZ without going through slow console
approval processes. And his critiques didn't
stop at hardware. He was equally critical of
the traditional publishing model. He turned down
multiple offers from major publishers who wanted
to take control of DayZ. many offers. He bluntly
questioned what actual value publishers provide
in a modern context. Now, I have to play devil's
advocate here for a second. Isn't that incredibly
risky? Publishers provide quality assurance,
massive marketing budgets, funding. Was he just
being arrogant or did he actually have a viable
alternative strategy? Why would he turn down
guaranteed money? It's a very fair question.
And it looks like arrogance if you don't understand
his underlying philosophy. Halls wasn't being
reckless. He was being fiercely protective. Protective
of the vision. Exactly. He saw a direct -to -consumer
value where the community and the creator interact
without a corporate middleman. If a major publisher
had taken over DayZ, their first instinct would
likely have been to make it easier. Oh, for sure.
Make it more accessible. They would have wanted
to remove permadeath to appeal to a broader audience.
They would have watered down the harshness of
his vision to guarantee a safe return on their
investment. By rejecting them, he ensured the
game remained authentic and uncompromised. He
wanted things authentic and challenging, and
that desire for extreme challenges wasn't confined
to digital worlds or industry debates. Hall's
pursuit of extremes spilled right back out into
the real world. He's not just a guy behind a
keyboard. No, we're talking about actual, literal
mountains. Hall is an accomplished mountaineer.
He had already climbed Mount Cook in New Zealand,
but he didn't stop there. in may 2013 right as
daisy was cementing its legacy and completely
consuming his professional life he took a sabbatical
and successfully summited mount everest becoming
the 42nd new zealander to ever achieve that feat
which is mind -blowing it's a perfect synthesis
of his passions really hall explicitly states
that his mountaineering experiences form a huge
part of the inspiration for his game design work
when you really break it down the psychology
of climbing everest and the psychology of playing
a game like DayZ are incredibly similar. High
stakes, low margin for error. Both require intense
preparation. Both demand a grueling commitment
to a singular task. And most importantly, Both
require the psychological fortitude to face harsh,
unforgiving environments where a single mistake,
a misstep on a ridge, or trusting the wrong person
in a game can cost you absolutely everything.
The mechanics of survival on Everest are the
exact same mechanics of survival in his digital
worlds. The mountain does not care about you,
and neither does the code. So what does this
all mean? You have a guy who has survived starvation
in the jungle, disrupted the multi -billion dollar
game industry, challenged the necessity of publishers,
and climbed the highest mountain on Earth. What
do you do for an encore? You start your own company.
Naturally. In November 2014, Hall decided to
leave Bohemia Interactive. He struck out on his
own, returning to his roots in New Zealand to
found his very own game studio, Rocketworks.
Moving from a project lead under another company
to the head of his own studio allowed him to
finally build a portfolio of profound ambition
without anyone looking over his shoulder. Total
creative control. And Rocketworks has an eclectic,
fascinating history. They didn't just stick to
zombies. They announced a debut title called
Ion at E3 in 2015, which was eventually canceled.
But that didn't slow them down at all. In December
2017, they released Stationeers. And Stationeers
is a wild game. It draws heavy inspiration from
the cult classic Space Station 13. It's not just
a game where you shoot aliens in space. You have
to literally manage the atmospheric pressure,
the gas mixes, and the electrical grids of a
space station. Incredibly deep. If you wire a
battery wrong, your station burns down. It is
insanely complex. Exactly. It requires the player
to learn actual systems, not just press buttons.
They also explored the virtual realities. space
with titles like Out of Ammo. And then in December
2021, they released a major survival title called
Icarus. Icarus is a perfect evolution of his
philosophy. It's a session -based survival game.
You drop down to a hostile alien planet to mine
exotic matter, but you have a strict timer. And
the timer is unforgiving. If you don't get back
to your dropship before that timer hits zero,
the ship leaves without you, and your character,
along with all their progression, is... Gone
forever. There's that Everest mentality again.
Exactly. The dropship doesn't wait for you, just
like the mountain doesn't care if you're tired.
It's that constant threat of severe consequences.
But what's truly exciting is a very recent development
from October 2024. This shows Hall is still operating
exactly the way he always has. He sees a massive
void and decides to fill it himself. Right. Following
the reported closure of Intercept Games and the
development freeze of the highly anticipated
Kerbal Space Program 2, Hall stepped up to the
plate. He announced that Rocketworks had started
work on a brand new game titled Kitten Space
Agency. And this move is monumental for fans
of the genre. For context, Kerbal Space Program
is a beloved game about building rockets and
flying them into space. But it uses actual punishing
orbital mechanics and real physics. It is notoriously
difficult. Yes. And with its sequel Frozen, that
entire dedicated community was left stranded.
Hall specifically stated the Kitten Space Agency
is designed as a spiritual successor to Kerbal
Space Program. His stated goal is to replicate
the exact same feeling, commitment, and challenge
of the original. It's such a massive undertaking.
Making a spiritual successor to a game based
on literal rocket science is not for the faint
of heart. No, it's not. But when Hall sees a
gap in the market, specifically a gap where an
intense, complex challenge is desperately needed,
he doesn't wait for a major publisher to fix
it. He builds it himself. He saw the void left
by KSP2 and immediately pivoted his studio to
ensure that specific, unforgiving brand of physics
-based challenge wouldn't die out. It's an incredible
timeline when you step back and look at it from
start to finish. We've traced the journey of
a kid rolling dice in Oamaru to a starving soldier
in the jungles of Brunei losing 55 pounds to
a visionary modder who took that trauma and accidentally
created the modern survival gaming genre. The
whole path is extraordinary. And now he's an
Everest climbing studio head building spiritual
successors to beloved space simulators. One person's
absolute commitment to authentic, brutal survival
mechanics. completely changed the landscape of
modern gaming. Without a doubt. Without that
horrific experience in Brunei, the entire survival
genre as we know it today, games where you genuinely
fear for your digital life, might look completely
different or might not exist at all. It is a
profound legacy of turning pain into innovation.
And it leaves us with a fascinating, somewhat
provocative thought to ponder. Hall's greatest
digital achievements were directly forged in
the fires of extreme, real -world physical suffering.
Starvation in Brunei and freezing on Everest.
Exactly. So in an era where creators are living
increasingly comfortable, purely digital lives,
it raises an important question. Are we at risk
of losing the raw, uncomfortable human experiences
required to create truly groundbreaking virtual
worlds? That is a brilliant question for you
to mull over as we wrap up today's deep dive.
We want to warmly thank you for joining us on
this exploration into the incredible life and
mind of Dean Hall. Keep asking questions, stay
curious, and keep exploring the hidden stories
behind the things you love. Until next time.