Dean Hall is the man behind probably the best-known PC game mod of today - Day-Z.
But the man known as 'Rocket' online, is also an avid mountain-climber and recently achieved his biggest goal; climbing Mount Everest.
"It was definitely something I'd always wanted to do, reading the books about it, growing up and hearing all the things that had happened on Everest - it was kind of an experience that I'd wanted to see what it was like," he says.
"It wasn't just summiting Everest, it was experiencing the whole drama around Everest as well."
Rocket set his sights on the mountain after successfully climbing Mount Cook on his fifth attempt in 2008 - and says he wanted to improve his victory speech at the summit.
"I didn't want to say something stupid like I did when I got to the summit of Cook... I finally got there after like five years and the first thing I said was, 'It's windy up here'."
Now Rocket has his sights set on the North and South poles - following in the footsteps of Sir Edmund Hillary, the first man to complete that trifecta.
Day-Z is a mod made for the first-person-shooter Arma 2. It turns the game into a survival challenge with players having to find items to help survive the zombie hordes which populate the earth - but also their fellow man, as players tend to kill one another for items and in some cases fun.
The mod he made in his free time has spawned a legion of fans who follow Rocket with something akin to hero worship.
"I meet people at gaming conventions and they're kind of like 'Oh look there's Rocket'," he says.
"They come over and they say hi to you, then when you start sort of talking they're like 'Oh my god it's Rocket, his lips are moving!' and it's as if they're not really seeing what you're saying."
Rocket announced his Mount Everest trip publicly - but some fans weren't happy it came right in the middle of the development phase of his new, fully-fledged standalone Day-Z title, sending him abusive emails, tweets and Facebook messages.
"It's a weird situation for me, particularly now with the game not being out and a lot of people really wanting it out - you end up with a lot of pressure, a lot of weird emails, like I can't play a game on Steam without a million people asking me why I'm not working on the project when I'm trying to play a game," he says.
"I chose the path of being really, or at least trying to be really engaged with the community… but obviously that comes with some risks, some of that risk is me making mistakes and saying the wrong thing, which happens plenty.
"I spend a lot of time on Reddit, trying to clean up the messes I've made in various interviews where I'll say something that may be sort of offhand, and then particularly if it surrounds a date at all, it just gets extrapolated out like crazy."
However, Rocket did let some things slip; the team is currently working on improving the disease system for Day-Z and making it another element of the game. An example Rocket gave was cholera. When introduced to a map, cholera will quickly spread through water and players will need the medication to fight the diseases.
But Rocket remains tight-lipped when asked about a release date, instead opting to be "very careful".
"There is no release date," he says, leaving hordes of fans to fight their hunger for a while longer.
3 News
source: newshub archive
