Gordon Hall, who founded the studio that would become Rockstar Leeds, who worked on plays like Red Dead Redemption, Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars and LA Noire, has passed away at the age of 51.
As reported by GamesIndustry, the news has come through today through various members of the development scene in Yorkshire. However, no cause of death has been revealed at the time of this writing.
Hall founded Möbius Entertainment in Leeds, England, in 1997. And the studio worked primarily on handheld games, including a Game Boy Advance version of Max Payne. Take-Two Interactive acquired the company in 2004, renaming it Rockstar Leeds in the process, and Rockstar co-founder Sam Houser said the company’s work on Max Payne’s game had been impressive enough to want to bring them to life. board.
Rockstar Leeds, with Hall as studio president, became Rockstar’s wearable specialist, jointly developing GTA: Liberty City Stories and GTA: Vice City Stories with Rockstar North. He also helped port other Rockstar games over the years.
Later, the studio led the development of GTA: Chinatown Wars for the Nintendo DS, a game that we gave a 9.5 / 10 review and which we rate as one of the best games in the history of Nintendo’s handheld. Furthermore, we spoke with Hall in 2009 about the development of the game and how Rockstar Leeds managed to fit a GTA city into the DS hardware.
Over the years, Hall also supported the development of LA Noire, Red Dead Redemption, Rockstar Games presents Table Tennis, and more. In 2011, Hall resigned from Rockstar Leeds and later joined Activision Blizzard Mobile as Creative Director.
All of us at IGN offer our condolences to Hall’s family and friends.
