Swords & Circuitry: A Designer's Guide to Computer Role-Playing Games (Game Development)

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations. Neal Hallford is an American author, computer game designer, screenwriter, independent film director, and audio drama producer. Born in Sapulpa, Oklahoma to school teachers Henry Hallford and Betty Hallford, was raised into an academically-oriented family that he says were also gifted, natural storytellers who supported his varied creative and dramatic interests in writing, acting, and film making. At seventeen, just days after graduating from high school, Neal started a job as a disc jockey at KTOW, a local country and western station outside of Tulsa, Oklahoma. Taking full advantage of the production studio at his disposal, he and his best friend Ron Bolinger wrote and produced "Uncharted Regions," a Twilight Zone-like series of weird tales radio dramas that aired intermittently between 1984 and 1989. These radio dramas would later play a key role in helping Neal land his first professional writing job. In 1990, six months after graduating from the University of Oklahoma with a degree in radio, television, and film production, Neal took a job in the computer gaming industry where he quickly established himself as well-respected writer and game designer, behind a number of best-selling and award winning computer role-playing games including "Might & Magic III: Isles of Terra," "Planet's Edge," "Betrayal at Krondor," "Dungeon Siege," and others. In 2001, he condensed his experiences into the book "Swords & Circuitry: A Designer's Guide To Computer Role-Playing Games" which he co-wrote with his wife Jana Ondrechen Hallford. (Later on, they would lift a portion of the book's title to be the name of their film production company, Swords & Circuitry Studios.) Despite having been a backyard filmmaker at thirteen, and having received his degree in film production from the University of Oklahoma, and having regularly written and directed actors like John Rhys-Davies and Kate Mulgrew and Ron Perlman as part of his game production work, Neal didn't become directly involved with film and television work until moving to San Diego in 1996 where he became a collaborator with screenwriter Jimmy Diggs (best known for his work as a writer on "Star Trek: Voyager" and "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.) Since 2006, Neal has become a very active cinematographer and director in the local San Diego indie scene. The first dramatic piece from his production company, a black and white horror movie entitled "The Case of Evil" styled after the classic Universal movies of the 1920s-1950s, bowed at the Horrible Imaginings Horror Film Festival in October 2014. It later went on two win six awards, and toured in 39 different film festivals scattered between the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Neal is also a co-producer and the director of photographer for "The Con of Wrath," a documentary directed by Star Trek expert Larry Nemecek about the Ultimate Fantasy, a notoriously gone-wrong Star Trek convention in 1982. In 2017, Neal rebooted his "Uncharted Regions" audio series with a pilot episode, "Someday, Over You," which opened the Horrible Imaginings Film Festival in San Diego, California. Subsequent episodes "These Haunted Hills" starred Gigi Edgley of FARSCAPE fame, and "Haven" which featured John Billingsley best known for his work on "Star Trek: Enterprise." With the approach of the 30th anniversary of the game Heroes of Might & Magic, he was approached by Ubisoft and Dark Horse Books to become the official chronicler of the franchise for "Heroes of Might & Magic: 30th Anniversary Retrospective." Read more about this author Read less about this author Read more about this author Read less about this author