Tomm Hulett

Tomm Hulett is a former employee of Konami Digital Entertainment, where he has worked on such titles as Contra 4 and Silent Hill: Origins as an associate producer. He is also the producer of Silent Hill: Shattered Memories and has a producing credit on Silent Hill: Downpour. In January 2013, he left Konami and moved to WayForward Technologies, which produced Silent Hill: Book of Memories prior.

Biography
Born in Southern California, in the summer of 1992, after sixth grade, Tomm tested games part-time at Virgin Games. Two years later, he designed levels and bosses for an unreleased game titled Caverns of Nebulon for Above the Garage Productions.

After high school, Tomm, along with friends Keith Martineau and Carolyn Carter, founded an independent game development team called Team XKalibur. Their flagship title, Mythri, achieved some level of recognition from online sources, and they tried for many years to get a publisher to sign the project, going so far as to post an online survey which received over 4,000 signatures. Though the game was never released, Tomm met many people in the industry, including some friends at Atlus USA.

Tomm started at Atlus as a tester in 2001. He tested while also working on Mythri but eventually moved on to do Localization writing for the company, and later produced the US versions of several titles, including Steambot Chronicles and the Trauma Center series.

Tomm graduated in 2003 from California State University Fullerton with a Bachelor of Arts in English with a Creative Writing emphasis.

Silent Hill series
Tomm received controversy within the Silent Hill fandom, due to his role as a director of the series since it left Team Silent. This shouldn't, however, be confused as Tomm having control over aspect of each western Silent Hill game as his creative input was sometimes limited.

"Of course it was daunting stepping up to the franchise. Be aware I was never "the man in charge of Silent Hill" as I've explained above. Whether I was assisting or Producing, I did my best to be an advocate in the interest of the SH series and its fans. This did not mean "ask what the fans want and do that", but make decisions I felt fans would especially enjoy, or would enhance their experience with Silent Hill."

"I think they act this way because I was the person in the most SH interviews. So if you're pissed off... you want to know who's responsible. So if you look for SH interviews, there I am! And if people don't know how large a team is, or what role a publisher plays, or what an Associate Producer does... it's easy to assume that guy on camera (or in print) is to blame. And if YouTube or a message board points to a guy as the one at fault, it's easy to blame him too."

Tomm even received death threats from certain adamant fans, to the point where it opened a discussion on the treatment of video game developers in the industry, and also called into question the maturity of the fans involved.

Tomm was involved with the Silent Hill HD Collection, but how much control over he had over it, as well as over the artistic differences between the originals, is unknown as he wasn't a core member of Hijinx Studios. He did, however, express disappointment towards the final product, especially of the technical issues.

Despite the various backlash he received, Tomm doesn't regret working on the series and it was a huge honor to work on Silent Hill.

Trivia



 * Tomm was given a plush Pyramid Head, hand-made by a Konami co-worker for his birthday.
 * Tomm wrote the Bogeyman nursery rhyme in Silent Hill: Homecoming.
 * Tomm protested against including Pyramid Head in Homecoming, which apparently upset the rest of Homecoming developers. Tomm said he "made a big stink", and after this, he was mainly on put on the development of Origins. It was only after the previous producer left that Tomm was allowed to continue working on Homecoming. The disagreement over Pyramid Head in Homecoming may be why Pyramid Head is called the Bogeyman.
 * During the development of Homecoming, a rejected script of the game involved a final battle between Alessa Gillespie and Joshua Shepherd over Toluca Lake; Alessa representing fire, Joshua representing water - a battle to determine the fate of Silent Hill and Shepherd's Glen. Tomm dissuaded it from happening.
 * Tomm isn't a big fan of the religious and occultic aspects of the Silent Hill series, preferring the psychological aspects. He wrote the memo in Homecoming about Douglas Cartland exposing the Order, which would have allowed Downpour to focus on a more non-occultic story.
 * Tomm voice acted for James Sunderland's appearance in Silent Hill: Shattered Memories during the UFO Ending.
 * Tomm makes a cameo in the church in Past Life, Issue 3.
 * Regarding the games he worked on, his least to most favorite: Homecoming, Origins, Book of Memories, Downpour, Shattered Memories.