He rose to prominence when he moved up to direct 2005's Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, which was both a critical and commercial success.

Across his career, Hocking has written monthly columns for the video game magazine Edge, and coined the term ludonarrative dissonance.

[1][2] Hocking started his career as a writer for website companies whilst completing his Master of Fine Arts in creative writing at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.

[3] With this experience, he sent his résumé in as "a lark" to Ubisoft Montreal and was subsequently hired as a level designer on 2002's Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell.

[3][5] Upon release, Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell was well-received by critics, receiving "universal acclaim" according to review aggregator Metacritic.

[7] In the alpha stage of development, Hocking initially declined the creative director role due to having two positions already, but he changed his mind a week later.

[8][9] This large workload caused him to have gaps in his recent memory, such as completely forgetting a week he spent socialising with a former colleague due to brain damage.

[12][13] Soon after, development of 2008's Far Cry 2, a first-person shooter featuring an open world environment set in a fictional African country, started with Hocking as the creative director and scriptwriter.

[17] Hocking and critics noted some of its reception was polarizing, which he attributed to the game breaking many conventions of the shooter and open world genre.

[35][37] Hocking also expressed difficulties in obtaining a green card and being on his third visa whilst in the United States, which was another reason he wanted to return to Canada.