Google likes to dabble in a little bit of everything, but it has largely stayed out of game development. It helps developers make games for Android and Google+, but it doesn’t actually make games itself. That all may be changing soon.
TechCrunch reports that Noah Falstein, the game designer behind arcade classic Sinistar, had updated his LinkedIn profile to say he was now the “Chief Game Designer” at Google. An even earlier version of the page listed the same position, but at something called “Android Play Studio.”
I don’t know about you, but that sounds like a game development studio to me. It could be that Google is starting to get serious about game development by either making its own games, or creating tools to help others more easily make games for Android. By hiring Falstein, it adds a lot of credibility to the studio as well.
It’s speculated that Falstein could even be working with Google’s Niantic Labs, the secretive part of the company that released Ingress last year. I would hesitate to call it a “game,” but it is another entry in the increasingly popular world of augmented reality experiences. Falstein could be working on complimentary experiences for Android to bring more AR games to the device.
Of course, all of this is simply speculation for now. All we know is that Google has hired Falstein for some unknown reason. It might not even be for games. I would be surprised if it wasn’t though.
[Image: Flickr/Georgina Goodlander]