Google hires Noah Falstein as chief games designer

Google has gone for gaming with the hire of Noah Falstein as chief games designer.

Tech Crunch now spots that he has changed his LinkedIn profile to reflect his new job at the world’s largest search engine provider.

Falstein is a veteran of Lucas Arts, 3DO, and Dreamworks Interactive, a frequent speaker at GDC, and most recently has been working as a gaming consultant at his own company, The Inspiracy.

Google has long been a major platform holder through the Google Play store for Android devices, but until now the company has avoided first-party development.

The recent arrival of Google’s augmented reality game Ingress is a small departure from this, but the Niantic Project team behind it is treated by its parent company as a self-contained start-up, and could be looked at as a second party by those in the company.

The hiring of a game designer could mean all that is changing.

Though its unknown what exactly Falstein will be getting up to, his bio page on The Inspiracy notes he has an interest in educational games, games to help with health and rehab, and how to apply new tech to games.

The latter of these could be the most immediately relevant, as Google is getting ever closer to the release of Google Glass.

If Falstein is on board to help create games for the new augmented reality glasses, or even if he’s making games for other purposes with full access to Google’s search engine, it’s definitely a development to keep an eye on.