Louis Castle joins Zynga

Social games giant Zynga has appointed industry veteran Louis Castle as vice president of studios.

Castle found himself out of work following the collapse of InstantAction, which until November 2010 he was CEO of.

The Oregon-based InstantAction was emptied of some 30 staff just three months following the release of a high-risk Facebook-meets-Guitar Hero game, called InstantJam.

In a new interview with IndustryGamers, Castle appeared to take no blame for the failure of the product, and suggested that InstantAction’s closure was premature.

"I think it would have helped if we would have been given another six months or so,” he claimed.

“We could have really lit the world on fire, but I respect the fact that the people writing the checks have the control over whether they want to keep writing them."

Zynga has in under four years become a social games outfit with highly experienced developers at its helm. The firm has in recent years hired former EA studio head Mark Skaggs, former Firaxis man Brian Reynolds, EA LA’s Mike Verdu and Ensemble Studios co-founder Bruce Shelley.