Monday, October 13, 2008

Turbine taps game vets to launch West Coast office

By Mass High Tech Staff

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In their own words: Jim Crowley, CEO, Turbine Inc.

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Game developer Turbine Inc. has opened a new studio on the West Coast and staffed it with top executives from various other game development companies.

The new operations are located in Redwood City and feature former Flagship Studios co-founder Dave Brevik as creative director, Jeff Lind from Ping0 as engineering director and Matt McKnight of Sniper Studios as studio director. Flagship Studios created the online game Hellgate: London.

Prior to co-founding Flagship Studios, Brevik spent seven years as both president for Blizzard North and as a director of Blizzard Entertainment, working primarily on the Diablo series. He also played an important role in the initial and iterative structural design of Blizzard’s free online gaming service, Battle.net, according to Turbine officials.

Lind led a team at Ping0 that built the online platform for Flagship Studios. He has also worked at Electronic Arts, on a range of titles from The Sims to The Lord of the Rings. McKnight previously served as CEO and president of Sniper Studios, and prior to Sniper also worked at Electronic Arts where he played key roles in the game development organization working on the Madden and Bond franchises.

In June, Jim Crowley, CEO of Westwood-based Turbine, said the company, which produces the games Asheron’s Call, Dungeons and Dragons Online and Lord of the Rings Online, plans to introduce user-generated content to its games as an “adjunct experience” — providing digital tools for subscribers to create their own game content.

In addition, it would begin to port its massively multiplayer online role-playing games from PC-based only to the popular gaming consoles.

Turbine, founded in 1994, has raised $88 million in venture financing. In April, the company landed $40 million in a third round, which Crowley said will help pay for the expansion plans.