Google Chief Game Designer Noah Falstein Quits Company to Make Games

Google Chief Game Designer Noah Falstein has left the company. This is surprising for a couple of reasons. First, Google never publicly announced his appointment. Secondly, Google doesn’t make games. It’s content in being a platform rather than a game studio.

Falstein joined Google four years ago. Though his job change wasn’t noticed till much later. He touches upon the reasons for his departure in a blog post:

“Four years ago this month I became Google’s Chief Game Designer. It seemed an auspicious time to be able to make games at a company known for its world-spanning technology,” Falstein wrote.

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“Unfortunately, the opportunity to actually build the big, consequential games that I had been hired to help create failed to materialise, even as the world market for games has continued to grow in size, diversity, and geographic reach. Accordingly, I’ve decided to leave Google, and today, April 6, was my last day.”

It appears that Falstein was hired by the Mountain View company to build games although this did not happen. With Pokemon Go and Ingress having their inception within Google’s then-owned Niantic Labs little else has been seen from Google in this regard.

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What next for Falstein? Well, making games of course.

“Google is a tremendous company and I know I will miss the perks, the excitement, and most of all, my colleagues there,” Falstein said. “But with 37 years as a professional game developer, making games is in my blood. I’m not ready to give up on it, certainly not when there are exciting new fields just opening up.”