Google hires video game veteran Noah Falstein as chief game designer

Noah Falstein, a 30-year veteran of the video game industry, has been hired by Google as a chief game designer, according to an update on his LinkedIn profile spotted by TechCrunch.

According to TechCrunch, Falstein's title was previously listed as Chief Game Designer at Android Play Studio, but has since been shortened to simply chief game designer. Prior to Google, Falstein's work history includes LucasArts, 3DO, Dreamworks Interactive and The Inspiracy, where he served as a game consultant for more than 16 years.

One of his earliest credits, according to his LinkedIn profile, was as project lead on Williams' classic arcade game Sinistar.

It's not clear what Falstein's role is at Google, which hasn't produced many original games. The company released Ingress, an augmented reality game for Android, last year through its Niantic Labs. Google flirted with social games in 2011, adding support for titles from Rovio, Zynga, EA and PopCap to Google+. It also ran (and closed) a Second Life-like social platform, dubbed Lively, in 2008.

Polygon has reached out to Falstein and Google for more information and will update accordingly.