Turbine hires Elder Scrolls, Amalur designer Rolston

Industry veteran Ken Rolston, best known for his work as lead designer on epic, open-world RPGs like Bethesda's The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind and Oblivion, has joined MMORPG developer Turbine. Rolston, who has worked on pen-and-paper RPGs (e.g. Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest) and video games for 30 years, will lead the vision and implementation of all game design aspects for Turbine. He most recently worked at Big Huge Games, which he joined in 2007 to serve as lead designer on Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. The developer's then-owner THQ eventually sold Big Huge Games to 38 Studios, where the team managed to ship Kingdoms of Amalur earlier this year -- just before its new parent company collapsed after running out of cash. In addition to Rolston, Turbine also added several other high-level members to its team: Alan Villani from NetherRealm Studios (Mortal Kombat) as its Technology VP, Jai Singh from Zynga as its Technical Operations executive director, and Demetrius Comes from Petroglyph Games (End of Nations) as its Engineering executive director. Based in Massachusetts and owned by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, Turbine Inc. has put out a number of MMORPGs, including Dungeons & Dragons Online and The Lord of the Rings Online (both launched with subscription models but now free-to-play).