Former SCEA, Sega President Joins Trilogy Advisors

Next-gen console game and virtual world development company Trilogy Studios has announced that former Sega of America and SCEA president Bernard Stolar has joined Trilogy's board of advisors. Along with the announcement, Trilogy also launched a website to debut its product line of virtual worlds and casual MMOs. Trilogy aims to combine game-like content and social networking with extensions of popular brands to enable media companies to monetize their content in online worlds through avenues like microtransactions, sponsorship and advertising, and says it will allocate the funds to expand the company's virtual world and casual MMO business. The company was originally founded in late 2005 by former Electronic Arts Los Angeles executives Rick Giolito and Mark Skaggs, along with former Vivendi Universal executive vice president Michael Pole. The appointment of Stolar comes on the heels of Trilogy's latest completed funding round, in which it raised $3.2 million dollars from There.com investor Chichen Itza ventures. Stolar began in the industry over 30 years ago with various roles Atari, leading to his installment as SCEA's first president. He left SCEA to helm Sega of America, where he managed the Sega Saturn and launched the Dreamcast platform. He has additionally held positions at Mattel Interactive, Bam! Entertainment and Adscape Media, and is currently the chairman of the board and lead director at mobile media content provider Oasys Mobile, Inc. Said Stolar, “Michael Pole and I have collaborated on a number of successful game projects over the years, and I view him as one of the most creative and forward-thinking people I’ve ever worked with. I trust in Michael’s vision, so when he asked me to join him in this emerging space, I was thrilled.”