Lou Castle Goes To Zynga

Now that InstantAction is shut down, former CEO Louis Castle has been hired as VP of Studios at Zynga. Castle, who is also a former Electronic Arts executive and co-founder of Command & Conquer creator Westwood Studios, was InstantAction's CEO since 2009. Since the time InstantAction began "winding down" late last year, Castle has reportedly held the role of senior advisor at PremiumFanPage, another social media company. InstantAction was a relatively short-lived effort at providing a social platform around games on the web, and launched a streaming service for embeddable games. It's owned by IAC, the large Internet-specific conglomerate that also owns sites like CitySearch and Match.com, and was shut down late last year. InstantAction's final launch was a browser and Facebook-based music game, Instant Jam that was shut down when IAC closed InstantAction's operations. GarageGames, owner of the Torque engine, was InstantAction's founder in 2007. GarageGames recently relaunched itself separately from IAC, and continues to offer the Torque technology.