According to TechCrunch, Noah Falstein is now the “Chief Game Designer” at Google. Never heard of Noah? It’s OK, neither have I. His Wikipedia page contains an impressive bio that shows the guy has a ton of experience, but I worry because it looks like he hasn’t made a game since the late 90s. He’s been a consultant since the early 00s, but it’s unclear what exactly he did as a consultant.

Curiously, Noah’s LinkedIn profile used to say “Chief Game Designer at Android Play Studio”. Does that mean Google is planning to become a first party game developer? For those unfamiliar with the term, just think of Nintendo. All the Mario games, all the Zelda games, those are first party titles because they were developed by Nintendo to run on Nintendo hardware. Games developed by Electronic Arts or other such studios, those are called third party titles.

So what exactly can Noah do for Google besides make a game? I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but Android isn’t exactly an operating system that people like to play with. By that I mean people don’t unlock their phones just to swipe through home screens and fiddle with the gestures. Yes, when you reach the bottom of a long list there’s a tiny pulsating blue light, but other than that … Android is pretty sterile.

Could Noah fix that? I have no clue, but I’ll definitely be keeping my eye on this story.