Loot Drop hires new creative director

Free Realms creative director Laralyn McWilliams is joining Loot Drop – the newly-formed social games studio headed by id Software co-founder John Romero.

McWilliams, once a lead game designer at now-defunct studio Pandemic, will become creative director at the company's San Mateo studio after leaving Sony Online Entertainment.

According to Gamasutra, Loot Drop COO Brenda Brathwaite said of McWilliams: "It's her background that's most appealing to us. She's designed great games for diverse audiences and really gets the Facebook space."

Prior to the McWilliams announcement, Brathwaite spoke to GamesIndustry.biz about recruitment at the studio, expressing delight that the company has thus far managed to avoid the so-called "talent acquisition war" - claiming the team has been inundated by calls from people across the industry looking to join the studio.

"Luckily we've had to do zero recruiting, absolutely zero. I can't even tell you how fortunate we are. It's something I've said 100 times behind the scenes - when we announced Loot Drop and during and after GDC, the amount of IM's, DM's, text messages, emails that I've received that have said, "let me know if you've got an opening" has been overwhelming. Way more than I ever would have expected. Obviously when you go from company A to company B there's always a couple of people who will ping you, but this has been overwhelming."

The full interview with Brathwaite is available now.