Ex-Blizzard North exec moves to Gargantuan

The ex-president of Blizzard North, David Brevik, is to head up Gazillion Entertainment studio Gargantuan with his first project being to lead the development of the Marvel Universe MMO, the company announced today.

During his time at Blizzard, Brevik worked on the studio's Diablo series, serving as project lead, design lead and lead programmer for the two titles. He also launched Blizzard's online gaming service, Battle.net.

His new role for the San Mateo, California-based development studio will be as studio director, and he will also be participating in a Q&A panel entitled The State of MMOs: A Discussion with the Developer at the upcoming San Diego Comic-Con.

"I'm a huge fan of comic books, Super Heroes and MMORPGs, so the chance to lead the creative efforts for the Marvel Universe MMO is an amazing opportunity," said Brevik.

"Gazillion's mission to bring MMOs to the mainstream while maintaining the depth in gameplay that enthusiast gamers demand is something that deeply resonates with me. Marvel is a perfect fit for this mission, and I couldn't imagine a better venue to announce our efforts than Comic-Con."

"As the creative and technical force behind the Diablo franchise and Battle.net, David is an immensely talented game industry veteran who is responsible for bringing role playing games and online gaming more generally to an extremely large and thankful audience around the world," added Rob Hutter, CEO of Gazillion. "We're thrilled that he's chosen to bring his vision and design leadership to the development of our landmark MMO franchise with Marvel."