Apple hires video game journalist to pick iPhone games

Apple is bringing on Matt Casamassina, an editor at News Corp.-owned video-game website IGN, to spearhead editorial content for iPhone and iPad games on the App Store. He announced the move on Thursday via a recent blog post.

Casamassina describes the position like this:

[aditude-amp id="flyingcarpet" targeting='{"env":"staging","page_type":"article","post_id":178042,"post_type":"story","post_chan":"none","tags":null,"ai":false,"category":"none","all_categories":"business,games,","session":"C"}']

In a nutshell, I will be leading the charge for games on the App Store, so whether you browse through iTunes, iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad, the games content you see will be handpicked and organized by me and my team.

Apple has historically been a company that hasn’t paid much attention to games on its computing platforms — primarily because many games were developed for Windows, and often took months to appear on the Mac, if they ever did.

Apple hired a small in-house team to develop simple games for the original iPod line. (That team, which included Jonathan Kromrey, now at Namco, went on to build a Texas Hold ‘Em app for the iPhone.) With the advent of the App Store and decent graphics power on the iPhone and iPad, Apple finally has created a platform where games can thrive.

Games became the most popular app, surprising Apple at first. It has since hired seasoned game developers such as Graeme Devine to work on iPhone game technologies.

With tens of thousands of games now available on the AppStore, the problem for users is discovering the games that they really want to play. The addition of a full-fledged game journalist to its editorial staff will help users find hidden gems more easily, and will give game developers the assurance that an informed eye is highlighting game content.

Casamassina has been a consistent presence at IGN, a network of video game and entertainment sites, over the last 13 years. He focused on IGN’s sites dedicated Nintendo platforms for his first 12 years, and last year became IGN’s editor-at-large, according to Gamasutra.