Sega Genesis-Era CEO Joins Gazillion After 20 Years Away From Industry

Marvel Heroes developer Gazillion has a new (old) face joining their ranks. After leaving the gaming industry 20 years ago, former Sega CEO Tom Kalinske has signed on as chairman of the board for Gazillion.

Kalinske left SEGA in 1996 to work with edutainment companies such as LeapFrog and Knowledge Universe. While he's still involved with those groups, he recently decided to take on his new roll after an invitation from current Gazillion CEO Dave Dohrmann, who he knew through his kids' little league baseball days.

He spoke about his return to the industry with GamesIndustry.biz recently saying that the changes since he'd left gaming are "unbelievable."

"I've got so much learning to do. I didn't even know about things like Steam and Valve. But the great thing is a lot of this was started so long ago. Remember, we had mobile games long, long ago. We did mess around with VR, but never successfully. I cancelled the introduction of VR when I was at Sega because it made everyone sick, basically. I love what's going on in AR. I've been a little bit part of eSports. So I've seen these things develop, and I'm so excited about what's going on."

In the interview with GI, Kalinske also spoke about Gazillion's relationship with Marvel and how his joining the company is a sign of "more to come." What that "more" is he didn't say except to add that he believes there is an opportunity to make Gazillion a "very large company". You can read the interview in full at the link above.