In-game ad company Double Fusion announced a promotion and two new management hires today: Double Fine’s own Julie Shumaker will now oversee the company’s newly formed Core Games Group as general manager and former VP of games at CNET Joshua Larson has been brought on as Vice President of Business Development, and former GameTrust CFO and COO Glen Sussman is now Double’s Fusion’s CFO.
Joshua Larson, Joshua Larson, Josh Larson? That’s right, at CNET he was involved in GameSpot business strategy, and he was apparently involved in the site’s “Gerstmann-gate” brouhaha. This controversy supposedly lead to the controversial firing of long-time staffer Jeff Gerstmann (pictured0. After that incident, other senior GameSpotters like Frank Provo, Brad Shoemaker, Ryan Davis and Jason Ocampo all left the site. Josh Larson was sacked last April. According to an anonymous “gamespot” commented at sister site Valleywag, Larson was “a suit [...]who had no editorial experience and was only involved on the business side of things”.
And now Joshua Larson is working in advertising. In-game advertising. Why was he ever working in editorial?
GameSpot’s ‘Gerstmann-gate’ VP Heads to Double Fusion [GameDaily][Pic]
President and CEO of Double Fusion, Jonathan Epstein put all the other GDC rock gods to shame this week at IBM’s Guitar Hero Competition. Epstein won the $US 1,500 grand prize with his face melting rendition of Eric Johnson’s White Cliffs of Dover. According tho the short press release, you can challenge Epstein to an epic battle of the bands by going to Double Fusion’s website. I went there myself and didn’t really see a place to sign up per se, but I suppose an email will do nicely. Just don’t count on wrestling that $US 1,500 from him. I think the title will be the best you can hope for.
