Ken Lobb

Kenneth Alan Lobb (also credited as Ken Lobb, KAL, and K. Lobb) is an American video game designer formerly employed by Taxan USA Corp., Namco Hometek, and Nintendo of America, and currently employed by Xbox Game Studios as Creative Director.[2] He is best known as co-creator of the Killer Instinct series.[3]

Ken Lobb
Other namesKAL, K. Lobb, Ken Lobb
Occupation(s)Video game designer, creative director, voice actor
Years active1988[1]–present

Lobb graduated from DeVry University in 1982 and attempted to secure a job in the video game industry unsuccessfully, blaming the video game crash of 1983. Lobb claimed that he applied to Atari Inc. around this time however never heard back. Lobb subsequently began working at AMD, specifically on programmable ROM.

Lobb was introduced to the management of Taxan USA via the owner of a video game store he frequented in Northern California. Lobb did not apply for a role with Taxan but instead had casual conversations with the company management about video games and this sparked their interest in hiring him, unbeknownst to Lobb until they invited him to play the newly released R-Type at their company office. Subsequently Lobb was employed as Product Manager of Taxan USA between October 1988 and January 1991,[4] where he worked alongside Japanese developer KID on various NES games made for the U.S. market. After Taxan closed down in early 1991, Lobb was then employed by Namco Hometek until 1993, where he was Head of Product Development.[5] The same year[6] Lobb began working at Nintendo of America, where he worked on several games, including GoldenEye 007.[7] Whilst at Nintendo Lobb worked as Head of Game Development for Nintendo of America. Shortly after the resignation of Minoru Arakawa from Nintendo in January 2002, Lobb left to join Microsoft Game Studios. Lobb commented in a 2007 interview with IGN that had Arakawa not left the company he would have been less likely to leave.[8]

A weapon in GoldenEye 007, the Klobb, was named after him due to last-minute copyright issues, and became notorious amongst gamers for its lackluster abilities.[9] Despite this, Lobb stated that it "ended up having a nice impact on me, personally".[10]

Works

References
  1. Archived at Ghostarchive and the Wayback Machine: How Did You Get Into The Games Industry? - Ken Lobb. YouTube.
  2. Archived at Ghostarchive and the Wayback Machine: Killer Instinct - 720p Gameplay Interview With Ken Lobb - E3 2013. YouTube.
  3. "An Audience With: Ken Lobb". Edge Online. Retrieved 2014-06-21.
  4. Archived at Ghostarchive and the Wayback Machine: How Did You Get Into The Games Industry? - Ken Lobb. YouTube.
  5. Archived at Ghostarchive and the Wayback Machine: Ken Lobb - Interview ( circa 2007 ) - Courtesy of IGN.com - Part . 1 of 3. YouTube.
  6. Archived at Ghostarchive and the Wayback Machine: How Did You Get Into The Games Industry? - Ken Lobb. YouTube.
  7. "IGN review of Goldeneye007". 26 August 1997. Retrieved 2009-07-16.
  8. Grooveraider. "Ken Lobb - Interview ( circa 2007 ) - Courtesy of IGN.com - Part. 2 of 3". Youtube. Retrieved 28 June 2022.
  9. Edge Staff (2014-04-04). "The story of GoldenEye 007's most notorious gun, The Klobb – and its design secret". Edge. Archived from the original on 2014-04-04. Retrieved 2020-10-27.
  10. Brian (2017-04-02). "Former Nintendo exec Ken Lobb on GoldenEye 007's rail shooter origins, Klobb gun, more". Nintendo Everything. Retrieved 2020-11-24.
  11. "Chief Thunder Voice - Killer Instinct (2013) (Video Game)". Behind The Voice Actors. Retrieved 13 June 2021. A green check mark indicates that a role has been confirmed using a screenshot (or collage of screenshots) of a title's list of voice actors and their respective characters found in its opening and/or closing credits and/or other reliable sources of information.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: postscript (link)
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