Kim Salzer Departs Linden Lab, Was Marketing VP

New World Notes reports Kim Salzer, whom was hired a little more than a year ago by Linden Lab, has recently left and is now working for another company.

Salzer had joined Linden Lab from Activision/Blizzard, her hiring announced Sept. 2, 2010. “Kim brings a deep background in gaming (including experience at Electronic Arts working on massively multiplayer online games and hit sports franchises), and in online learning,” the Linden blog stated at the time. Hired as Marketing Vice-President, her goal was to figure out “a single idea to focus on and bring out, an X Factor” to get more people to want to get into Second Life.

Hamlet Au at the time of her hiring considered her arrival a welcome note of optimism after months of bad news. He thought she was behind Linden Lab’s push to market virtual pets. He also wrote that he had been told by insiders that she brought about changes in company communication policies, making it more tightly controlled between the Linden Lab staff and Second Life’s community, as well as between different departments, “under Kim Salzer's direction, company communication has shifted from the looser, open-ended structure associated with founders Philip Rosedale and Cory Ondrejka, and become more hierarchical and regimented -- not unlike the major game publisher where she began her career in interactive entertainment.”

Salzar gave the reason of her leaving as getting weary of the regular commute to Linden Lab’s San Francisco office from her home in Los Angeles. Hamlet felt her leaving “probably represents the most prominent change in the company this year.”

Image from iliveisl.

Bixyl Shuftan