Ken Lobb

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Ken Lobb, also known as Ken Lobb, KAL, or K. Lobb, is an American video game designer, creative director, and voice actor. He has worked for Taxan USA, Namco Hometek, and Nintendo of America, and is now the Creative Director at Xbox Game Studios. He helped co-create the Killer Instinct series.

He graduated from DeVry University in 1982. He had a hard time breaking into the industry, blaming the 1983 video game crash, and says he even applied to Atari but heard nothing back. He later worked at AMD on programmable ROM.

Lobb was discovered by Taxan USA management after a casual conversation at a Northern California video game store. They invited him to play R-Type at their office, and he was hired as Product Manager for Taxan USA from October 1988 to January 1991, working with the Japanese developer KID on NES games for the U.S. market. When Taxan closed in early 1991, he moved to Namco Hometek as Head of Product Development until 1993.

In 1993 he joined Nintendo of America, serving as Head of Game Development and working on several titles, including GoldenEye 007. He left Nintendo in January 2002 after Minoru Arakawa’s resignation to join Microsoft Game Studios (now Xbox Game Studios). In a 2007 interview, Lobb said Arakawa’s departure influenced his decision to leave.

A Klobb weapon in GoldenEye 007—the vz. 61 Škorpion—was named after him due to copyright issues. It became infamous for its weak performance, but Lobb says it ended up having a positive impact on him personally.