Jon Hanna Jumps From Turbine to Kaneva

Jonathan "Calandryll" Hanna has left his position as the Director of Community Relations with Turbine Inc. to take on the position of Producer with fledgling MMO-engine developers Kaneva. Hanna is perhaps best known for his time as the Lead Designer of EA's Ultima X: Odyssey, a game that the publishing giants canceled in June of 2004.

Kaneva is an Atlanta-GA based company looking to break into the MMO space with an easy to use set of MMO development tools. Previously, they had been most notably linked with Rapid Reality, until the two had a rather public falling out last year.

When contacted by WarCry, Kaneva CEO Chris Klaus gave us the following statement:

Jonathan Hanna has joined Kaneva as its new Producer for the 3D Virtual World of Kaneva (currently in Private beta).

We are thrilled to welcome Jon to the Kaneva team -he has over a decade of high level game industry experience in Community Relations and Game Development. He is a seasoned professional having worked at Electronic Arts, Sony Online Entertainment, and Turbine, Inc. on titles such as Ultima Online, Star Wars Galaxies, Dungeons & Dragons Online, Lord of the Rings Online, and many others. Jonathan is a frequent speaker about Community and Social Networking at game industry conferences and is recognized as one of the pioneers of community-building in online gaming. As a strategic member of the Kaneva team, Jon will help us continue to develop the Virtual World of Kaneva, taking it to the next level and helping us redefine the Virtual World space as a new digital world where you can teleport your self, your media and your imagination into a totally modern 3D virtual environment full of avatar friends, cool places, events and entertainment.

You can learn more above Kaneva on their website.