Warner Bros. Games has hired former Sony Santa Monica executive David Hewitt to run Monolith Productions.
Hewitt will be directing studio strategy for the studio most recently responsible for the Lord of the Rings-inspired Middle-earth series. Both Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor and Middle-earth: Shadow of War saw critical and commercial success with the debut of the Nemesis system.
The Nemesis system (which was recently patented by Warner Bros) allowed players to encounter a unique set of procedurally generated Orc foes in each playthrough of the game. Said orcs would engage in duels with each other, react to the player's victories, and advance in rank if they managed to kill the player.
Hewitt himself comes from the world of game design, having started his career as a game designer at Ratbag Games before becoming a lead designer and creative director at Tantalus Media.
Warner Bros. seems to have taken a renewed interest in its interactive entertainment division, which for a short period of time was being floated for sale to parties like Microsoft. It has since taken the division off the market.