After a 10-year career at ArenaNet, Guild Wars 2 lead designer Eric Flannum has joined Amazon Game Studios to serve as creative director in the development of a new third-person "competitive, melee-oriented" PC game, Gamasutra has verified through a trusted source.

This is intriguing in light of the fact that Amazon's game development arm lost two of its high-profile designers this summer, even as it began aggressively staffing up to develop its first PC game.

Confirmation of Flannum's new role also comes via a recruitment post he published on LinkedIn, suggesting the company is continuing to pour resources into its Seattle-based game division.