Zynga hires Nicolas Gramlich, the coder behind open source Android AndEngine

Like a black hole, Zynga continues to suck in more and more mobile development talent.

Following the purchase of Canadian outfit Five Mobile last week, it's now hired Nicolas Gramlich, the developer behind the open source 2D Android OpenGL game engine AndEngine.

Gramlich announced the news on his blog, saying "I'm very excited to announce that I am joining the Zynga Mobile team.

"Zynga has long been an advocate of the open source community. For example, the key contributors behind cocos2D recently joined Zynga, and I'm proud to join in this tradition."

Weight of numbers

He explained, he'll continue to support and contribute to the engine, operating the blog and forum, while AndEngine will remain open source.

Of course, whether or not Zynga will itself use the engine for its games, the context of the move is the company's stated focus on bulking up its mobile development.

"We believe there is a large opportunity to extend our brand and games to mobile platforms such as Apple iOS and Google Android," it said in its IPO listing document.

"We will continue to make our games accessible on a large number of mobile and other Internet-connected devices and invest in developing and acquiring mobile development talent, technologies and content."

[source: AndEngine blog]