Casual game upstart Rebel Monkey has announced that Jeff Kesselman, former head of MMO technology initiative Project Darkstar, has joined the company as its CTO, where he will oversee development of its yet unrevealed "gaming environment."

Founded in February of 2007, Rebel Monkey is headed by former Skunk Studios CEO Margaret Wallace and Nicholas Fortugno, one of the creators of hit casual title Diner Dash. While the company still has not formally announced any forthcoming products, it has announced a focus on "connected, community-focused casual games," and recently secured a million dollar investment.

As previously reported, Kesselman's Project Darkstar was a research effort undertaken by Java developer Sun Labs, aimed at simplifying the process of developing multi-player online games that can be deployed on a massive scale and made available to players using virtually any client device.

Prior to his work at Sun, Rebel Monkey notes that Kesselman has held senior engineering positions at former PC online technology company Total Entertainment Network and game developer Crystal Dynamics.

Said Wallace on the appointment, "We’re delighted to have Jeff join our management team. As CTO, Jeff brings unparalleled experience and technical know-how to the company, allowing Rebel Monkey to deploy its forthcoming web-based gaming environment on a massive worldwide scale.

[The preceding article by Brandon Boyer originally appeared on Worlds in Motion sister site Gamasutra.]