Rock Band senior designer Dan Teasdale leaves Harmonix for Twisted Pixel

Harmonix's Dan Teasdale, lead designer for Rock Band 3, has made the jump to Comic Jumper and 'Splosion Man developer Twisted Pixel, where he will begin work on "a ridiculously cool new project." He is flying to Austin, Texas today to join the team, though we suspect there will be time for Mexican food and Amy's ice cream somewhere in there.

While we assumed the only reason you'd leave a job like that is the sudden onset of deafness, Teasdale offered justification for the decision. In a blog post, he cited a desire to work with a smaller game in order to have more hands-on influence on the creation process. "I want to be able to help drive the vision and direction of a game," he said, "but at the same time be hands on and physically implement and iterate on the low level of making games in a more substantial way than time affords me when working as a lead on multi-hundred person titles."