Ins and Outs – June 2021’s industry hires roundup

Sumo Digital returns to our hires roundup, announcing that its made five new hires this month.

First, Steven Wilson joins Sumo Sheffield as a senior animator. Wilson has over ten years’ worth of experience in animation, and joins Sumo Sheffield from TT Games.

Marco Vernetti joins Sumo Leamington as their newest executive producer. Vernetti has 21 years of experience in the games industry, having previously worked for the likes of Eidos, Rare, Codemasters, Supermassive Games, and CCP.

Jonny Flieger meanwhile joins Sumo Sheffield as lead writer. Flieger previously worked at Ubisoft Québec, as a writer and editor on Immortals Fenyx Rising

Arone Le Bray joins The Chinese Room as principal narrative designer. Le Bray has over 14 years of experience, having worked alongside the narrative teams at BioWare.

Finally at Sumo, Ellie Greenfield joins Sumo Sheffield as a marketing executive. Greenfield has more than five years’ experience in marketing and PR, with her most recent experience being Rise at Seven as a digital PR executive

Not to be outdone, Splash Damage also has five new hires, starting with Chris Latta, who joins the company as senior backend engineer. Prior to joining Splash Damage, Latta worked for Dovetail Games as a DevOps Engineer on the Dovetail Live platform.

Dániel Molnár also joins Splash Damage, as senior development manager. Molnár was previously senior producer on the Dark Pictures Anthology at Supermassive.

Jamie Stanton joins Splash as a producer.  Stanton started in the film industry, before they had the chance to turn one of their films into a game, 8-Bit Waterslide. Stanton has been making games ever since.

Thomas Howieson joins the company as a production tester. Prior to joining Splash Damage, Howieson was working at SEGA on the Total War franchise.

Finally at Splash Damage, Firas Hosn joins the company as a senior AI programmer. Before joining Splash, Hosn was at Build A Rocket Boy in Edinburgh. Prior to this he was working on Watch Dogs for Ubisoft.

IO Interactive has announced that two developers have joined to work on their current and upcoming projects, including Hitman and Project 007. First, Rasmus Højengaard joins as studio design director. Højengaard was the game director on Hitman Blood Money back in 2006 and returns to IOI after some years away.

Second, Andrzej Zawadzki joins from CD Projekt Red as senior game designer, working on a new, unannounced IP. Zawadzki was a senior gameplay designer on Cyberpunk 2077.

Games industry audio provider SIDE has appointed Jessica Kent as their new head of their North American flagship studio in Los Angeles. Kent has a decade of voiceover experience, including a significant amount of time spent at Riot Games.

Anna Tumurova has joined biz dev consultancy company Analog Ltd as an account manager. Tumurova previously worked as a project manager for FrankContent, and has also worked for the likes of INLINGO and The Most Games.

Former MCV content editor Jake Tucker continues his love for now obscure three letter acronyms by joining NME as commissioning editor, video games. Tucker’s last role was with Red Bull.

MCV/DEVELOP 30 under 30 alumni Alex Holt-Kulapalan has left Indigo Pearl to join 2K as a PR manager. He was at Indigo Pearl for three years, working as an account manager.

David Williams has joined Maverick Media as their new creative director. He has over 15 years of experience in film, TV and advertising, and joins Maverick in order to “break new ground by bringing all the possibilities of games advertising to life.”

The BGI’s trustees have appointed Claire Boissiere as their new Chair, after serving as Vice Chair for the last 2 years. Boissiere is studio manager at Jumpship, an independent game studio based in Guildford, UK.

Still at the BGI, Ian Livingstone CBE has been appointed the new President of the charity, after serving as Chair since the charity’s foundation in 2019.

Rounding out this busy month for hires, Retro games streaming platform Antstream Arcade has expanded its team by hiring Mike Rouse to lead its production team and help build its internal studio. Rouse joins from 2K’s Hangar 13

Got an appointment you’d like to share with us? Email Chris Wallace at chris.wallace@biz-media.co.uk