Ins and Outs – September 2021’s industry hires roundup

Here are the highlights from the recent industry hires and moves, as published in MCV/DEVELOP’s September issue.

After two years at Ukie, George Osborn now has a new job title at the UK trade body, and is now its head of campaigns and communications.

Jack Langley has taken up a new role at Kalypso Media as senior PR manager, covering the UK, EMEA and ANZ. Prior to joining Kalypso Media, Langley was working at Wargaming. Langley asked to be included here in order “to reintroduce myself to society like a young Victorian dandy at a London season.”

Bastion has five new hires to announce this summer. Sam Smith joins as an account manager. Smith comes from Bandai Namco, where was community manager. Previously he worked at Gfinity and as a journalist at Imagine Publishing.

Amaresh Bhangle also joins the team as a senior account executive. Having worked agency-side in PR for four years, he has led campaigns for clients such as Amazon, and launched startups during the pandemic.

Tom Edwards also joins as an account executive, after working in-house for Escape Hunt. Tom’s past PR experience includes the sparkly world of fashion, hospitality, and events at AKA Communications and The Tape Agency.

Tinashe Mhizha is joining the team as a PR apprentice, through the PRCA apprenticeship scheme. Tinashe has previous experience in social media management, business and IT.

Joe Bridgland joins Bastion as a marketing & HR executive. This is his first role in the industry, and he will be applying his experience providing operations and HR functions at an equity research firm, to support Bastion’s ongoing growth

Splash Damage has eight(!) new hires to brag about. First, Dave Thompson joins as a development director. Thompson has spent the majority of his career in production based roles. Three years ago, he left the UK to work in Serbia with Nordeus.

Next up, Adam Board joins as design director. Board previously managed the demo team at Improbable, before going on to help launch a mobile games start-up making casual MMOs

James Featherstone also joins Splash, as head of QA. Featherstone was previously at Disguise, making visual effects technology for events, theatre, movies and TV. He has also previously worked at Eidos, EA and Codemasters.

Splash Damage also has a new environment artist in Jake Banitas. Before Splash, Banitas was working at Climax studios for three years and then with Bossa Studios. During the time at both he was doing environment art and set dressing.

Still at Splash Damage, Spencer Grant joins as associate video editor. Grant previously worked freelance as a video editor for YouTube channels like Simon Clark, Dice Check/MagikarpUsedFly, and Huggbees

Still at Splash, Arturo Noain joins as lead production tester. Noain was previously a project manager for Testronic where he coordinated the QA for several mobile and console titles.

Ezequiel Claverie joins Splash as an audio designer. Claverie was previously making audio tours and apps for museums and attractions including The Tate Modern, National Gallery, Prado Museum, The Vatican and Opera Garnier.

Finally at Splash, Daniel Quill joins as a gameplay programmer. Prior to joining Splash, Quill was working in software. In his spare time, he has also been developing a game which he recently released on Steam called Abacus, a retro 2D platform-shooter.

Elsewhere, James Archer has joined Rock, Paper, Shotgun as their new hardware editor. Archer was previously working at Future Publishing, editing the audio channel of Tom’s Guide.

Curve Digital has announced four new hires across various areas of their business.

First, Ranj Vekaria has joined as creative director after spending 13 years at SEGA as a creative lead where she specialised in packaging, branding and advertising.

Next up, Rich Earl joins as senior marketing manager. Earl was also previously at SEGA, along with stints at Bossa Studios, Capcom and TT Games in a variety of marketing roles.

Bobby Wertheim also joins Curve as VP of partnerships after spending a decade at SEGA as director of content. Wertheim also previously worked at Sony Computer Entertainment Europe.

Last up at Curve Digital is Jay Shin who joins the publisher as business development manager. Shin is a lecturer at the University of West London and is also the director and co-founder of indie developer Arrogant Pixel.

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