Ins and Outs: June 2023’s industry hires roundup

Here are the highlights from the recent industry hires and moves, as published in MCV/DEVELOP’s June 2023 issue. 

JESS GASKELL is now director of PMO at Sumo Digital. She has over a decade of experience in game development and project management, and previously worked as director of production at Media Molecule. She will work directly with studios, overseeing their projects, stage gate reviews and tools.

ALIF LAMEESA TREVATHAN has joined the Sumo Group as its belonging engagement manager. Alif has been an activist and volunteer her entire adult life, and organised and executed Birmingham’s largest Reclaim the Night march in 2019. She also has a masters degree in gender studies from SOAS.

ADELE RICHARDS is also at the Sumo Group, as their latest social media coordinator. She started out doing socials at a university K-Pop club, before doing some work at the non-profit industry support group Into Games.

ANTONIO RIZZATTI DE ABREU is now a concept artist at Sumo Nottingham. Originally from Brazil, Antonio has a particular passion for drawing vehicles, characters and environments. He’s been a professional artist since 2015, and has worked on films as well as games.

MIGUEL GUILLEN has become the latest lead backend engineer at Sumo Leamington. In the past he was an online game engineer at Yager, a system engineer at OLX Group, and worked in Dev Ops at Aeria Games.

TOM HUDSON is also at Sumo Leamington, as their newest junior programmer. He comes to them after spending over two years as a programmer on Kwalee titles. Before that, he was an arena specialist and deputy manager for Belong Arenas UK and GAME.

BEN SMITH is the newest technical support analyst at Sumo Leamington. He worked at Biffa for the last eight years, and was an IT field engineer for the last five, where he rose to a senior level. Before that he did four years at House of Fraser in the menswear department.

MATT GROVES is making some noise as the newest senior sound designer on the Sumo Leamington team. He previously worked in music venues with live bands, theatres with touring shows and production companies as an on-set sound mixer, and still moonlights as a DJ when he gets the chance.

JULIA DRAKE is an assistant producer at Sumo Leamington, taking on her first job in the video games industry. She used to work at a GP surgery for the NHS, but studied history at university. She’s as adventurous as her namesake from the Uncharted games, clearly.

GARGI ROY is a concept artist at Sumo Newcastle. She used to work as an freelancer, following time as a concept artist at India’s oldest game developer Dhruva Interactive, and then at Rockstar Games India after Dhruva was acquired back in 2019.

KIERAN LATHAM has joined Sumo Sheffield as a technical artist, after working on game projects for Liverpool John Moores University, Hobs 3D, Imagin3D, and the Virtual Engineering Centre. His work included architectural visualisation, manufacturing planning, and medical simulation training and sometimes involved VR and MR tech implementations. At Sumo, his primary focus is on procedural content generation.

CALLUM HILL has joined Sumo Sheffield as well, as a junior support analyst. He was previously a junior IT technician at ASD Lighting PLC and Rotherham United Football Club. His unique career has taken him to all sorts of places, and he even did IT for the UEFA Women’s Euros at the New York Stadium.

TOM LEIGHTON is now at Atomhawk as an art manager. In the past he worked in art roles at companies like Eutechnyx and ZeroLight. He enjoys the planning and problem solving aspects of production, and has been known to refer to it as his ‘second love’. We assume that art is his first, although he may just also have a partner. If we’re honest, we didn’t ask.

LUKE GARDNER is the latest compliance QA lead at Secret Mode. He started out at SEGA in San Francisco, before spending time at Electronic Arts and Double Fine. Before getting bored of the land of the free and leaving the American dream behind, he worked at Bandai Namco on titles such as Dark Souls.

RIC COWLEY is now a PR executive at Secret Mode. He comes to the publisher after spending time as a mobile games journalist: Starting out as an intern at Pocket Gamer, he worked his way up the chain until he was the editor. He also spent some time as editor at PocketGamer.biz, before going into marketing at Project N.

MARCIN SZAMBELAN is now a senior UI artist at The Chinese Room. He tells us that he has been interested in digital graphics since 1999, when he first installed Photoshop, but his love of art started even before that. He also likes to dabble in photography, cinematography and portraiture, and has even done some album covers for musicians.

DANNY WHITEHOUSE is now lead environment artist at Auroch Digital, arriving at the studio after working as a freelance animator and generalist for TV adverts, children’s education software and emergency training simulations. He has also worked at Rare, Rebellion, Lionhead, Climax Studios, and Firesprite.

VICTORIA MACKENZIE is now a producer at Auroch Digital. She started her career at Outright Games on Giganotosaurus the Game, and got the job right after graduating from Pompey University. We’re not too surprised they snapped her up, as during her studies she worked at IBM on a voice-controlled VR game utilizing IBM’s AI system Watson, which is frankly, very cool.

ZACHRAY CUNDALL is the newest lead producer at Auroch Digital. He was previously studio lead at Ocean Spark Studios, which worked as outsourcers on several projects alongside doing its own in-house work. At Ocean Spark Zachray helped to build an academy to teach kids how to make their own games using Unreal Engine.

ROSE RUSSELL now works as lead gameplay programmer at Auroch Digital. They have come to Auroch after seven years at Rebellion, where they worked on games like Sniper Elite 5, Strange Brigade, and the Battlezone VR.

GRANT BOLTON has returned to nDreams as its new VP of technology, after spending a year at Meta. In the past he has worked at big studios like Lionhead, Electronic Arts, Supermassive Games, and of course, nDreams, where he used to be its technical director. Home sweet home.

WILL TARRATT has joined TT Odyssey down in Brighton as a design director. He used to work in the same role as Boss Alien, which is also in Brighton, so he hasn’t had to move very far. He has also spent time as a designer at Big Bit, Relentless Software and Sumo Digital.

ROSEY ASQUITH joins Airship Interactive as its new talent acquisition partner, having previously worked at Firesprite, Playground, and Aardvark Swift. Rosey has been in games for over five years and is passionate about finding new talent within the industry and helping people excel in their roles.

DAN BROWNE is joining Airship Interactive’s team as producer from REALTIME. Dan has an extensive background in production and TV and started his career in games at Team 17 where he was creative services manager before moving on to Frontier as a creative services producer.

MICHAEL RUSHTON is Airship Interactive’s new head of production. Mike has over 20 years of experience in production and managing projects across Europe, the US, and Asia. He joins Airship from American Meetings, Inc.

ERIC MAWEJA is Airship Interactive’s new senior groom artist, having joined from Share Creators and before that AniMate. Eric comes from a family of exceptional industry artists and has over seven years of experience in game art and animation.

CHRIS CHALLINOR is Airship’s new head of IT. Chris will be leading the design and implementation of infrastructure, networking, and security to support Airship’s expansion. With nearly a decade of experience in IT, this is Chris’s first role within the games industry and he is passionate about leading the way for the future of technology.

BRITT DYE has been promoted at Whitethorn Games, and is now the company’s very first chief accessibility officer. She joined the publisher back in 2021 and has been making sure their titles meet and often exceed industry accessibility standards so that as many players can enjoy them as possible ever since.

STEWART CLARK has left Alfred PR, and has joined Hope & Glory PR, where he’ll now be a senior account executive. He started his career in QA at Rockstar Games, working remotely on both ‘current and future’ Rockstar games. How mysterious!

EUGENIO VITALE has joined MY.GAMES in Amsterdam as the director of their premium games division. He’s worked in the industry for over 25 years with teams developing AAA games. Most recently he was at PLAION as its director of product and technology working on IPs like Dead Island, Metro, Saints Row, TimeSplitters and Painkiller.

TOM PHILLIPS is now the editor-in-chief at Eurogamer. He has said that he intends to keep a large amount of his focus on the news side of the site, uncovering cool stories and continuing their quality, accurate and authoritative games coverage along with his team.

RICHARD DARLINGTON will join international investment bank DC Advisory as their executive director in Manchester. He has over 15 years of investment banking and accounting experience, primarily in the technology, media and gaming sectors. He used to work at Zeus Capital, where he was director of their Investment Banking division.

BEN ATKINS CHAFER has joined Corsair. Previously, he was at By Gamers, For Gamers, where he worked as a product specialist for WePC, and a commercial copywriter for AgencyGMR.

OLIVIER PERBET has joined IO Interactive as its new chief marketing officer. Olivier will oversee IOI´s game marketing, communication and community building efforts. He was at Warner Brothers Games for 15 years, and worked on marketing for game series like HITMAN 2, Mortal Kombat and Batman Arkham.

IMOGEN CALYPSO MELLOR has left The Telegraph, and is currently freelancing while looking for her next big job. She has also worked at other well-known media outlets like PC Gamer, GamingBIBLE and PCGamesN, and is a two-time BAFTA judge.

SHAKIRA DAY is now an account manager at Bastion, and joins them from 160over90, where she worked on EA titles including the FIFA series. She has also worked with other major brands like NFL, PUMA and Calvin Klein.

EMILY DIXON is an account executive at Bastion, and comes to them in a transition from a career in online journalism. In the past you might’ve seen her bylines on popular websites like RealSport101 and DualShockers.

Finally, AMY CARMICHAEL BRAKESPEAR is now an influencer executive at Pinpoint, Bastion’s team of specialists that work with influencers and content creators on collaborations and other online marketing campaigns. Before joining Pinpoint, Amy used to work at Picnic Ventures as a marketing executive.