Ins and Outs – May’s industry hires roundup

Former head of Xbox’s official YouTube channel, Xbox On, Matt Castle has joined Rock Paper Shotgun as the first member of its new video team. Castle previously worked for the likes of Official Xbox Magazine and Official Nintendo Magazine.

2K has hired a new community and social manager, Matt Gardner, who joined from Gameloft where he had been global community manager for nearly two years.

Curve Digital has made two new hires in its marketing team. Jack Gosling joined as social media manager, having previous experiences at Mr Bean, Amazon, MasterChef, Xbox and AKQA, where he was international social lead for some of Activision’s biggest titles, including Destiny and Call of Duty. Also joining was Cédrine Décoret, as product manager. Previously brand manager at Microïds, she also spent almost a year at Square Enix France where she worked on key titles such Tomb Raider and Final Fantasy XIV: ARR.

Lucy James has been promoted from video producer to senior video producer at CBS Interactive’s Gamespot. Also a freelance writer and presenter, you can find her work at VideoGamer or GameReactor.

Former event editor at Steel Media and Gamesforum’s event director George Osborn has joined in-game advertising agency BidStack as its new head of content.

GamesRadar’s Zoe Delahunty-Light has been promoted to video script editor and presenter. As a freelancer, you can also find her byline in GamesTM, Official PlayStation Magazine and Official Xbox Magazine.

Skillsearch’s head of business development Guy DeRosa has joined Studio Gobo (and newly-created sister-studio Electric Square) as recruitment manager. He said: “Please get in touch if you’d like to discuss current openings here, there are some insane projects being cooked up behind the scenes and we’re going to need a lot of talented people to help us.”

Performance capture service provider Audiomotion has hired Philip Morris as sales director. With over ten years of experience in the industry, he’s worked for Nintendo, Intel and Apple. Brian Mitchell, managing director of Audiomotion, commented: “Philip brings a wealth of professional sales experience to our growing studio, combined with a genuine passion for high end technology and video games.”

Jagex’s head of community Tom Sweeney has departed to become The Social Chain Group’s new director of gaming. He will be responsible for heading the gaming division, which reaches a community of 9.1m players across platforms and includes gaming community GameByte.

PCGamesN has bolstered its team with two new hires and a promotion. Deputy editor Ben Maxwell, who joined in June 2017, has been promoted to editor, having previously spent seven years at Edge. Maxwell commented: “I’m elated to have been given the opportunity to oversee the next phase of PCGamesN’s spectacular growth, and honoured to be working with one of the most talented teams in the industry. I am now seriously considering investing in a PC, too.”
Network N’s publishing director Joel Gregory added: “Ben’s work since he’s been here and his vision for the future of PCGamesN made him the outstanding candidate in a very strong field. I’ve every confidence that he’ll be able to lead our wonderful team into this next, hugely exciting era for PCGN. Plus if it all goes wrong people can just blame me for lingering in the background, like an outgoing football manager who still shows up to every game and sits scowling in the stands.”
The team also hired two esports writers. Jessica Wells has been a senior reporter at Newsquest Media Group for the past two years, with her byline also being featured on Esports Pro, Eurogamer and PC Gamer. Jack Ridsdale has been hired in the same role, joining from our sister-title ToyNews where he’s been senior staff writer since late 2016.

Creative marketing agency Substance Global has promoted Elisha Brown to social media junior account manager. She joined the firm in 2016, having spent over a year at games industry initiative NextGen Skills Academy.

Eurogamer’s video producer Chris Bratt has left the firm to launch a new project on Patreon. His new video game series is called People Make Games, modelled after the Here’s A Thing videos he’s been producing at Eurogamer.