Ins and Outs – February 2022’s industry hires roundup

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

There’s four new starters over at Marvelous Europe, starting with Daniela Pietrosanu as communications manager. Previously working with Lick PR and following roles at Curve Games and Square Enix, Pietrosanu will be looking after PR, influencer relations and community management at Marvelous Europe.

Marvelous Europe has hired Ellie Ball as Marketing Manager, spearheading several titles currently in development. Ball joins from All in! Games where she was a senior brand manager.

Coming from PQube, Mayumi O’Shea joins Marvelous Europe as Associate Publishing Producer overseeing the development and production of a variety of titles. O’Shea has previously worked at Square Enix and CyGames in Japan.

Finally at Marvelous, Europe, Charlotte Parker takes on the role of commercial manager at looking after European distribution.

Tencent Games has announced four new additions to their partnership team. First, Ivan Davies joins as director, studio partnerships following previous roles at Ocean Software, Infogrames, Warthog and PlayStation. Most recently, Davies was production director at Catalyst Outsourcing,
the company he founded.

Tom O’Connor also takes on a director, studio partnerships position. Following previous roles at Electronic Arts and Activision, O’Connor more recently managed a portfolio of AAA titles at PlayStation, including the multi-award winning LittleBigPlanet franchise.

Taking on the newly created position of development director, studio partnerships, Jon Lawrence will be responsible for defining and implementing production operations across some of Tencent’s 2nd party studios. He has previously worked at the likes of Electronic Arts, Microsoft, Natural Motion and Scopely.

There’s a whole host of new hires over at Sumo Digital. First, Robert Hancock joins Sumo Sheffield as a video editor, following six years at twentysix where he worked on a range of content and social media campaigns, video and animation projects, and web design. Hancock also previously worked in film and television.

Helene Bliksvaer Hansen meanwhile joins The Chinese Room as a QA tester. Hansen joins from Universally Speaking where she was the LQA project manager.

Arjun Chauhan joins Sumo Leamington as a programmer, following two years at Sumo Pune as a junior programmer. Chauhan has worked on titles including Forza Horizon 4 (Steam), and Forza Horizon 5.

Gosia Rajner joins Sumo Sheffield as a recruitment & campus coordinator. Rajner joins following experience at Oxford Brookes, Uni of Sheffield and Uni of Huddersfield.

Emily Cook meanwhile joins The Chinese Room as art producer. Cook’s most recent experience includes Supermassive Games, where she managed the Animation and VFX teams across The Dark Pictures Anthology

Brogan Fraser-McCluskey joins Sumo Sheffield as recruiter – design & production. McCluskey joins the team at Sumo Sheffield with over five years of recruitment experience in agency and in-house.

There’s a new army of hires over at Splash Damage. First, Julia Pardo joins as associate producer. Pardo’s production journey began via the Limit Break mentorship, and previously freelanced as a 3D Generalist at Laireon Games LTD.

Viola Crellin joins Splash as senior backend engineer. Crellin is an ex-advertising strategist who found programming far too late in life and has spent the past six years fixing this.

Kay Anna Ross also joins the Splash team as technical lead. Ross was a particle physics researcher who took a sidestep into making games. She was at Frontier Developments from 2013 to 2021, making the Milky Way and leading the graphics programmers for Elite Dangerous.

Yogesh Batra joins Splash Damage as senior animator. Batra has been working in the animation industry for the past 13 years.

Also joining the Splash team is Simon Loiseau, who joins as senior game designer. Coming from Montreal, Loiseau has worked as a game and level designer for the past 13 years. He has spent the last 4 years in Czech Republic, working in a mobile game studio and then an AAA studio.

Finally, Virgil Mihailescu joins Splash as senior animator. Mihailescu previously worked on his own IP, a sci-fi 3D roguelite platformer called Seven Signs: Pulp Planet.