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LEROY HINES is the latest Junior VFX artist at Sumo Nottingham, and comes to the team having worked on the Portal-meets-Halo indie shooter Splitgate for a year at


1047 Games. He graduated from Birmingham City University, where he studied video game development, 3D modelling and VFX.


KEVIN HAYES has joined Sumo Nottingham as a technical art director. He’s spent 22 years in the industry, mostly working in the fields of technical art


and visual effects, including time at studios like Disney, LEGO, Microsoft, Bioware and most recently Studio Gobo.


DAMIAN HOSEN has become a studio design director at Sumo Leamington. This is actually his return to the company, as he previously served as


design director on LittleBigPlanet 3 at Sumo Sheffield. In the past he has also worked at Hutch, NaturalMotion and PlayStation London.


ZOE ROWBOTHAM is also joining the team at Sumo Leamington as a junior programmer. She is a University of West England graduate, which is where


she studied games technology. She also spent some time working full time at Sumo Digital for her undergraduate placement.


BOKUN AN has joined Sumo Newcastle as a junior character concept artist. He recently graduated from a masters at the University of the Arts London, where he studied character animation.


He is also a big fan of League of Legends, and has posted lots of fan art for it online, some of which has even won prizes.


Got an appointment you’d like to share? Email Vince Pavey at vince.pavey@biz-media.co.uk October/November 2022 MCV/DEVELOP | 19


FELIX NEILA has become a Junior Programmer at Sumo Warrington. He has just finished his real time interactive simulation degree at the DigiPen Institute of


Technology Europe Bilbao in Spain. While at DigiPen he was one of the team that developed Arclight Beat, a 3D platformer made in Unreal.


DIANA FLINDT has left Jagex, where she had been working as a content developer on RuneScape 3. She’s going to be joining the team over at Splash


Damage, where she will now be a Narrative Designer on “something big and brand new”. How very secretive!


MILLICENT THOMAS has joined the PlayStation UK team as influencer manager, and is responsible for influencer relations and campaigns for first party


titles across the PlayStation brand. She was previously export PR & marketing executive at Ubisoft, and has an extensive background in journalism and PR from her time as a freelance film critic and entertainment writer at GamesRadar+.


AL HIBBERD has joined Meta as product marketing manager. He was formerly at Frontier Developments, and joins Meta’s recently acquired Unit2Games studio


team in a senior role, where he will be driving forward marketing and communications for the Metaverse publishing platform Crayta.


ALEX VERREY has taken on a new role as VP of PR and communications at Embracer Freemode, and is establishing a new team that will service their group of 12 companies


and counting. Prior to being at Embracer, he was the director of global PR at Heaven Media. He has also worked in PR at several other companies, including Mad Catz, Big Boy PR and Little Big PR, the latter two of which he worked to build from the ground up.


Also joining the team at Embracer Freemode is GABRIELLE HIBBERD, who has taken on the role of Head of PR. She previously worked with Alex in publicist


roles at Little Big PR and Heaven Media, before a stint as a senior account manager at Renaissance PR.


BRIAN BRIGHT is another newcomer to the team at Embracer Freemode, taking on a leadership position and bringing with him his experience and expertise


from his many years at Activision Blizzard. Brian has worked on Call of Duty, Guitar Hero and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, and has over 40 game credits to his name, as well as ten video game- related patents.


FRANK SAGNIER is now the non-executive chair of the board at Steel City Interactive over in Sheffield, taking on the role after 25 years at sports game publishers like


Codemasters and Electronic Arts. It will likely be a very good fit for him, as Steel City Interactive are soon to release a boxing game that they have told MCV/DEVELOP is the “most ground- breaking and authentic boxing game in over a decade.”


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