Hiring in the social games industry was up slightly this week, with eight companies reporting 14 recent hires. According to data from LinkedIn and other sources, Zynga reported the most activity. The week’s most notable hire went to Peak Games, which brought on Ahmed Alsafar as its director of MMO Games in the Middle East and North Africa.

In related news, former EA Playfish vice president John Earner has joined Plumbee’s advisory board. Earner left EA in January to take a position as an entrepreneur in residence at Accel Partners. Earner is the second Playfish alumni to join Plumbee’s board, following Dan Fiden, Playfish’s former U.S. general manager.

If your company is hiring new people or making a notable promotion, please get in touch with us. Email us at: mail (at) insidesocialgames (dot) com, and we’ll get your news into an upcoming post.

If you want to know who else is hiring, the Inside Network Job Board showcases current openings with the industry’s leading companies.

Disney Playdom

• Travis Marshall, Associate Producer – Marshall was previously a technical analyst at Diamond Game.

EA PopCap

• Miriam Shen, Project Coordinator – Shen join’s PopCap’s Chinese office. She was formerly a production coordinator at Xinhua Sports & Entertainment Ltd.

Kabam

• Vivian Han, Analyst Intern – Kabam reports two hires this week. Han was previously the retail marketing supervisor at Nike Sports.
• Marielle Piccolo, Player Experience France – Italy - Piccolo joins Kabam’s customer service team.

Kixeye

• James Bellenger, Server Engineer - Bellenger was previously a  senior software engineer at Redux.

Newtracks

• Johannes Zint, Game Designer - Zint starts his career at Newtracks as a game designer.

Peak Games

• Ahmed Alsafar, Director of MMO Games – MENA - Peak reports a high profile hire this week with Alsafar, who was formerly the business development manager (MENA & Asia) at Looki Publishing GmbH.
• Barkin Basaran, Product Specialist – Basaran is fresh from a position as the marketing and communications intern at Mercedes-Benz Turkey.

Plumbee

• Ian Morrison, Automated Infrastructure Engineer – Morrison comes to Plumbee after a 10 year stint running IT service company Darq Ltd.

Zynga

• Christopher Fortier, Product Manager – Fortier was formerly the chief operating officer at Agora Health Networks.
• Souvik Mukherjee, Test Lead-QA - Mukherjee was previously a senior QA specialist at K2 Network.
• Gemma Kelly, Senior CS Manager Zynga Player Advocacy & Service - Kelly comes from a position as the operations delivery manager at Sportingbet.
• Jagan Mohan, Software QA Engineer - Mohan was previously the senior authoring engineer at Technicolor India Pvt Ltd.
• Frank Benedetto, Super Moderator - Benedetto joins Zynga’s community management team as a Super Moderator.

Hiring in the social gaming industry was down this week, with nine companies reporting 11 recent hires. According to data from LinkedIn and other sources Zynga reported the most activity. Idle Games had the week’s most noteworthy hire, bringing Zynga’s former lead game designer Michael McCormick on as its director of game design.

If your company is hiring new people or making a notable promotion, please get in touch with us. Email us at: mail (at) insidesocialgames (dot) com, and we’ll get your news into an upcoming post.

If you want to know who else is hiring, the Inside Network Job Board showcases current openings with the industry’s leading companies.

Crowdstar

• Bohan Yang, International Mobile Engineer - Yang comes to Crowdstar from a position as a technical assistant programmer at the Linguistic Data Consortium.

Idle Games

• Michael McCormick, Director of Game Design - A high profile move for Idle Games, which hires McCormick from Zynga, where he was CityVille’s lead game designer.

King.com

• Elin Andersson, Junior Graphic Artist - Andersson makes a career shift, having previously been an art teacher at Allvar Gullstrand High school.

Kixeye

• Damjan Stulic, Software Engineer - Stulic was previously a software engineer at Rivet Games.

Nordeus 

• Marija Ilić, Customer Support Specialist - Ilić was previously a restaurant supervisor at the Costa Lindia Beach Resort.

Peak Games

• Selin Koseoglu, Art Director - Peak also makes our list with a single hire.  Koseoglu was formerly an art director at ArcadeMonk.

Social Point

• Sebastian Bermeo, Flash Developer - Social point reports two hires this week. First up is Bermeo, who was previously a game developer at Karibu Games.
• Javier Garcia, iOS Developer - Garcia is Social Point’s other hire this week, coming on board as an iOS developer.

Spil Games

• Ivar Zantinge, Corporate Business Development Director - Spil brings aboard Zantinge from his previous position as the VP business development at TomTom.

Zynga

• John Combs, Super Moderator - Combs joins Zynga’s community management team as a Super Moderator.
• Kami Rai, Marketing and Community Manager - Rai gets a promotion at Zynga, moving up from his former position as a customer support and community manager.
• Steven Yu, Senior System Administrator - Yu was previously a senior system administrator at Blizzard Entertainment.

Hiring in the social gaming industry was up this week, with 11 companies reporting 17 recent hires. According to data from LinkedIn and other sources Plumbee reported the most activity and unlike previous weeks, two companies reported high profile moves. New company Fiveonenine Games brought on Tim Horan as chief revenue officer and Ana Maria Echeverri as its VP operations and Digital Chocolate made Vahe Torozyan its general manager.

If your company is hiring new people or making a notable promotion, please get in touch with us. Email us at: mail (at) insidesocialgames (dot) com, and we’ll get your news into an upcoming post.

If you want to know who else is hiring, the Inside Network Job Board showcases current openings with the industry’s leading companies.

Fiveonenine Games

• Tim Horan, Chief Revenue Officer – Some of this week’s highest profile hires go to new company Fiveonenine Games. Horan was previously the SVP at Appia.
• Ana Maria Echeverri, VP Operations – Echeverri has previously held senior positions at IBM and Microsoft.

6waves Lolapps

• Mark Stultz, Software Engineer – Two hires for 6waves Lolapps. Stultz was also a software engineer at Escalation Studios.
• Steven Yuen, Product Manager – Yuen was a senior game designer at VTech.

Digital Chocolate

• Vahe Torozyan, General Manager – Lime Tech co-founder Torozyan comes to Digital Chocolate as its new general manager.

GSN

• Abby Johnson, QA Engineer – Johnson gets a promotion from her previous title of QA associate at GSN.

Kabam

• Jacob Harrison, Software Engineer – Flash – Harrison moves from a post as a quality assurance tester at Pole To Win America, Inc.

Kixeye

• Damjan Stulic, Flash Engineer – Stulic was a software engineer at Rivet Games.

Nordeus

• Dimitrije Radojević, Software Development Engineer - Radojević starts his career at Nordeus after graduating from the University of Belgrade.
• Simo Kosanovic, Software Development Engineer – Kosanovic also joins Nordeus fresh out of school.

Peak Games

• Güvenç Süzgün, Game Master – A pair of hires at Peak Games. Süzgün comes from Cetech, where he was a team leader.
• Ahmed Alsafar, Head of Core Games – MENA – A high profile move for Alsafar, who was the business development manager (MENA & Asia) at Looki Publishing GmbH.

Playdom 

• Derek Manning, Game Designer – A single hire for Playdom, which brings on Manning in its Oregon office.

Plumbee

• Terry Gaylor, Contract Artist – Gaylor joins Plumbee in a temporary capacity.
• Oli Ladenburg, Consultant, Community Management and CRM – Ladenburg was previously the community management lead for Pogo.com.
• Saikala Sultanova, Marketing Coordinator - Sultanova gets a promotion from marketing intern to marketing coordinator.

Zynga

• Steven Yu, Senior System Administrator – Yu was a senior system administrator at Activision Blizzard before joining Zynga.

Inside Social Games is pleased to announce Mike Thompson as our new lead writer. He joins us most recently from video game industry publication The Escapist to focus on the business of social games here at ISG.

Mike earned his undergraduate degrees in Advertising, Journalism and Photography from Northern Arizona University. Aside from news stories on The Escapist, you may have seen his bylines on Gamezebo and Ars Technica where he covered mobile games and a broad range of PC titles, respectively. His investigative articles on web game Envoy last year are a great read for social game developers looking to avoid a nightmare bad-press situation.

We hope Mike finds a happy home here at ISG. He joins up at an interesting time — Zynga is publicly traded, Google+ is expanding its social games platform, everyone wants in on i-gaming, clones and “fast follow” games are hot button issues and social games are now more widely accepted by the broader video game industry than ever before. Read his first ISG article here.

Hiring in the social gaming industry was up this week, with 11 companies reporting 16 recent hires. According to data from LinkedIn and other sources Digital Chocolate, GSN, Social Point  and Zynga reported the most activity. There were no significant or executive hires to report this week.

If your company is hiring new people or making a notable promotion, please get in touch with us. Email us at: mail (at) insidesocialgames (dot) com, and we’ll get your news into an upcoming post.

If you want to know who else is hiring, the Inside Network Job Board showcases current openings with the industry’s leading companies.

6waves Lolapps

• Jesse Flanagan, Project Lead - 6waves Lolapps starts off our hiring roundup with one hire. Flanagan was formerly a producer at Escalation Studios.

Digital Chocolate

• Kim Larsen, Server Programmer – Larsen was previously a programmer at Anuntis Segundamano.
• Javier Soto Huesa, Programmer – Soto Huesa gets a promotion, moving up from his former position as a junior client programmer.

GameHouse

• Niels van de Groep, Game Localization Specialist – van de Groep was previously an intern at New Day at Work.

GSN

• Stephanie Shaw, Associate Product Manager - A pair of hires at GSN. Shaw was previously an intern at Krupp Kommunications.
• Brian Duenas, Designer – Duenas was formerly a JR art director at ETA Advertising.

Kixeye

• Yangyi He, Data Analyst - A single hire for Kixeye as well this week. He was a statistical programmer at Return Metrics before joining the company.

Peak Games

• Nükhet Savaş, Community Manager - Savaş begins her career at Peak Games.

Playdom 

• Rachel Donné, UI/UX Designer - Donné was previously a graphic designer at Zazzle.

Social Point

• Hannele Teräs, Product Manager – Teräs was previously a community manager and product manager at Digital Chocolate.
• Sara Guerola, Community Manager – Guerola comes to Social Point from a marketing background.

Tetris Online

• Ming-Yung (Marlos) Hu, Junior Game Designer – A rare hire for Tetris Online. Hu was formerly a game designer at Digital Madhouse.

Wooga

• Riku Heino, Game Designer / Graphical Artist – Trainee - Heino comes to Wooga from Demola, where he was a designer.

Zynga

• Paul Wu, 3D artist – Three hires for Zynga. First up is Wu who was formerly an environment artist at Sucker Punch Productions.
• Primo Gallanosa, Artist (Contractor) - Gallanosa was art lead at Meteor Games before taking a contract with Zynga.
• Brent Thale, Software Engineer - Thale was also a software engineer at TimeGate Studios.

Manny Anekal, Zynga’s Global Director of Brand Advertising, has left the company to help lead reward-based mobile advertising startup Kiip as its new chief operating officer.

During his two years at Zynga, Anekal lead the company’s in-game advertising and brand integration efforts in its main titles, and was behind some of Zynga’s biggest in-game promotions, like Lady Gaga’s “GagaVille” promotion for her album Born this Way, as well as recent deals with Farmers Insurance.

Like his peers Barry Cottle and John Schappert, Anekal came to Zynga from EA, where he worked as the company’s senior manager of in game advertising and its global director of ad operations before leaving to join the social gaming giant. According to Zynga’s fourth quarter earnings results, the company earned $27.3 million from advertising revenue, a 230 percent increase year-on-year. It is not yet known who will replace Anekal at Zynga.

Kiip made its debut last April and works with more than 65 mobile developers to incorporate advertising into a game’s existing achievement system. Founded by then 19-year-old Digg alumni Brian Wong, the company has so far received $4 million in funding from Hummer Windblad Venture Partners, Crosslink Capital and True Ventures. In December, the company unveiled its latest product, limited-time promotional tournaments called Swarm campaigns.

Hiring in the social gaming industry dropped this week, with six companies reporting 10 recent hires. According to data from LinkedIn and other sources, Zynga was by far the busiest hiring source, accounting for almost half of this week’s batch. There were no significant or executive hires to report.

If your company is hiring new people or making a notable promotion, please get in touch with us. Email us at: mail (at) insidesocialgames (dot) com, and we’ll get your news into an upcoming post.

If you want to know who else is hiring, the Inside Network Job Board showcases current openings with the industry’s leading companies.

GameHouse

• Bram Verhoeven, Intern - A single hire for GameHouse starts our roundup. Verhoeven is currently a student at Fontys Hogescholen in the Netherlands.

GSN

• Bert Jayasekera, Executive Director, Library Services – Jayasekera moves up at GSN, having previously served as the company’s director of library services.
• Michele Castagnetti, Art Director – Castagnetti was previously a freelance art director.

Kabam

• Michael DeBrosse, Animation Intern – DeBrosse starts his career at Kabam.

King.com

• Per-Erik Bergman, Senior Game Developer – Bergman was a senior consultant at Jayway before joining King.com.

Wooga

• Emma Kiiski, Game Artist Trainee – Kiiski was formerly a graphic designer at CalQuest.

Zynga

• Anoop Dixith, Software Developer – Four moves this week for Zynga. Dixith was previously a software engineer at NDS services Pay TV Technology.
• Heather Franklin, QA Analyst – Franklin was a QA Embedded Tester at BioWare SF (Electronic Arts) before coming to Zynga.
• Neha Joshi, Associate Producer – Joshi gets a promotion at Zynga to make our list this week. She was formerly a QA engineer at Zynga Games India.
• Daniel Cull, IT Intern - Finally Zynga brings on Cull, who was previously an intern in training at Year Up.

Hiring in the social gaming industry was up again this week, with 10 companies reporting 16 recent hires. According to data from LinkedIn and other sources Zynga showed the most activity. We saw several very high profile moves in the industry for the week, as well: King.com added Emma Vaz as its vice president for business development and partnerships in EMEA, Nordeus scooped Nikola Cavic to be its head of business development from Eve Online maker CCP, We R Interactive added Paul Whitehead as global commercial director and Zynga promoted Fareed Mosavat to head of studio, Zynga Boston.

If your company is hiring new people or making a notable promotion, please get in touch with us. Email us at: mail (at) insidesocialgames (dot) com, and we’ll get your news into an upcoming post.

If you want to know who else is hiring, the Inside Network Job Board showcases current openings with the industry’s leading companies.

Digital Chocolate 

• Fatima Monllor, Game Designer – Digital Chocolate leads our roundup with a promotion for Monllor, who was previously a QA manager for the company.

East Side Games 

• Jerry Cai, Contract Art Consultant – Two hires for Vancouver-based East Side Games. Cai was previously a Flash game designer contractor at Rival Schools.
• Dana Sharon, Android Developer - Next up is Sharon, who was a was Gameplay Programmer at Ubisoft.

King.com

• Emma Vaz, Vice President for Business Development and Partnerships, EMEA – King.com has a very high profile hire. Vaz was most recently the VP of international partnerships for Europe and Asia Pacific at Oberon.

Nordeus

• Nikola Cavic, Head of Business Development – Nordeus makes our list for the third week in a row with a high profile hire. Cavic was previously the senior sales manager at CCP.

Peak Games

• Ilker Yoldas, UI Designer – Two hires for Peak this week. Yoldas was previously a freelance designer.
• Alper Mat, Director of Product - Mat was formerly a consultant at Bain & Company.

Playfish

• Andrea Bobick, Animator – A single hire for Playfish. Bobick was previously an animator at Betsoft Gaming.

Plumbee

• Heather Murray, Junior Artist – Murray was a freelance illustrator before joining Plumbee.

We R Interactive

• Paul Whitehead, Global Commercial Director – We R Interactive makes another of this week’s highest profile hires. Whitehead was formerly at Channel 4 as its head of corporate and business development.

Wooga

• Greg Latham, Jr. PR Manager - Latham comes from Frogster Online Gaming GmbH, where he was also a jr. PR manager.
• Pawel Romasz, Art Lead - Romasz was the art director at Vast Studios.

Zynga

• Fareed Mosavat, Head of Studio, Zynga Boston – A high profile move for Zynga, which promotes Mosavat to head of studio in Boston. He was previously the Director of Product, Adventure World.
• Viktor Lidholt, Senior Software Engineer - Lidholt was the Lead Game Developer at Stardoll.
• Srinath Ramanujan, Software Engineer - Ramanujan was formerly an intern at Reliance Trends Limited.
• Anupama Narisetty, QA Engineer – Narisetty moves from VMware, where he was a QE engineer.

Hiring in the social gaming industry was up again this week, with 11 companies reporting 14 recent hires. According to data from LinkedIn and other sources Arkadium and Bossa Studios showed the most activity with a pair of hires each. While hiring activity was up, there were no high profile hires to report this week.

If your company is hiring new people or making a notable promotion, please get in touch with us. Email us at: mail (at) insidesocialgames (dot) com, and we’ll get your news into an upcoming post.

If you want to know who else is hiring, the Inside Network Job Board showcases current openings with the industry’s leading companies.

Arkadium

• Grant Reid, Game Design Intern – Arkadium hires a pair of interns this week. Reid is a student at New York University.
• Rebecca Brooker, Game Design Intern – Brooker comes to Arkadium from the University of Toronto.

Bossa Studios

• Joao Martins, Server Developer - Martins comes to Bossa Studios from Escola de Rafting Atlântico.
• Jack Good, 3D Modeler - Good was previously a junior artist at Ideaworks3D.

Digital Chocolate 

• Marta Cortiñas, Producer – Cortiñas moves up from her role as junior producer at Digital Chocolate.

EA Playfish

• Peter Crotty, Software Engineer – Crotty was formerly a system developer at Aquila.

GSN

• Matthew Rockoff, Sales Associate – Rockoff changes jobs this week, moving from a position as an experienced digital/TV sales planner at GSN.

Loot Drop

• Matt Waggle, Artist – Waggle was previously the assistant art director at Reliance Media Works VFX

MegaZebra

• Franz Stradal, Producer – Stradal comes to MegaZebra from Gameforge.

Nordeus

• Nemanja Posrkača, Online Marketing and Customer Relations Manager - Posrkača makes our list with a promotion this week, moving up from his position as an online marketing assistant at Nordeus.

Vostu

• Nicolás Salvia, Email Marketing Analyst – Salvia comes to Vostu from MKT S.A., where he was a research economist.

Wooga

• Robin Pan, Intern iOS Developer – Pan was formerly a technical game designer at the Science Media Centre of Canada.

Zynga

• Ikbhal Basha Shaik, Game Developer – Two hires for Zynga this week. Shaik was a software engineer at Amazon.com
• Zachary Fand, Software Engineer Intern - Finally, Fand comes to Zynga from Northeastern University.

Hiring in the social gaming industry was up again this week, with 10 companies reporting 11 recent hires. According to data from LinkedIn and other sources Zynga had this week’s highest profile hire, bringing on Ken Weber to lead its charitable Zynga.org arm as executive director.

If your company is hiring new people or making a notable promotion, please get in touch with us. Email us at: mail (at) insidesocialgames (dot) com, and we’ll get your news into an upcoming post.

If you want to know who else is hiring, the Inside Network Job Board showcases current openings with the industry’s leading companies.

Cie Games

• David Bresson, Systems Engineer – A single hire at Cie Games begins our roundup this week. Bresson was previously a systems engineer at Disney Interactive Media Group.

Disney Playdom 

• Faiz Kamarul Baharin, Lead Concept and Production Artist - A single move for Disney Playdom this week, which promotes Baharin to lead concept and production artist.

EA Playfish

• Ke Ren, Technical Lead – Ren makes our roundup with a promotion from his position as server developer.
• Tom Pearson, Lead Platform Developer – Pearson moves from an executive level position at Morgan Stanley to join Playfish’s UK team.

GSN

• Maneka Mahajan, Administrative Assistant – Mahajan was previously a business analysis intern at the American Institute of Physics.

Kabam

• Kevin Ligon, UI Artist – Ligon was formerly a graphic designer at Cardinal Health.

Kixeye

• Maximilian Herkender, Flash Engineer – Herkender comes to Kixeye from 6waves Lolapps, where he was a software engineer.

Nordeus

• Jasmina Jović, Customer Support Specialist - Jović starts her career at Nordeus this week.

Peak Games

• Can Ozcer, Assistant Intelligence Analyst - Peak brings on Ozcer from Esit Electronic where he was an R&D intern.

Tetris Online

• David Veltri, Legal Extern – Tetris Online makes a rare appearance this week. Veltri completed his education at the William S. Richardson School of Law at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa.

Zynga

• Ken Weber, Executive Director, Zynga.org – Finally Zynga snags this week’s highest profile hire, appointing Weber as the head of Zynga.org. Weber was previously the chief operating officer at The ONE Campaign.