Pingle have appointed Kirk Scott, the former head of indie development on Switch at Nintendo of America to the rol of vice president of publisher and developer relations.
After over 20 years of experience in video game development, publishing, and partnerships spaces, his new role at the Ukrainian developer will involve providing consulting services to assist Pingle Studio’s clients.
Dmytro Kovtun, CEO at Pingle Studios said: “We are thrilled to have Kirk joining the team here at Pingle Studio. We look forward to working closely with him in order to support our partners even further and are excited to continue our journey of expanding Pingle Studio’s offering with new relationships in the industry.
Kostyantyn Shepilov, Co-CEO added that “we are on a strong pathway to become the number one company in porting, codevelopment, full cycle development, and our newest hires reinforce our highest qualities and values in the field.”
Pingle Studio began by helping local developers complete their video games before the studio’s official founding in 2007. It now counts giants such as EA, Disney, Epic Games, Square Enix among its partners.
We caught up with Kirk to discuss what makes Pingle different and his plans for the future.
Pocketgamer.biz: Tell us about your previous roles and experience?
Kirk Scott: Phew! How much time do you have? Seriously though, I think it’s the variety of experiences over 27 years that is important. Over that time, I have been a producer, marketing manager and business dev in different companies.
And your new role as VP of Developer and Publisher Relations at Pingle? What do you plan to achieve in your new role?
The founders asked me to conquer the world with them, and I am up for it! With consolidated roles in publisher and developer relations, it allows us to streamline things a bit with a proper focus on co-dev and primary development work. We really want to be the prime choice for publishers making games and the destination for developers to help us optimise their ports. A year from now, I’d like to be in a position where we are choosing our work and turning opportunities down.
What would you say makes the culture at Pingle different?
That’s pretty obvious from the outset. I have never worked for a company based in the Ukraine. You can’t really grasp the resilience and perseverance of a culture until you work for them. It’s amazing.
What do you think makes “a Pingle game”? Is there a quality or an element that you always look for?
Currently, I think what makes a game a “Pingle Game” is the optimisation of the code we work on. In the future, I would want it to be something game fans know as high quality, like a Blizzard game.
What can we expect next from Pingle?
If we’re focused and work hard, I think you can expect us to partner with some of the biggest games being made going forward. I want us to be a studio that the big players lean on to deliver high-quality AAA content to the masses. We have the staffing, we have the brains and we have the passion to deliver AA and AAA content on a yearly basis.
