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Former Disney and GitHub execs join Improbable

Bill Roper joins as Chief Creative Officer

Improbable has made two new senior hires to its team.

The British tech company has named Bill Roper as its Chief Creative Officer. Roper is a veteran from Disney, and has worked on Marvel IP, as well as titles such as Disney Infinity. Since 2014, he has worked within the Disney organisation to explore new ways of telling stories with technology. Prior to that, he was also part of the creative team from Blizzard that launched Warcraft, Starcraft and Diablo. He has also worked as CEO of Flagship Games and CCO of Cryptic Studios.

Elsewhere, Jason Jhonson has been named chief marketing officer. Jhonson is a marketing veteran having worked as senior director of developer and product marketing at GitHub - where he was responsible for brand, product and developer marketing for 22m software developers. He has also held senior product marketing roles at Yahoo and PayPal.

These are new roles at Improbable as the company capitalises on its recent $502m investment from Japan-based conglomerate Softbank. Roper will work with studios to help them get the most out of the firm's SpatialOS platform, which is designed to help build massive and detailed persistent open worlds.

Meanwhile, Jhonson will be driving adoption of the technology and building the Improbable brand globally.

"Too often, startup stories focus on the founders," begins Herman Narula, CEO of Improbable. "We are building a world-class team at Improbable. These two critical hires bring a wealth of experience and a record of success with some of the biggest names in entertainment and technology. We're delighted to have them at Improbable, as we move into a new stage of our history."

Jhonson adds: "It's hugely exciting to be joining Improbable at this stage in its journey. The first games built on SpatialOS are entering the market, and the recent investment has raised the company's profile. This is an opportunity to build a foundational developer platform, which could transform games and many other applications."

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Christopher Dring avatar

Christopher Dring

Head of Games B2B

Chris is a 17-year media veteran specialising in the business of video games. And, erm, Doctor Who