It's New Blood O'Clock over here at Giant Bomb, which is a really exciting time for us. This time around we're announcing two new additions to the staff. Let's start with the New York office, where Vinny's been looking for a new producer. Here's his dispatch:

Give a warm welcome to Abby Russell who will be joining us over at Giant Bomb East next week. First, I’d like to thank all 1,000-plus of you that applied. It was great to see so many people interested, but also extremely difficult to make a choice. Now, I’d also really like to thank Abby, who didn’t run out of the building screaming when she saw our studio. Big plus. While we currently don’t know everything about Abby… yet, here are some things she has revealed:

She was raised in both Texas and Virginia, hails from Boston, and currently lives in Brooklyn.

Her favorite game is obviously Mass Effect 2 but she has a weird thing where she pronounces "Mass" as “Kat” and "Effect 2" as “amari Damacy.” Probably a Texas thing.

She also really likes Red Dead Redemption.

She has a cat named Tater Tot

She also has a cat named Dirt Bike

Honestly, we could not be more excited to welcome her into the Giant Bomb family. She’s smart, funny, and again… can’t stress this enough, she didn’t laugh until passing out when we opened the door to our studio.

Welcome Abby! You can follow and welcome Abby on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ybbaaabby

Katamari Damacy is really good, it's true!

Out here on the Westside we've also been faced with tough choices as we went through a zillion resumes, listened to podcasts, combed through YouTube videos, and sifted through a lot of samples. After that difficult process, we've made an addition to the team in the form of Ben Pack. Ben starts today and before too long here you'll be seeing him on the podcast, in Quick Looks, and all over the rest of our stuff. We asked Ben to send over some factoids about himself and here's what we got:

Ben is 6’10’’. That is above average in height.

Found out he got the job here at Giant Bomb the day his house burned down.

Ben has lived in the Bay Area his whole life, and one time saw famous San Franciscan Danny Glover at his college.

Ben has over 5000 hours logged in Dota 2, but swears that “at least half of that has to be idle time.”

Previous jobs for Ben included interning at Whiskey Media, video production for Destructoid, and working clinical trials to pay for his college tuition.

Oh right, that Ben Pack. OK, I remember that guy. Welcome Ben! This'll be a lot of fun. You can find Ben on Twitter at https://twitter.com/PackBenPack

That's all for now, but we're not quite done on this front. So you'll probably see some more news along these lines later on in the year.