Pantelis Kassotis

Pantelis Nikolaos Kassotis-Zizzis is a Greek video game developer and publisher. He is the team lead behind Varangian North, having worked on Fortnite (2017) , LEGO Fortnite (2023) , Rocket Racing (2023) , and Fall Guys (2020) . Born in Athens, Greece he graduated from Lyceum of Agios Stefanos and then attended the University of the Aegean in the island of Chios to study business administration. Back in his high school years he dreamed of becoming a professional artist, and took afternoon classes to prepare for the Athens School of Fine Arts, but eventually went to business school for a more secure future. As a way to express his creative side he started drawing cartoon sketches and eventually created his first comic book "Eric & Erica" which he presented at the Comicdom Con Athens of 2014. After publishing two more comic books as a sketch artist, he transitioned into animation by creating the comedy animation web-series Just Funny (2017-) for Funny Or Die, alongside his childhood friend Christos Poulos-Renesis . After Funny Or Die was absorbed by Vox Media in 2018, he took a break from animation and began learning how to code. This new melding of animation and coding skills led him down the path of game development and VFX. His first commercial project in video games was Gluttony (2021) , which he coded while completing his mandatory military service in the Hellenic Army. On December 13th, 2023 and after publishing twelve more indie titles, he joined Epic Games and began working on his first AAA projects. He is mostly known for his third-person shooter (TPS) games and is considered an auteur of the genre, earning several accolades from them, on an international level.