Posted on: 22nd February 2023
About the Studio
If you have always thought of developing a Soulslike game, a roguelike, or both, here’s your chance. Join a young, ambitious studio in developing a groundbreaking AAA game that aims to bring these game genres to the next step.
Based in the US, this studio is open to remote work across North America. Working with leading technologies and Unreal Engine 5, this game focuses on stylish animation and combo-driven game mechanics. Rich, fantasy-inspired storytelling and co-op multiplayer round up a package we trust will place itself among the best games soon.
Responsibilities and Requirements
As Lead Game Designer, you will be responsible for ensuring that assembly instructions for ‘what makes this game fun’ are created and easily understood by other developers. You will drive discussions, be proactive in filling in missing information, ensuring that the design team is doing the correct work in the correct order. There will be balancing, ideation, creative writing, and documenting, at high and low levels. Most importantly, this person will drive the creative vision for the project and make sure the gaming experience is fun.
- Create solid foundational design, concept and theory for the entire team to follow.
- Guide efforts for the game to be super fun, accessible, and playable with modern standards and multiplatform requirements.
- Track and plan development gates with the rest of the development team.
- Echo the needs of stakeholders and creative leadership through the team.
- Create a core design structure for the game’s picture, specifically in the documentation and monitoring of its execution.
- Ensure the high-level design is staying on track and that the other departments are understanding the needs of design in a positive and informative manner.
- Ensuring the game is fun through planning, monitoring, reporting, and communication.
- Do in-depth research and due diligence for a game, audience, partners, genre, empathy, and market impact.
- Mentor the dev team for game design insights and understanding of game design theory.
- Drive prototyping phases with clear goals and needs.
- Conduct play sessions with other team members to gather feedback and test ideas.
- Document and manage living documentation for the game’s design team, ensuring it is kept up to date and communicated to other teams within the game’s dev team.
- Spearhead dev timeline needs with other leads, producers and directors.
- Present game design for instruction and peer review.
- Describe game designs backed by game design theories, challenges for development, and why a game design mechanic works.
- Iterate game design during development, monitoring and adjusting features as needed within allowable constraints.
- Communicate with partners internally and externally to discuss game design needs.
About You
- Minimum 5 years of experience working on AAA Console/PC.
- 1+ years as a lead game designer on core games.
- Ability to manage, lead, train, and motivate a team of designers.
- Strong communication with all other departments in the dev team.
- Proactive problem-solving.
- Ability to own game design features from conception through full production.
- Proficiency in game design documentation and ability to describe game design features clearly.
- Ability to identify ways players can exploit features early on.
- Ensuring designs work well with the rest of the design and scope.
- Understanding player skill level and how to plan difficulty for mass appeal.
- Articulate why a feature is engaging, fun, and works with the overall game.
- Ability to do some scripting (visual scripting, or light text scripting).
- Being capable of running playtests to investigate feature playability.
- Collecting and knowing how to process player feedback.
- Ability to describe game design theory to team members.
- Ability to deconstruct/reverse design existing games and their features and document findings.
- Ability to create clear working instructions for QA and testing efforts for features.
- Understanding and engagement in current gaming trends.
- Being an avid gamer.
- Ability to design with many different genres.
- Ability to mentor and share knowledge with the studio and other game designers.
- English fluency to be able to handle communication quickly and accurately.
Nice to have skills would be:
- Having worked on a well-received game (review scores, market success) as a game designer.
- Active involvement with the gaming industry (expos, blogs, tutorials, etc.).
- Engagement in mods/custom content in their free time, actively pushing their horizons.
- Being able to handle heavy technical workloads.
- Ability to do their own artwork at a rudimentary level.
Benefits and Perks
Although this is a fully remote role, it still has all the benefits you would expect in an on-location job.
- Supportive colleagues! We are industry rockstars eager to share what we know and collaborate with our teams to deliver memorable gaming experiences
- AAA titles! Work with top franchises from industry-leading publishers, with your name on the credits
- We’ve got you covered! A comprehensive benefits package that includes competitive pay, medical, and vision plans for you and your family
- A studio you want to be a part of! Enjoy all the amenities in a comfortable workspace that fosters connections, professional development, and creativity
About Us
At Haptic, we know that people-first recruitment is fundamental to our success. We work closely with talented candidates and innovative studios to offer the best opportunities and build the most promising teams.
Operating on the belief that a studio’s strength comes from the team they build to bring their ideas to life, we are committed to assembling the most talented, diverse game makers.
As part of this pledge, whenever you apply for a job with us, one of our specialist recruiters will support you through each stage. From introductions and interviews to accepting an offer and submitting your resignation, we’re always here to help.
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