Senior/Lead Game Designer

Design
Remote
November 16, 2024
Full Time

Job Description

We seek a senior game designer. This person will do concept development and initial spec writing, then work with programmers, artists, sound designers, testers, and the community to guide development from start to finish.

Please note: This is not a programming position.

Applicants should have substantial relevant experience on released games, and be able to demonstrate their experience. Games you’ve designed before, game designs you’ve written, or articles about game design are all relevant.

Core responsibilities:

  • Use a variety of tools, including spreadsheets, bug trackers, task queues and messaging apps to organize designers, developers, artists, audio experts, and testers, and keep a project on track.
  • Efficiently communicate the state of the project to other stakeholders. Create an understanding of opportunities, risks, needs, and problems.
  • Understand the high-level goals of game design and orchestrate a game development process to satisfy those goals.
  • Help hire new designers, developers, artists, and so on.
  • Help designers, developers, artists, and others grow by giving useful feedback.
  • Write game system specifications for implementation by developers.
  • Work with structured data formats like XML to implement and tune gameplay data like weapons, player tools, constructibles, animals, and so on.
  • Use analytical tools including spreadsheets, Monte Carlo simulation, debug tools, tester requests, and others to analyze game designs.
  • Review implemented features and specify improvements, cuts, and feature replacements.
  • Prioritize tasks to find the most valuable work.

Secondary responsibilities:

  • Organize the project’s polish phase before release. Ensure that the details are handled, everything is high-quality, and nothing slips through the cracks.
  • Engage with the community to understand player desires. Adapt designs to service them while also retaining your own design intent.

Non-essential but useful cross-disciplinary skills:

  • You can read and write C# code enough to understand implementation details and talk to developers about them.
  • You’re skilled enough with image editing to make useful UI mockups.
  • You’re a good enough writer to write player-facing texts like quest descriptions, object descriptions, tutorials, and so on.
  • You can create pretty good art, or at least understand the elements of an aesthetically-pleasing image.
  • You can use data to implement visual effects like explosions, interaction particle effects, and so on.

When applying, please include written design specifications, analysis, articles, and any other relevant writing you have. Your ability to write clear and insightful texts about game design is critical.

To apply, just send us an email at apply@ludeon.com. In your message, please:

  • Say which role you’re interested in.
  • Say where you’re located.
  • Include a traditional resume.
  • Include design writing samples: written design specifications, analysis, articles, or direct links to these. This should be design writing from within a development process, not general descriptions of game projects.
  • Be concise and focus on showing the things you’ve created. YouTube videos of your games, art, or projects are great starting points for this.

We can hire internationally. We generally start with a trial contract at full pay rate.

Ludeon’s mission is to make creatively-vivacious, original, provocative, and engaging games. Our team members come from diverse origins and hold many different beliefs. Please be ready to work on this mission with people who might think differently from you.

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