Staff Game Designer – Arcade Survival

Job Description

At Fortis Games we aspire to make great games that bring people together while redefining how game companies work. We believe in building a sense of belonging through our games, their communities, and how we operate and treat each other. Through our game communities, we will create powerful connections and lasting memories. We will foster a culture of diversity, equity and belonging where together our diverse skills, experiences and backgrounds impact the games we make.

We are an early but mighty organization with a leadership team of game industry veterans. There are many opportunities for you to have a big impact on the products we’ll be making as well as the overall direction of the company. If you’re passionate about tackling difficult problems with direct and thoughtful communication and team first mentality, we may be the right place for you.

About the role

You will design core systems in our new Survival Arcade-style game that are critical to its success by:

• Creating proposals that articulate how these features and systems uphold the game’s design pillars and drive the desired player behaviors.
• Implementing and owning these features from proposal to polish, creating visibility and buy-in from partner teams such as user research, UA, etc.
• Supporting team members through your expertise so that our game has consistent design targets across the product.
• Continuing to grow your expertise in the opportunity spaces, genres, and game mechanics you explore during prototyping and share your learnings with the broader product team to advance our collective knowledge.
• Cultivating your personal design philosophy that upholds the key tenets of Fortis’ approach to products while adding your own unique approach to thinking about emerging patterns in service design.

What you’ll need to be successful

• An expertise in mobile game development, specifically in the arcade survival genre. 
• The ability to take game-defining designs from proposal to polish.
• A holistic view of game systems and the downstream effects of all design decisions throughout both the product and player lifecycle.
• A firm understanding of fundamental design principles, metagame systems, game economies, and player psychology that allows you to design from first principles.
• Ability to articulate the nuances of abstract concepts and how they apply to complex, interrelated systems.
• Ability to synthesize feedback from team members, user playtests, and other validation efforts into product insights and rapidly iterate on designs.
• Extensive knowledge of games as a service and live operations – you know what good looks like and can build efficient design processes, workflows, and tooling to enable it.  
• A natural curiosity and eagerness to learn – we believe this is essential to our ability to stay ahead of the market and value this over years of experience.

We expect our leaders to continue being students of their craft and the game spaces they’re working in. You should be educated on the latest trends and have a strong perspective on how they relate to our current and future projects.

Why join us

There are many reasons to join us, but here are a few:

• We strongly believe we are changing how games studios operate and at the core of what we do is making great games that create a connected community
• We’re not just about making Games Where You Belong. We’re also about building communities where our people belong. That’s why Fortis is a thriving environment that celebrates diversity, embraces inclusivity, and fosters growth.
• Build and grow with a seasoned team of accomplished talent who have left an impactful mark in their disciplines, both in and out of gaming

Fortis is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, national origin, protected veteran status, or any other basis protected by applicable law, and will not be discriminated against on the basis of disability.