Lead Game Designer

This client brings together the leadership teams and innovative platforms that the two organizations have collaborated to create and builds upon the current game-based learning platforms of the two companies including a community-driven creation sandbox game where you can play, hack, and create within a rich narrative world and share those games with the world. The Company also leverages a game-based learning platform where players learn the fundamentals of coding and computational thinking through a diverse collection of games where hacking is a key mechanic.

The Company’s first service, operates as a highly-distributed, youth-centered game making studio where teens and young adults apprentice with game industry pros and other aspiring game makers to create games using Unity, and other creation tools.

About the position:
We are seeking a Lead Game Designer. Responsibilities will be focused on leading the team in the design of innovative game-based creative experiences. These sandbox creation experiences are intended to facilitate fun, collaborative game creation in a variety of genres while introducing key concepts to aspiring game makers. The initial suite of experiences will be 3D, built in Unity and feature realtime and asynchronous play and collaborative game making, as well as UGC content creation and discovery. In addition to leading the design of the creation tools and surrounding experiences, the Lead Game Designer will also drive the creation of exemplar content to help motivate and guide youth creators to use the tools to create their own UGC.

Our ideal candidate has experience designing and implementing fun gameplay on multiple shipped titles, a broad interest in diverse areas of game development, and a critical eye for opportunities to improve the quality of the game experience. As a Lead Game Designer, you will help establish and evolve the overall vision and ensure the implementation of highly engaging and impactful gameplay.

This is a full time, work-from-home position.

As our Lead Game Designer, you will be responsible for ...
• Owning ideation and implementation of game design;
• Effectively communicating design direction, requirements, and deliverables across disciplines;
• Creating guidelines for design documentation and choice of tools for the project;
• Reviewing and approving all of the game design deliverables throughout the development cycle, from concept and design documents to all key development deliverables; has a major impact on driving quality and innovation for many of the differentiating features of the game;
• Managing the game design team to define deliverables including milestone schedules and plans for accomplishing these deliverables;
• Developing and operating processes to ensure high-quality creative output and creative problem solving by the team;
• Ensuring all key design milestones and deliverables are achieved within budgets and timeframes;
• Hands-on design of levels or other areas as needed, operating as ‘player-coach’;
• Troubleshooting challenges and conflicts as they arise in the design process;
• Communicating effectively both with the game development team as well as domain experts;
• Staying on top of industry trends to ensure the game design is compelling and relevant;
• Contribute to an exciting, innovative, and supportive work environment.

We are looking for someone who has …
• Minimum 5+ years experience in a creative leadership role on commercial games;
• Having creatively led game design on multiple commercial games from inception to launch;
• Hands-on experience implementing level designs in Unity 3D;
• Experience managing and motivating design teams and delivering game products on time and at a high-quality level;
• Ability to communicate effectively with design, programming, and art as well as domain experts;
• Passion for creating high-quality games that can both make money and have a positive impact for players and on our society.

It’s a bonus if you have …
• Shipped one or more games built in Unity;
• Cloud development or large scale data store experience;
• Samples of completed Unity game projects you have directly contributed to;
• Prior experience developing for or supporting learning, especially learning to make games.