Senior Gameplay Designer (Combat & AI)

RESPONSIBILITIES

• An active member of a cross-discipline small team building new AI enemies, player objectives, and the core systems that enable the creation of future AI, such as navigation, perception, behavior, and combat prioritization
• Create and balance a suite of active and passive player items that can extend and amplify player base kits and act as meaningful inter-match upgrades
• Review content created by multiple disciplines, giving feedback to ensure competitive readability, best in class game feel, and compelling fantasies
• Create and maintain endearing characters that uphold IP quality, consistency, along with sandbox design principles
• Work with audio, effects, 3D and animation to make in-game gameplay affordances clear to players

REQUIRED SKILLS

• Intuitive understanding of how second-to-second action games work and why people play them
• Fluency for collaboration with designers, artists, programmers, audio professionals, quality assurance and producers to achieve a common goal, with adaptability for how to work in a flexible work environment
• Broad T-shaped rapid prototyping skills, with strong technical scripting ability and enough multi-disciplinary knowledge to quickly stub out gameplay ideas to evaluate their potential
• Strong understanding of combat animation; is experienced in discussing anticipation, follow through, character and timing, and their impact on game readability and balance
• Proven ability to build alignment and productively own feature direction without sacrificing empathy and collaboration with team contributors
• Ability to operate autonomously and handle ambiguity, including giving and receiving feedback despite that ambiguity
• Understanding of PvP game design and balance, getting the challenge level right for a wide variety of situations
• Understanding of how systemically consistent, combinatoric game design can create player surprise and laughter
• Outstanding oral and written communication skills

PREFERRED EXPERIENCE

• Experience as a Sandbox/Gameplay Designer on a multiplayer action game, designing, documenting, and building combat/character systems
• Experience delegating work or ownership of an area to multi-disciplinary peers
• Knowledge and perspective from playing competitive team games