Senior Designer

KingsIsle Entertainment, established in 2005, is a proven MMO hit-maker with 50+ million registered users across both our MMOs with vibrant and strong communities.  Our award-winning game Wizard101 is currently in its 16th year and Pirate101 is in its 12th.  We attribute our success to great people, and we recognize the value of every team member. We work hard and have fun, whether it’s with lunchtime gaming sessions or office outings to the movies. The working environment, friendly teammates, and support for growing careers all contribute to the long tenures many people enjoy at KingsIsle. 

Position Overview

In this role you will take point on designing and balancing systems for our upcoming life sim/adventure game, Ravenwood Academy. The ideal candidate will have a broad knowledge of the genre’s gameplay conventions, as well as experience creating and integrating game systems that seamlessly advance narrative goals.

Responsibilities

• Lead the conceptualization and design of game systems from initial ideation to final implementation, ensuring a captivating gaming experience

• Develop compelling and immersive game content, including narratives, characters, puzzles, minigames, and impactful player choices

• Collaborate with a cross-discipline team, utilizing your prior experience in hands-on development to effectively communicate and solve problems with teammates, both technical and non-technical

• Clearly and persuasively communicate designs via documents, presentations, diagrams, and prototypes

• Be an active member of the Design team, brainstorming and writing designs, and providing feedback to other designers

• Support your teammates through knowledge-sharing and documentation

• Analyze design features of competitive products in order to make data-driven decisions that enhance overall user experience and engagement

• Research subject matter relating to the design objective in an effort to ensure the authenticity of the experience.

• Mentor other designers and lead by example.

Qualification

·        5+ years of game design experience on a shipped or live product

·        Experience working with Unity and Unity plugins

·        Comfortable and proficient with technical implementation

·        Enjoy creative problem-solving as part of a team

·        Excellent communication, documentation, teamwork, and leadership skills.

·        Strong work ethic, initiative, attention to detail, critical thinking skills and ability to anticipate problems

·        Comfortable with MS suite (Word, Excel, Powerpoint, etc.), Google Docs, Visio, JIRA, online collaboration suites such as Confluence.

·        Candidate must be willing to take a short Excel apptitude test

Preferred Skills

·        Familiarity with the life simulation and dating simulation game genres, including an understanding of their core mechanics, themes, and audience appeal.

·        Knowledge of mystery games, especially those with life sim elements

·        Experience designing games with strong narrative focus

·        Experience designing life sim and/or ‘cozy’ games

·        Experience working with Excel