Lead Activity Designer

2 weeks ago

Santa Monica, United States Absurd Ventures Full time
Summary

Become the primary vision holder and hands-on contributor for all systemic content and game modes in an open world action-adventure game. Lead a team of multi-disciplinary specialists to deliver an innovative and diverse suite of gameplay activities characterized by emergent drama, player expression, and best-in-class minute-to-minute action.

Responsibilities
  • Drive the design and implementation of systems-driven, highly replayable content.
  • Establish a vision for game modes, open world activities, and challenging endgame content that serves the narrative and creative direction, then evangelize that vision to the broader team.
  • Coordinate with fellow design leads to craft experiences that capitalize on the moment-to-moment sandbox, fuel the metagame, and seamlessly integrate into a living open world and authored narrative missions.
  • Continuously seek opportunities to innovate and push the boundaries of gameplay-driven storytelling in activity design.
  • Rally designers, engineers, artists, and external co-dev partners to deliver playable progress at regular intervals as part of a rapid iterative process.
  • Incorporate feedback from peers, playtests, and senior leadership to refine, rebalance, and pivot as the game demands.
  • Go beyond documentation and management to lead from the trenches, with hands-on contributions to playable content.
Qualifications
  • 5 or more years of experience designing content and/or gameplay for action games.
  • Deep understanding of casual and hardcore player needs, with the ability to design welcoming and challenging content for both.
  • Narrative sensibilities and vision to design experiences that immerse players in an authored fictional world, while empowering them to write their own stories.
  • Recent experience with direct implementation in the form of level design, visual scripting, balance tuning, or other individual contributions.
  • Experience developing a broad range of activities and minigames that appeal to both a core and a casual audience.
  • Excellent communication, interpersonal, and leadership skills.
  • Innovative thinker with creative problem-solving skills who thrives in a collaborative team environment.
  • Multiplayer content and gameplay design experience is a plus.
  • Experience leading multidisciplinary teams is a plus.
  • Experience working with co-development partners is a plus.
  • Experience in UE4 or UE5 is a plus.
Description
  • Full time job with benefits
  • Role is on-site in Santa Monica, CA
  • Office is located near downtown Santa Monica - near metro and freeways

The base pay range for this position is $125,000 to $165,000 per year. Actual compensation is based on market location and may vary depending on job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. We also offer a competitive package of benefits including paid time off, sick time, company holidays, parental leave, medical/dental/vision insurance, life insurance, disability insurance, and 401(k) to regular full-time employees. Certain roles may also be eligible for bonus and equity.

About Absurd Ventures

Absurd Ventures is a media company creating new IP across all platforms and for all formats. Absurd Ventures is building narrative worlds, creating characters, and writing stories for a variety of genres, without regard to medium, to be produced for live-action and animation; video games and other interactive content; books, graphic novels, and scripted podcasts.

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