Senior/Lead Game Designer

Ludeon Studios
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Posted
November 15, 2024
Full Time
Anywhere
Remote

We seek a senior game designer. This person will do concept development and initial spec writing, then work with programmers, artists, sound designers, testers, and the community to guide development from start to finish.

Please note: This is not a programming position.

Applicants should have substantial relevant experience on released games, and be able to demonstrate their experience. Games you’ve designed before, game designs you’ve written, or articles about game design are all relevant.

 

Core responsibilities:

  • Use a variety of tools, including spreadsheets, bug trackers, task queues and messaging apps to organize designers, developers, artists, audio experts, and testers, and keep a project on track.
  • Efficiently communicate the state of the project to other stakeholders. Create an understanding of opportunities, risks, needs, and problems.
  • Understand the high-level goals of game design and orchestrate a game development process to satisfy those goals.
  • Help hire new designers, developers, artists, and so on.
  • Help designers, developers, artists, and others grow by giving useful feedback.
  • Write game system specifications for implementation by developers.
  • Work with structured data formats like XML to implement and tune gameplay data like weapons, player tools, constructibles, animals, and so on.
  • Use analytical tools including spreadsheets, Monte Carlo simulation, debug tools, tester requests, and others to analyze game designs.
  • Review implemented features and specify improvements, cuts, and feature replacements.
  • Prioritize tasks to find the most valuable work.

 

Secondary responsibilities:

  • Organize the project’s polish phase before release. Ensure that the details are handled, everything is high-quality, and nothing slips through the cracks.
  • Engage with the community to understand player desires. Adapt designs to service them while also retaining your own design intent.

 

Non-essential but useful cross-disciplinary skills:

  • You can read and write C# code enough to understand implementation details and talk to developers about them.
  • You’re skilled enough with image editing to make useful UI mockups.
  • You’re a good enough writer to write player-facing texts like quest descriptions, object descriptions, tutorials, and so on.
  • You can create pretty good art, or at least understand the elements of an aesthetically-pleasing image.
  • You can use data to implement visual effects like explosions, interaction particle effects, and so on.

 

When applying, please include written design specifications, analysis, articles, and any other relevant writing you have. Your ability to write clear and insightful texts about game design is critical.

 

To apply, just send us an email. In your message, please:

  • Say which role you’re interested in.
  • Say where you’re located.
  • Include a traditional resume.
  • Include design writing samples: written design specifications, analysis, articles, or direct links to these. This should be design writing from within a development process, not general descriptions of game projects.
  • Be concise and focus on showing the things you’ve created. YouTube videos of your games, art, or projects are great starting points for this.

We can hire internationally. We generally start with a trial contract at full pay rate.

 

Ludeon’s mission is to make creatively-vivacious, original, provocative, and engaging games. Our team members come from diverse origins and hold many different beliefs. Please be ready to work on this mission with people who might think differently from you.

About 
Ludeon Studios

Ludeon Studios is an independent game developer and creator of the hit sci-fi colony management simulator RimWorld. We love deep PC games and story generators.

 

Why working with us is awesome

  • We have been fully remote since our founding in 2013.
  • We don’t crunch – ever. It’s never happened, not for one person, not for one day or for one hour.
  • There is no required time to be online. We collaborate asynchronously, so you can choose your own hours and days to work.
  • Your work will make people happy, and you’ll see that. Our team is small, so you’ll own specific things and see people engaging with them.
  • We work on games that explore novel ideas and new game design concepts. Every product tries to do something that has never been done before.
  • Our team is small, so there’s room to take on different kinds of tasks and to grow into new skills.
  • Our game community is full of knowledgeable, friendly, creative, thoughtful people.
  • Ludeon is wholly owned by Tynan Sylvester, a game creator. This means that unlike at investor-owned companies, our company strategy does not focus on boosting short-term growth metrics. Ludeon seeks to build long-term success by making creatively-rich products with a stable group of talented team members. At the end of it all, we want to be proud of what we’ve created and how we’ve treated team members and players.
Featured Game
s

RimWorld is a sci-fi colony sim driven by an intelligent AI storyteller. Generate stories by simulating psychology, ecology, gunplay, melee combat, climate, biomes, diplomacy, interpersonal relationships, art, medicine, trade, and more.

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