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Character Mechanics Designer

Avalanche Studios is looking to add one professional to our Game Design Craft. Is it you we are looking for?

You'll be joining a small design team where you will take charge of the character systems. As the owner of the character mechanics design, you will take charge of player and character interactions with the world, both inside and outside of combat. You will take charge of the combat systems, and be expected to refine and balance the flow of battle. You will work closely with our coders and animators in order to nail the perfect character control feel, and you'll work with the rest of our design team to make sure weapons and equipment are balanced and work together. We’re also looking for someone who can keep an eye on the wider game; someone who can see the impacts of their work on other parts of the game, and who is able to ensure that the player systems work seamlessly together the rest of the game.

• Player & NPC mechanics, design & ownership
• Third person combat mechanics, design & ownership
• Third person camera, design & ownership
• Assisting in building AI behaviours
• Assisting in scripting animation states
  

• Always curious about how things work. "Can it really be true that Sumo Wrestling is rigged?
• Always questioning hearsay, motives and incentives. "Why would the Sumo wrestlers cheat?
• Intelligent and well read. "Sumo is sacrosanct and deeply engraved in Japanese culture, if they cheat that would be remarkable given their honor culture.
• Slightly eccentric. "I’m going to add an example about Sumo wrestlers. That will be brilliant.

• Humble. "I could be wrong, please show me what you mean."
• Social and caring.
• Committed and loyal.
• Resilient in the face of adversity. "We'll ride this storm out - it's going to be ok."
• Fiercely result driven. "This solution requires manually adding 100 data entries, but it is the right way to do it. I'm doing it now..."
• A realist. "This workflow must be improved or no one in their right mind will bother to build this content."
• Aware of the bottom line. “The system may be the most elegant thing ever designed, but the content we have built does little to enhance what the player perceives.”
  
  

• Just the right amount of lazy. "There must be a better way to set this workflow up so that I don't have to do this **** every time".
• Skeptical of quick hacks. "It might be tempting but we will get results quicker with efficient workflows and content that "Just works.""
• Service Minded. "Don't worry, I'll expose that value for you so you can easily tweak it."
  
  

• Experience with State Machine Scripting
• Experience with behaviour trees
• Experience with data driven systems
• Experience with combat design and animation
• Able and willing to work in our Stockholm studio

• Worked on shipped games, preferably Open World Games
• Worked on mods or indie games
• Experience with procedural systems
• University Degree
• Stays up to date with current games and with developments in character mechanics