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Game Design Director
4 years ago
Located in Chicago’s River North area, Level Ex’s fast-growing game studio is transforming the way surgeons hone their skills by practicing high-risk surgeries with the latest medical devices in our industry-leading mobile, AR, and VR titles.
Our games are built using state-of-the-art graphics and physics tech and deploy an arsenal of well-designed game mechanics to capture the thrill and challenge of performing real surgery. These games increase dramatically in difficulty as the player progresses, and are carefully crafted with professional level design, compulsion loops, flow channels, and deliberate gameplay balance. Backed by a mature art pipeline and latest-gen engine tech, we’re able to recreate surgery with spectacular realism.
Our engine has earned the trust of the country’s leading physicians; plus, we’ve custom-built GPU-based real-time fluids, tissue shading, and soft-body systems that enable a wide range of new game mechanics in mobile and VR. Our team unites award-winning game designers, developers, and artists with industry-leading surgeons, all passionate about using game design approaches to keep doctors across the world performing at the top of their game.
We’re now looking for a deeply experienced Game Design Director to join our team.
What You’ll Be Doing with Us
- Take on some of the most open-ended and ambiguous game design challenges of your career. At Level Ex, we engage in genre-bending and genre-defining design.
- Use an arsenal of game mechanics borrowed from a wide range of game genres (FPS, hidden-object, puzzle, RTS, physics, …) to capture the challenges of medical practice and translate them to mobile, VR, and AR games.
- Hone scalable mechanics and game loops to keep large audiences of specialists thrilled and engaged in a continuously updating portfolio of live games.
- Lead and mentor a team of junior and senior designers.
- Collaborate across a multidisciplinary team of game designers, engineers, medical researchers, artists, and project managers to identify game design objectives, establish technical specifications, and make tradeoffs.
- Work with the business development team to identify creative ways to showcase our work on the latest mobile, VR and AR platforms, and improve physician performance at scale.
- Identify requirements for the analytics system to support game design. Develop a data-driven design methodology to iterate rapidly on design and new content based on analytics and insights from live games.
- Develop ongoing training and provide design leadership to the development team and entire organization.
- Stay up-to-date with relevant industry processes and trends around design, especially for mobile, VR, and AR.
Who We Want To Meet
- 10+ years of hands-on game design experience, including lead design roles on games with an audience of 1M+ players
- 4+ years of experience managing game designers
- Experience developing a range of game genres
- Shipped five or more games on mobile, PC, and/or console platforms
- Fluent knowledge of design technology and tools, including experience with at least one industry-standard analytics tool
- Deep understanding of the psychology of game design, and experience applying those principles in new kinds of design and game mechanics
- Proven experience optimizing and re-balancing games post-launch based on user feedback and data
- Experience designing social games and understanding the dynamics of collaboration and competition
- Experience communicating and championing the larger vision of games across numerous types of stakeholders
- Bachelor’s degree in applicable area/discipline, or equivalent education and experience
Bonus Points For
- Experience with puzzle and/or physics-based game design
- Experience working with large teams
- Experience in VR design
- Unity or UE4 in-engine experience
- Economy design experience
- Familiarity with medical and anatomy concepts
How We Make You Happy
- Multiple health insurance plans with 100% company-paid premiums
- 401(k) with company-paid match
- Dental and vision insurance
- Pre-tax flex spending and commuter accounts
- Paid vacation, sick days and holidays
- River North loft workspace convenient to public transportation, and plenty of nearby food options
- Unlimited cold brew and gourmet coffee, kombucha, Bevi sparkling water, and craft beer
- Full kitchen and food options including breakfast, and both healthy and comfort snacks
- Team after-hours events, like Board Game Night
Interested?
For the fastest consideration please send us your resume along with a cover letter detailing why you’re a fit for this important role. We look forward to hearing from you and exploring the possibilities.
Level Ex is an Equal Opportunity Employer (EOE).
No Agencies or recruiters, please.
Candidates must be authorized to work and accept new employment in the U.S.
We are currently unable to accept resumes from foreign countries without a sponsored visa.
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