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Game Designer
3 years ago
Game Designer
Location: Redwood City / US Remote
At Maxis, we thrive on outrageous thinking. It's the fuel that inspires the best games in the world. We're innovators and great storytellers. But it's not just about amazing your peers – it's about amazing yourself and our fans. Take risks. Collaborate with brilliant minds and dare to dream big. Together, we can change the way millions play every day.
As a Designer on The Sims, you'll work with a large (but tight-knit) team of enthusiastic industry craftspeople from all walks of life. Your job will be to use your passion and knowledge to design and create player-first experiences from end to end, to surprise and delight millions of gamers around the world.
You will report into a studio Development Director.
Responsibilities
- Be an advocate, representing the Design team to the larger dev team.
- Help establish best practices for the team.
- Take an active part in the design team in brainstorming and writing designs, and providing feedback to other designers.
- Become a mentor to more junior members of the team.
- Have a depth of knowledge across a majority of systems, being able to manage entire pillars for a pack and train/support the team on its features.
- Determine gameplay experience goals for designs, and tune features to meet those goals.
- Improve designs based on our playtests, game metrics, team input and community feedback.
- Be resourceful and solve problems using the tools and time/scope available to create unique and fun experiences for players.
- Work with all team disciplines, including artists, animators, modelers, engineers and producers to get support from the team and guide a project from initial design to final production.
- Become an expert on the game and our community, drawing from our large, varied player base and our past games to make and defend intelligent design choices going forward.
- Have an eye for improving process and efficiency to make life easier for the Design team.
Qualifications
- At least 5 years of game design experience on a video game development team.
- Excellent creative, analytical and organization skills with the ability to write and maintain detailed design documentation throughout a project life cycle.
- Progressive thinking and motivated to overcome challenges with practical solutions.
- Exceptional time-management practices.
- Become proficient in multiple proprietary development tools within a short period of time.
- Sense of ownership and responsibility.
- Design and implementation experience with game features which focus on open-ended player creativity.
- Effective at working both autonomously and in groups of different profiles.
- Knowledge of and enthusiasm for gaming: playing, deconstructing and creating.
- Experience with games in The Sims PC franchise and other simulation games.
- Desired experience : Shipped a AAA HD title.
- Desired experience: Bachelor's Degree or equivalent.
- Desired experience: Comfortable with MS suite, G-suite, Visio, JIRA, and online collaboration suites such as Confluence.
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