This job might no longer be available.

Lead Combat Designer

We are looking for a Lead Combat Designer to lead the creation of incredible new combat experiences in an online RPG game world.

WHOOOOOOO ARE YOU? WHO WHO, WHO WHO!

You view combat and minute to minute game-play as a symbiotic dance of design, animation, art, engineering, audio, science, and a little bit of magic. When you play RPG’s you deeply analyze the games minute-to-minute systems and are constantly taking inspiration from what you see, and identifying opportunities to improve.

Maybe you’ve had the chance to work on parts of a combat system and now you’re ready to lead the full creation of a combat system end-to-end. Or perhaps you’ve led creation of a combat system before but you’re looking for a bigger challenge to do something cutting edge that pushes the boundaries of what’s been seen before. Enter: our role at ArenaNet where you’ll have that opportunity!

As the Lead Combat Designer, you work closely with project leadership to build alignment in direction, then lead and champion the design on a cross-discipline team of engineers, artists, animators, audio designers, tech artists, and other designers to deliver a compelling first of its kind moment-to-moment experience. Across the broader game you’ll work closely with the Lead Designer to ensure combat reinforces and informs interconnected systems such as player progression and social interactions.

HOW WE WORK

Our development philosophy is one of constant iteration with a focus on getting things in the game quickly, iterating until we find the fun and then refining the experiences. We embrace taking chances and trying new ideas by getting them in the game fast and seeing if they work. If something doesn’t work, we don’t view it as failure – we ask what did we learn and how is it helping us make a better game?

We believe cross-discipline teams of developers working really closely together exploring problem spaces to find solutions is where the magic happens. We treat communication and collaboration as part of the core job requirement and just as important as implementation.

WHO WE ARE

We’re ArenaNet—we’ve created a studio that builds online worlds infused with innovation, hand-crafted excellence, and creative passion. We're not the only ones who share this passion; gamers made Guild Wars 2 the fastest selling MMO in the West with more than 3 million copies sold in its first 9 months, and players and press have consistently called it one of the best games of all time.

We cherish our relationship with gamers. For over 10 years, we've been building trust with our players by delivering a series of consistently good experiences over time. We engage. We listen. We design for them.