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Narrative Design Director
2 years ago
Phoenix Labs is looking for an exceptional Narrative Design Director to join our Los Angeles studio. This role will lead the narrative design of a new IP, and work with an interdisciplinary team of designers, programmers, artists, and production staff on an R&D project.
As the first Narrative Design Director to join our studio, we’re looking for a worldbuilding storyteller who is passionate about creating universes and bringing exceptional entertainment to players. They will be responsible for creating, editing, and collating the history, cultures, places, and goings-on in our IP. Since we’re still a small team, this person would do some design exploration and prototyping to help leverage the game’s narrative structure and storytelling mechanics.
Phoenix Labs is a dynamic and iterative environment. We pride ourselves on our ability to continuously improve and do hard things. People are our most important asset, and we look for each new person to add to our mosaic culture. Our goal is to be a place where a diverse group of driven, collaborative, and empathetic developers can do their best work.
This role is a full-time, permanent position in our Los Angeles studio. Currently, our team is working from home due to the COVID-19 pandemic. We’ll continue to follow local government guidelines to keep our team safe. However, once we’re able to return to normal work conditions, this role will be onsite in Los Angeles, CA.
Responsibilities:
- Partner with project vision-holders to oversee and contribute to the creation of the story and writing of the game’s narrative elements to ensure it meets the intended vision; this includes writing and reviewing pitches, scripts, character bios, and world lore.
- Work with project vision-holders, designers, and producers to support interdisciplinary collaboration, and user research to reach project goals.
- Drive in worldbuilding and storytelling efforts across the broad ecosystem of the game
- Implement character development, dialogue, and story elements into the game (ex: scripts, NPC text, quest text)
- Can be relied on to help build a future narrative design team including recruiting, managing, mentoring and developing other designers.
Requirements:
- Minimum of 10 years of experience as a narrative designer with worldbuilding, game dialog writing and character creation on multiplayer action games.
- Shipped at least one AAA game title in a director or lead narrative design role.
- Experience working through all phases of narrative design within AAA game development.
- Knowledge of contemporary gameplay and narrative design, with an understanding of different narrative systems/delivery mechanisms.
- Excellent world-building writing samples.
- Experience working on original IP.
- Self-starter who is comfortable working in an early stage R&D environment with a small, collaborative, cross-functional team on an ambiguous and evolving problem space.
- Excellent written and verbal communicator.
Preferred:
- Experience in social systems, meta-game systems, or monetization.
- Experience working on a multi-platform game.
- Experience working on a live product.
- Experience leading and growing a team of writers and designers.
Who we are:
Phoenix Labs is a multinational video game company with connection at its core. Dauntless, our flagship title, was the first-ever game to launch with full cross-play and cross-progression, and we’re already working on several new projects and ways to bring people together.
In our studios, the story is the same. Our teamwork, transparency, and optimism keep us focused on doing what matters, and we work hard to live up to our central promise that people are the ends, not the means.
Phoenix Labs is headquartered in Vancouver, BC, with studios in Montreal, Los Angeles, and San Mateo. We are backed by Garena, our long-time partner in Southeast Asia.
Learn more about our values->
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