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Senior Game Designer (Gameplay)

System Era is looking for a Senior or Principal Game Designer to focus on moment-to-moment gameplay systems for a cooperative multiplayer sandbox game.

In this role, you will cover a wide range of core mechanics – player movement and traversal abilities, camera and controls, and overall balancing and difficulty tuning – to help elevate our exploration and action-oriented gameplay. Additionally, you will be responsible for AI entities and behaviors to create interesting encounters with players and integrate them into a wider sandbox. We are looking for a designer with an intuitive and practiced sense of good game feel so that each move, interaction, and AI encounter feels satisfying, responsive, exciting, expressive, and playful. The ideal candidate is a game designer that deeply enjoys moment-to-moment gameplay and has a strong understanding of highly systemic sandbox systems.

While we prefer working in a hybrid model, with regular time spent onsite with our team in Seattle, WA, System Era supports a variety of work routines to match the needs of our team, including permanent remote work within the US and Canada.

Compensation package includes salary, benefits with full medical and dental coverage for employee and dependents, 401k with company match, participation in profit sharing, discretionary bonuses, as well as relocation assistance for those interested in moving to Washington state. The base salary range for this position is $110,000 - $135,000 depending on the skills and experience of the candidate. We look for candidates who value joining a team with a diverse set of backgrounds, experiences, interests, and viewpoints.

Responsibilities :

• Drive the design of moment-to-moment game feel for the player character, with an emphasis on finely tuned controls, camera, and movement for exploration gameplay
• Own design for our AI, including defining movement, routines, behaviors, and complex interactions across several sandbox systems
• Tune various systems to balance difficulty for cooperative play with varying numbers of players
• Collaborate closely with character artists, animators, engineers, vfx, and audio to coordinate all the pieces that go into building complex systems like AI or player move sets
• Work with other designers to improve the game feel of their features
• Collect and act on feedback – informally and through playtests – to improve the player’s experience, and act as a general advocate for the player
  

Qualifications :

• Prior experience working on AI systems, including behavior trees and complex state machines, through all phases of development from prototype to ship
• Prior experience on systems related to game feel and moment-to-moment gameplay, preferably on an action-oriented game
• Proficient with modern game development engines such as Unreal, Unity, or proprietary tools (we develop using Unreal 5.3)
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills
• Deep understanding of sandbox gameplay and systems thinking as part of your overall design skillset

Nice to Haves :

• Familiarity with Astroneer
• Experience building – or keen interest in – multiplayer cooperative gameplay
• Background in engineering or high level of technical expertise beyond that expected of a designer
• Experience in game-adjacent fields such as interactive media, film and theatre, creative writing, teaching, art, animation, etc.