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Senior Manager, Inclusive Game Design

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Your Mission

As the Senior Manager, Inclusive Game Design, you will design, implement, and govern processes and solutions to bridge the gap between access barriers and help create processes that enable our Game Developer Teams to create more innovative, inclusive experiences for our players. You will work across business units and game teams at Activision, Blizzard, and King to empower processes and people to deliver more inclusive outcomes in our games and will be closely embedded with individual game teams and developers to educate, influence, and execute thoughtful, authentic change towards inclusive game design. The ideal candidate will be passionate about accessibility and diverse representation in games, have a highly collaborative mindset, and will display knowledge of inclusive game design

Responsibilities

Game Developer Teams / Player Engagement

• Direct overall strategy for game accessibility and diverse representation in Activision, Blizzard and King games
• Develop roadmaps for the integration of inclusive design to become a foundational step in the game design process.
• Partner with Studio Leads, Designers, Artists, UI/UX, and Engineers to create a process to embed inclusive game design into the game development lifecycle
• Monitor industry trends in representation and accessibility to stay aware of best practices.
• Partner with Legal to provide teams with guidance about standards, requirements, and legal risk.
• Provide coaching to teams on compliance standards, inclusive design, and accessible game play.
• Identify and partner with vendors, content creators and gamers from diverse background to help influence game design.
• Oversee inclusive game design workshops and craft documents that outline the requirements, design parameters and standards, and testing considerations to be integrated into the game development lifecycle.
• Lead accessibility audits of UX designs and create and maintain ownership of an Accessibility Playbook.

Raise Enterprise-Wide Education and Empathy Building

• Work with internal Communications Team to develop and include content in a regular cadence of company newsletters to highlight progress within the organization and broader industry.
• Create learning and development opportunities to raise awareness of trends and best practices in inclusive game design (i.e., workshops, virtual events, speaker series, etc.).
• Implement intersectionality across diversity dimensions that helps expand accessibility beyond traditional disabilities to age, access to technology, and stigma.
• Consult and collaborate with the Employee Networks to identify intersectionality opportunities to provide visibility to topics crucial to delivering greater inclusion.

Vendor Management

• Cultivate and maintain relationships with the accessibility community, diverse communities and industry experts to help bring inclusive game design to the forefront of our industry.
• Identify and communicate objectives, build accountability for achieving results, and highlight improvement opportunities to external partners.
• Manage partner performance and attainment of contracted goals and outcomes.
• Explore opportunities for collaborative communications between the company, vendors, and our audiences to highlight inclusive game design and provide visibility into its success.

Executive Updates and Program Reports

• Identify and report on key metrics to measure the success of inclusive game design and create accountability for integrating accessibility and diverse characters and themes into our games.
• Create annual reports measuring the impact and effectiveness of inclusive game design processes and trainings to improve efficiency and drive results.

Qualifications / Knowledge, Skills and Abilities

• 7+ years in gaming, entertainment, or digital technology
• 3 years of experience in accessibility, user research, UX design, or related experience with a focus on inclusive products
• Demonstrated success navigating complex organizations and ability to influence a wide range of diverse audiences
• Basic knowledge of accessibility regulations globally (e.g. ADA, CVAA) and how they apply to games
• Familiarity with video game or software production processes, game accessibility best practices and available resources in the industry
• Knowledge of diverse character design and awareness of best practices and trends
• Strong project/program management, with the demonstrated ability to manage multiple, complex and global programs, including project design and implementation, stakeholder management, and budget management
• Experience owning program strategy, end to end delivery, and communicating results to senior leadership
• A bias toward action and creative problem solving in a fast-paced environment
• Understanding of existing gaming products and franchises of the company is helpful

Our World

Our mission, to connect and engage the world through epic entertainment has never been more important. Through communities rooted in our video game franchises we enable hundreds of millions of people to experience joy, thrill and achievement. We enable social connections through the lens of fun, and we foster purpose and a sense of accomplishment through healthy competition. Like sport, but with greater accessibility, our players can find purpose and meaning through competitive gaming. Video games, unlike any other social or entertainment media, have the ability to break down the barriers that can inhibit tolerance and understanding. Celebrating diversity is at the core of our culture and ensures we can create games for players of a diverse set of backgrounds in the 190 countries our games are played.

As a member of the Fortune 500 and as a component company of the S&P 500, we have an extraordinary track record of delivering outstanding shareholder returns for over 30 years.

Our enduring franchises are some of the world’s most popular, including Call of Duty®, Crash Bandicoot™, World of Warcraft®, Overwatch®, Hearthstone®, Diablo®, StarCraft®, Candy Crush™, Bubble Witch™, Pet Rescue™ and Farm Heroes™. Our sustained success has enabled the company to support corporate social responsibility initiatives that are directly tied to our franchises. As an example, our Call of Duty Endowment has helped find employment for over 80,000 veterans.

Learn more information about Activision Blizzard and how we connect and engage the world through epic entertainment on the company's website, www.activisionblizzard.com.

The videogame industry and therefore our business is fast-paced and will continue to evolve. As such, the duties and responsibilities of this role may be changed as advised by the Company at any time to promote and support our business and relationships with industry partners.

Activision is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, national origin, protected veteran status, or any other basis protected by applicable law and will not be discriminated against on the basis of disability.