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Senior or Lead Meta-Systems Designer

Counterplay Games needs a Senior or Lead Meta-Systems Designer to drive design, development, and ongoing stewardship of our player progression, crafting, itemization, cosmetics, and reward systems. Be the hands-on craftsperson and conceptual driving force behind excellent Meta-systems.

About the Role and Project:

• You’ll be a key contributor to a cooperative action shooter with a powerful player fantasy and rich theme
• Your domain, Meta-Systems, is a critical cornerstone in the foundation that supports player goal-setting, engagement, satisfaction, and long-term joy

• You’ll collaborate closely with the entire multi-disciplinary team over the course of the project; the design, tech, development, art, and creative directors, engineers, artists, producers, and other designers

About You:

• You’re a wayfinder: an optimistic self-starter who loves taking ideas from a point of inspiration to polished experiences via solid process: a strong vision with clear goals, a bias toward prototyping, thoughtful iteration, pride-free discourse, and - more importantly - advocacy for the players in our core audience.
• You aren’t afraid to explore past the boundaries in a relentless pursuit of the best experience for our players, asking “what if” of others and responding with “yes, and” when others bring new ideas to you.
• You adore and think in systems, and are able to deftly craft individual systems, and the relationships between systems, to achieve the goals
• You want to make a direct and lasting impact on the game both individually and as part of a team

Your Responsibilities:

• Be a visionary, listener, teammate, and maker on a multi-disciplinary, player experience-driven team
• Develop and maintain a deep understanding of and intuition for the target experience, core promise, and vision for the game.
• Define the goals and values to guide us toward excellent Meta-systems that will keep our players feeling motivated and rewarded for their time, effort, and skill. Put that vision into action with hands-on design, implementation, and iteration
• Work closely with Player Combat and Mode Designers to bridge the disciplines and bring their work together in satisfying and highly motivating and rewarding meta-systems
• Working with Gameplay Designers, proactively suggest improvements to gameplay systems and principles, especially where those improvements open new meta-system spaces that will lead to additional player delight.
• Be a key contributor to overall game design, leveraging your unique perspective to help us create the best possible player experience.
• Collaborate effectively with other disciplines - code, animation, sound, visual effects - to bring all components together into a holistic experience
• Use all available tools: paper design, team workshops, implementation in engine, playtests, feedback sessions, iteration and tuning, and competitive inquiry to guide the process of encounter design toward exceptional outcomes for the player experience
• Break down work into well-understood components in order to communicate technical needs, collaborating with engineering and tech to realize opportunities and deftly navigate constraints
• Present the team's work to audiences and stakeholders to persuade, include, and excite

Your Interests & Skills:

• Experience with Unreal Blueprints
• Experience with and enthusiasm for the action shooter genre.
• Experience with horizontal and vertical power progression concepts
• Experience working on player expression and cosmetic systems
• Experience servicing the evolving needs of PvE gameplay in a live ops environment.
• Having a scripting/technical design background is a plus