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Sr. Game Designer – Puzzle Team

Looking for an innovative, creative, passionate, and fun company in OC? Then, let us introduce ourselves. We are MobilityWare and we make fun for a living! Our mobile games have been rocking the app store since its inception and we regularly show up in top lists for most popular games. We recently reached over 350 million downloads across our portfolio of games!

We have been voted 2015, 2016, 2017 & 2018 Best Places to Work in Orange County by the Orange County Business Journal and OC Register! Headquartered in Irvine, CA., our flagship game, Solitaire, was released on the day the App Store opened in 2008. Other titles include Blackjack, FreeCell, Jigsaw Puzzle and Spider Solitaire, to name a few. Our mission is to bring JOY to others one game at a time.

Position Summary

MobilityWare is looking for an experienced Sr. Game Designer to help us develop new games and engaging features for our current casual puzzle games! We are looking for fun, energetic people who have a passion for building great products and bringing our games to life. So, if you love designing and playing casual mobile games and think you have the chops to deliver something unique, then we are interested in talking to you!

MobilityWare is a cool, casual, and awesomely successful company smack dab in the middle of Orange County. We do fun and we do it better than others. Our game downloads to date total over 200 million and our games are consistently ranked in the top 5.

Responsibilities

The Sr. Game Designer will work closely with the casual puzzle team from game designers, engineers, producers, UI/UX designer, product managers and other game development team members from all disciplines throughout the game’s lifecycle.

The Sr. Game Designer will be responsible for game design initiatives on one or more projects at once. The Sr. Game Designer should be versatile who can easily step between designing fun and addicting puzzles/levels, tuning gameplay, balancing systems and economies, defining goal progression and UX flow when needed to target core KPI goals. This individual should be highly creative, but grounded in best practices; innovates purposefully to drive results, and values great execution of ideas over the ideas themselves.

The Sr. Game Designer will drive the design and tuning of new and existing game features and systems to improve and extend the performance of the game based on analysis of player data. The Sr. Game Designer must be a respectful collaborator who takes ownership over their work while empowering their teammates to do the same and believes that great design ideas can come from anywhere and anyone, however being able to recognize when ideas are within scope and realistically tackle the intended goal.

The Sr. Game Designer will write and maintain specification design and level design documents (if any), contribute to user interface design and create detailed wireframe diagrams as needed for new games / new game features for live titles. This includes design and balancing game economies and game item stats to optimize retention/engagement with the game. The Sr. Game Designer will take place in multiple brainstorming and playtest sessions during games in development and be responsible for the quality of the work for members on the team. The Sr. Game Designer will work closely with Game Production and the Live Operations team to design and optimize game tuning strategies that improve key performance indicators.

Qualifications

• Minimum 3-5 years creating and designing casual puzzle games (F2P Mobile, Social). Having designed for top grossing mobile card games or casual games are a plus.
• Excellent understanding of the Mobile Game market (Platforms & Trends).
• Excellent understanding of different business models in mobile games today. Having designed for F2P is a huge plus.
• Implemented and shipped at least 2-3 mobile game titles. Having designed Social elements are a plus.
• Extensive experience in the planning, production and development of games; must be able to prioritize tasks and assign resources effectively
• Good understanding of game balancing, level design, viral design and monetization with balancing of virtual currency economies.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills
• Ability to work in a collaborative, multi-team environment, including engineering, artist, marketing, support services
• Must be able to provide samples of design work – concept presentations, GDD’s, wireframe diagrams, prototypes
• Must be fearless, smart, and intellectually honest with an eagerness to learn
• Passion for working on high quality games and surpassing the expectations of players
• Flexibility to adapt to a fast-paced environment with the ability to adapt quickly to shifting priorities
• You must love games and have a deep drive in creating casual fun and addictive gameplay for our Solitaire target demographic.
• Excellent organizational, problem solving and interpersonal skills
• Deep understanding of what makes games fun and current best practices
• Patient, collaborative, and empathetic – can maintain a positive team culture and attitude.
• Understanding of technical game development process, scheduling, and asset management

SPECIFIC SKILLS REQUIRED

• Experience with both Macintosh and PC computers required.
• Experience working on casual puzzle level editors and documenting game systems.
• Experience with critical software (Word, Excel, Visio / Gliffy or other wire-framing Tools, Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash)
• Familiarity with C++, Java, Objective C, Direct X, Open GL, Unity is a huge plus!
• Results oriented, Self-motivated and disciplined.
• Able to multi-task like a pro.
• Ability to take direction and have a sense of humor and positive attitude.
• Strong team player w/ good people skills
• Ability to handle multiple projects simultaneously
• Must be able to take criticism like a champ and have the ability to think through all designs presented with minimal holes in the design.
• Problem Solver and self-starter who can take accountability and ownership of projects from start to finish

Why you should work for us:

• Awesome Perks: free lunch, free snacks, free drink, free Annual Company trip
• Casual workplace - yes, flip flops and shorts are pretty much an everyday thing
• Growth, growth, growth - we are growing and we would love for you to join us on the ride
• We also want to take care of our team so we've got profit sharing incentives, medical, dental (100% paid), vision (100% paid), Unlimited PTO/Vacation, life insurance (100% paid), and 401K
• Awesome office smack dab in the middle of OC and 2 minutes off the 5 freeway
• Amazing talent: We've got some heavy hitters from the industry who embody both brilliance AND humility