The following job listing was forwarded to me by a friend. It’s… amazing:
Skills Required:
Game Designer, PC, Xbox, PS3, Wii, game levels, game play, AI,
Job Description:
Game Designer, Game Producer, Game Developer,
If you are a Game Design who has shipped titles, please read on!
What you need for this position:
– Bachelor degree in computer game design, computer science or a related field is preferred
– 3+ years of related professional experience required
– 3+ years experience with games/design preferred
– Strong sense of game product structure.
– Able to develop relationships at all levels of production and management.
– Well organized and proactive in gathering information and applying information to specific issues.
– Proven ability to work in an extremely fast-paced environment.
– Ability to write schedules and manage teams to schedules.
– Must be able to convey product and task vision to team members to implement.
What you’ll be doing:
– Develop concepts and treatments for specific game modes and features, and help implement the design features and game worlds.
– Design game flow from high concept to implementation
– Benchmarking and competitive research to influence continual product improvement
– Determine game level layout and design
– Create and produce game play content
– Evolve and tune game mechanics into fun, intuitive features that are player centric.
– Communicate designs visually and verbally to other team members, by possibly creating 2D maps of game levels, 3D roughs of game objects and level, documenting of gameplay functionality and design plans, document expected behavior(s) and functionality of entities
– Create detailed specs describing concept, content, assets, rules and behavior(s), constraints, etc
– Implement designed elements or oversee implementation of designed elements.
– Test gameplay and use results to tune gameplay, to make the game more enjoyable
– Examine problem sets and determine optimal solutions
– Develop product requirements and write specification documents for development team
– Develop workflow schematics
– Write product documentation for game users
– Correct errors found in product after live deployment
– Effectively receive and give constructive criticism
– Collaborating with the internal production, & marketing teams to define problem sets and determine tasks
– Develop systems and tools to improve team workflow and product efficiency
– Coordinate work of development team to complete tasks and projects
– Prepare cost and labor estimates
– Develop schedules and manage teams to them to ensure product goals are met
So, if you are a Game Designer with shipped title experience, please apply today!
The ending should read “If you are a dozen people, please apply today!” Imagine if someone put up a job listing for a “bricklayer” that required designing homes, electrical wiring, plumbing, HVAC, carpentry, operation of earth-moving equipment, insulation, overseeing personnel, and experience as a realtor. Now, I’ve worked in some very small-company situations, and I’m all for hiring people who can wear a lot of hats. I’m certainly one of those people. But this is preposterous. This is basically “everything”. I imagine the guy who gets hired will be put in a room with a computer and told, “Make a game and get it published. Let me know when you’re done and I’ll have another assignment for you.”
The only people with these abilities are one and two person studios like 2D Boy. And finding someone who can do all of that, for all platforms? And multiple shipped titles?
I love “develop workflow schematics”. Yeah. You don’t need to document the workflow process if you’re the only one involved it it. A bachelor doesn’t write down the menu each day before he makes himself breakfast.
Also good is “Effectively receive and give constructive criticism”. At the same time! To yourself!
“Develop schedules and manage teams to them to ensure product goals are met” – Teams which will be run by and comprised entirely of… you!
“PC, Xbox, PS3, Wii” – Has there ever been a single title that shipped on all of these platforms? I can’t think of any. [EDIT: According to the comments below, yes there are! I just haven’t played any of them yet. While not common, this does happen. Of course, we’re talking about games from immense development houses, who we assume wouldn’t go around trying to hire the one-man-band of game development.]
Whew. Crazy.
Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.
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