Lead Game Designer, Combat - Unpublished MMO

Job Description

All Game Designers at Riot have a base set of skills: you design, tweak, and optimize the player experience. Your analytical skills, player insight, and creativity aid in crafting in- and out-of-game experiences that engage and surprise players. You will collaborate with interdisciplinary teams and work with every tool at hand to innovate and iterate player-focused designs that'll delight millions around the world.

As Lead Combat Designer you’ll build a compelling combat vision that you share and develop with the team for years. You own and shape the core combat fundamentals that the team will be able to build a large volume of player and enemy content on top of. You excel in the systems and components of compelling player combat and enemies. Tuning and getting the finest details perfect for great feel, depth, and strategic decision making is your focus. You are comfortable operating in an ambiguous environment where the team owns its own goals, and where change, big and small, is a critical part of the process. You will report to the Game Director on the team.

Responsibilities:

• Define and iterate on a vision for combat that leads to world class results and inspires the team
• In collaboration with other discipline leaders, build a direction and roadmap for the game’s combat that delivers high quality results and builds progress in an efficient and organized manner
• Ensure that the team is delivering on our aspirations in the solutions, content, and decisions they make day to day
• Empower and inspire all members of the team to continue striving for their best possible work in a healthy and sustainable way
• Mentor and grow designers on the team in both craft and collaboration skills
• Ensure an effective playtesting process that can validate our goals and fuel continuous improvement over time
• At the tactical level, build and improve specific core combat mechanics and enemy systems to serve the game for years to come
• Build direction for core player actions like Camera, Controls, and Character
• Design and iterate on low level details of inputs and player actions that contribute to great feel, rich decision making, and a balanced ecosystem
• Create and provide multiple potential designs and solutions, articulating trade-offs and risks between different options

Required Qualifications:

• 7+ years of experience in professional Game Design
• 4+ years of experience in either Combat Mechanics, Enemies, or Combat Feel in real time games
• 2+ years in a craft leadership role on combat focused teams
• Has built combat systems that are approachable, satisfying, and engaging for many years of play
• Can build a combat vision that lays out goals, values, and the most critical solutions
• Experience communicating and expressing complex and nuanced designs in simple ways
• Can work effectively with non design disciplines to deliver a unified and cohesive experience for players
• Shipped or worked on at least one AAA+ game
• Can create complex mechanics and systems with attention to the player impacts and downstream effects
• Experience designing enemy systems that interact with player combat to create varied and satisfying encounters
• Deep level of understanding of multiplayer PvE and PVP games (ARPG, MMOs, MOBAs etc.)

Desired Qualifications:

• Direct experience across both third person action and MMO genres
• Experience with group based combat and cooperative play
• Iterating on combat in a live service environment with balance, improvements, and new content
• Experience across a variety of platforms like PC, console, and mobile
• People management experience; experience with mentorship of other designers leading to a promotion or substantial positive improvements in their work
• Experience creating systemic change to a team’s process or principles to improve output significantly across the team
• Leadership experience resolving conflict, and when needed offering difficult feedback with respect
• Experience with combat adjacent gameplay systems like traversal, vehicles, or puzzles
• Is familiar with the LoL IP

For this role, you'll find success through craft expertise and a collaborative spirit that prioritizes the delight of players. We will look at your past studies and experience, but for this role, we also look for dedicated people with a personal relationship with games. If you embody player empathy and care about players' experiences, this is the role for you!

Our Perks:

Riot focuses on work/life balance, shown by our open paid time off policy, in addition to other perks such as flexible work schedules. We offer medical, dental, and life insurance, parental leave for you, your spouse/domestic partner and children, and a 401k with company match. Check out our benefits pages for more information.

Riot Games fosters a player and workplace experience that values teamwork embodied by the Summoner's Code and Community Code. Our culture embraces differences as a strength, and our values are the guiding principles for how we approach work. We are committed to putting diversity and inclusion (D&I) at the center of everything we do, and promoting a fair and collaborative culture where Rioters treat one another with dignity and respect. We encourage you to read more about our value of thriving together and our ongoing work to build the most inclusive company in Gaming.