Design Director (Raleigh NC – Hybrid)

Puny Human is a game development company located in Raleigh, North Carolina. Formed in 2007, we are made up of numerous fun-loving, experienced game developers with a mission to provide our players with entertaining and lasting experiences in a healthy, open, and versatile way.

We are searching for a Senior Game Designer to serve as a project’s Design Director. The Design Director is the project’s champion of all things creative and game design. Senior Game designers are responsible for creating innovative design systems and solving complex design challenges that serve the project’s overall vision.

The project’s Design Director will ensure a high level of design quality to improve the overall game experience, and act in a leadership capacity for other designers on the team. The Design Director on this project will be working closely with other artists, engineers, testers, designers and work with Production, Art, Engineering, and Test leads on various projects.

This person must be extremely detail-oriented, always willing to learn, and be humble. Expect this work to be for a title running on PC and Consoles. 18 years of age or older. A high school or college degree is not required. Attitude over aptitude.

Responsibilities

Senior Game Designers are responsible for design quality and systems, creative vision, and ensure highly attentive and rigorous practices and pillars for the team to create features resulting in an overall fun player experience.

  • Serve as the project’s Design Director, collaborating with the team, leading high and low-level design direction in all areas, while working closely with the Game Director, Art Director and Engineering Director.
  • Lead the designers in ensuring a high-quality product, promoting collaboration and organization among the project’s most inventive and quality-oriented designers
  • Design game features that match the creative direction of the game.
  • Integrate designed features into the game by modifying values of various systems where necessary and possible.
  • Balance technical values to develop well balanced gameplay for numerous systems.
  • Analyzes project requirements and creates design systems, working with game designers and artists to communicate the intended objectives.
  • Performing testing on features to ensure that they meet design acceptance criteria.
  • Develops design material, including the project’s design document, feature systems sheets, presentation slideshows, and design goal specifications to ensure a unified design vision.
  • Cultivates a lean, agile team-wide personality focused on customer satisfaction, design excellence, and knowledge sharing.
  • Assists in creating and executing processes for art creation and audio design, feature implementation, task and defect management, marketing and external communication to other developers and leads, where necessary.
  • Ongoing, transparent communication with a focus on expectations and fostering trust with internal stakeholders and external partners.
  • Ensures product meets or exceeds defined quality goals in accordance to project production guidelines.
  • Provides regular coaching and mentorship to the design team, providing guidance with other disciplines when necessary and warranted.

Requirements

  • 8 or more years of experience working with real-time 3D game development.
  • 6 or more years of experience working in professional game design related roles.
  • 2 or more years working with Unreal Engine, with a strong understanding of the various design related features of the editor.
  • Superhuman grasp of game design principles, standards and philosophies necessary to create an entertaining gameplay experience.
  • Strong understanding of time management, estimation, scope, and requirements work in a team setting.
  • Intermediate understanding of source-control management software such as PlasticSCM, Perforce, Git, or SVN.
  • Minor understanding of Agile Scrum methodologies such as Scrumban or Kanban.

Be this:

  • A discerner, understanding perspectives, empathetic and never making assumptions based on their own interpretation.
  • A captivator, with a talkative, outgoing, and friendly personality and positive attitude.
  • A sage, capable of maintaining composure in front of many or being interviewed.
  • A forward-thinker, constantly formulating new ideas to reach audiences or satisfy fans.
  • A creator, capable of trying new things through inventive and innovative means.
  • A team player, willing to help regardless of peer relationships or target project.
  • A self-starter, able to be motivated regardless of situation or circumstances.
  • Tolerant, that doesn’t care about what makes somebody a human being.
  • Organized, efficiently self-managing time and tasks to stay on schedule and within budget.