At Maxis, we thrive on outrageous thinking. It’s the fuel that inspires the best games in the world. We’re innovators and great storytellers. But it’s not just about amazing your peers – it’s about amazing yourself and our fans. Take risks. Collaborate with brilliant minds and dare to dream big. Together, we can change the way millions play every day.
As a Designer on The Sims, you’ll be working with a large (but tight-knit) team of enthusiastic industry craftspeople from all walks of life. Your job will be to use your passion and knowledge to design and create player-first experiences from end to end, to surprise and delight millions of gamers around the world.
You will be reporting into a studio Development Director.
Responsibilities
- Serve as an advocate, representing the Design team to the rest of the dev team.
- Help define best practices for the team.
- Be a proactive member of the Design team, brainstorming and writing designs, and providing feedback to other designers.
- Become a proactive mentor to more junior members of the team.
- Have a depth of knowledge across a majority of systems, being able to own entire pillars for a pack and train/support the team on its features.
- Define gameplay experience goals for designs, and tune features to meet those goals.
- Iterate on designs based on internal/external playtests, game metrics, team input and community feedback.
- Be resourceful and solve problems using the tools and time/scope available to efficiently craft unique and fun experiences for players.
- Communicate and collaborate with all team disciplines, including artists, animators, modelers, engineers and producers to get buy-in from the team and drive a project from initial design to final production.
- Become an expert on the game and our community, drawing from our large, varied player base and our past games to make and defend intelligent design choices going forward.
- Have an eye for improving process and efficiency to make life easier for the Design team.
Requirements
- At least 7 years of game design experience on a video game development team.
- Excellent creative, analytical and organization skills with proven ability to write and maintain detailed design documentation throughout a project life cycle.
- Open-minded, progressive thinking while remaining flexible, energetic and driven to overcome challenges with practical solutions.
- Strong communication and inter-personal skills, with ability to champion a design and get the team excited to work on it.
- Exceptional time-management practices.
- Ability to learn and become proficient in a variety of proprietary development tools.
- Strong sense of ownership and responsibility.
- Design and implementation experience with game features which focus on open-ended player creativity.
- Effective at working both autonomously and in groups of different profiles.
- Knowledge of and enthusiasm for gaming: playing, deconstructing and creating.
- Experience with games in The Sims PC franchise and other simulation games.
- Desired experience : Shipped a AAA HD title.
- Desired experience: Bachelor’s Degree or equivalent.
- Desired experience: Comfortable with MS suite (Word, Excel, Powerpoint, etc.), Google Docs, Visio, JIRA, online collaboration suites such as Confluence.
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