At NaturalMotion, we make games that wow people. We innovate to create experiences that previously were impossible and that would not exist without us. We take pride in making titles that reach a large audience and in creating communities that last.
You are ambitious, bright, and wanting to learn. You are a self-disciplined problem-solver, who is respectful and straightforward with all your colleagues. You are trusting and trusted, flexible and emotionally mature, and you thrive on working with people who share these values.
We are seeking a Junior Designer to join our CSR2 studio to help define and implement content and metadata changes for live campaigns, events and cars to ensure users have a world-class experience with events and daily engagements, as well as cars to collect and drive that are authentic and desirable.
Job Purpose
As a member of the Game Design team, you will assist the Live Ops Manager and Car Designer to design, build, balance and deliver live, in-game events and setup and introduce cars into the game for players to race with. You will help ensure that the team can run exciting, competitive and dynamic live events and deliver car content that will motivate players to engage with the game as much as possible.
As a Junior Designer you’ll have an ambition to make memorable and fun games. You’re starting out on your game design journey and are keen to integrate yourself into a multi-discipline design team with the opportunity to learn and develop a number of game design skills. A desire to improve, to take on feedback with an open mind and to help your colleagues achieve fantastic results is needed.
Seeking to become a Game Designer, you are ready to take on new responsibilities and challenges, and be pushed out of your comfort zone. You’ll relish new challenges and tasks, and enjoy the opportunity to collaborate with different disciplines such as Programmers, Artists, Product Managers, Producers and Quality Assurance Engineers.
You will be delivering content and features that will be enjoyed by millions of players, and will constantly be seeking to learn how and what will improve your skills as a Game Designer and enhance the game experience that is enjoyed by our loyal and devoted players.
Key Roles & Responsibilities
- Design: Produce designs for game features that will add new ideas to the game or iterate on existing systems to make them more effective and enjoyable. A number of these features will be in response to opportunities as identified by the Design and Product Management teams.
- Content Creation: Work with the Live Ops and Design Teams to help plan out and author content that will go live in the game. This can range from anything between events, multiplayer competitions, and rewards.
- Documentation: As a Junior Designer you will be required to explain your designs and ideas in documents that give a clear vision and detailed plan for how they will work in game. This can take the form of text, flow diagrams, tables and mockups – whatever you feel will help you to convey your thoughts.
- Playtesting: A big part of your role will be having an in-depth knowledge of how both the live game and the in-development features work and are being experienced by our players. You will be required to organise and take part in helping your peers to test, iterate and improve features in the game.
Requirements
We are seeking someone to fufil the following criteria, however we are always passionate about talking to experienced candidates who have the ability to grow into the role and undertake professional development where necessary.
- An interest in cars and racing games would be advantageous but not essential.
- You will be a confident, independent worker, able to own tasks as an individual but also recognising when to seek guidance and help from your peers.
- Team Player: Being open-minded to other personalities and cultures and relishing the challenge of learning about how games are not only built, but maintained and improved once they are live.
- Design: Demonstrated passion for games and knowledgable about both mobile and console games – especially ones that successfully deliver new and different content as part of a regularly updated live service.
- Attention To Detail: Diligent in being careful and precise with implementing designs and methodical to achieve reliable results.
- Communication Skills: Being confident and comfortable communicating ideas and thoughts to the design team as well as the broader CSR2 development team.
Core Skills: Which will be learnt/developed in this role:
- Maintenance of design documentation using Confluence/Google Docs
- Excel or Google sheets data management skills
- Photoshop or other visulisation software
- Unity
- Handling data through development, staging and live server configurations.
- Balancing in-game rewards/currency
- Balancing game difficulty curves and rates of progression
- Edit metadata files using Visual Studio Code/Sublime Text 2
- JSON Scripting
What Do We Offer?
- Competitive salary, discretionary annual bonus scheme and Zynga stock allowance
- Contributory pension scheme
- 25 days holiday, plus public holidays and Christmas shutdown
- Private medical care and healthcare cash plan
- Life insurance and critical illness insurance
- Discounted gym membership and free weekly yoga and exercise classes
- Flexible working hours
- Free fruit, snacks & soft drinks provided daily, as well as free lunch on Fridays
- Annual season ticket loan and cycle to work scheme
- Summer and Christmas parties and Happy Hour every Friday
NaturalMotion is an equal opportunity employer. Employment decisions are made without regard to race, national origin, ancestry, sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, age, religion, pregnancy, marital status or veteran status.