As a Game Director, you define the shape of the game experience and collaborate with the leadership team to develop a compelling product vision and development strategy. You’re laser-focused on the needs of your audience and deeply understand how your product serves those needs. Whether it’s features, tone, style, pacing, market fit, or any other element of game and product strategy, you understand how your audiences react and can develop a point of view around that. You ensure the game vision is clear, and use your strong leadership skills to communicate the product’s goals and inspire our multi disciplinary teams to execute on them successfully. You ensure everyone has the direction they need to perform at their best. You report directly to the Executive Producer.
Responsibilities:
Audience Knowledge and Vision
Profoundly understand the needs and motivations of the players. Can utilize different tools (data, empathy, design frameworks, experience) to gain and communicate deeper insights.
Create and effectively communicate a vision for how players will experience the game and why they will love it.
Ensure that the resulting product will effectively resonate with our relevant audiences and deliver on the business level strategy.
Understand how game systems, mechanics, and creative influence player behavior and how disparate elements come together to create a holistic experience.
Provide clarity around goals, direction, and approach, which allows the team at all levels to effectively make decisions and translate it into a work product.
Maintain a broad and deep understanding of the competitive landscape, player motivations for those products, and opportunities to level up those experiences in places where they matter most to players.
Prioritization and Roadmapping
Appropriately prioritize problems and opportunities based on the target audience, player knowledge, team competencies, and stage of development.
Synthesizes multiple craft perspectives to build and evangelize a roadmap that creates the most value for Riot and our players.
Leadership
Identify and manage relationships with stakeholders and customers, communicating key strategic choices and their implications.
Fosters a creative, psychologically safe, and collaborative work environment that leads to strong insight generation and design choices and leverages the thought diversity present within the team.
Required Qualifications:
10+ years of development experience within the games industry.
5+ years of experience in a leadership role in an internal game development studio shipping games.
Experience scaling a team and helping scale leaders.
Has shipped (or maintained) PvE games as a lead designer, game director, product director, or other senior development role that has focused on deeply understanding and developing experiences for an audience.
Strong understanding of motivational audience needs for online PvE games (ex. ARPG, MMO, Action-Adventure, Hack and Slash).
Strong understanding of action combat and long-tail progression systems.
Leadership experience resolving conflict, and when needed offering difficult feedback with respect.
Desired Qualifications:
Has shipped (or maintained) PvE games as a lead designer, game director, product director, or other senior development role at scale (70+ developers).
Our Perks:
Riot has a focus 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.
(Los Angeles Only) Base salary range between $226,600.00 - $339,900.00 USD + incentive compensation + equity + 401K with company match + medical, dental, vision, and life insurance + short and long-term disability + open PTO.
It’s our policy to provide equal employment opportunity for all applicants and members of Riot Games, Inc. Riot Games makes reasonable accommodations for handicapped and disabled Rioters and does not unlawfully discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, age, handicap, veteran status, marital status, criminal history, or any other category protected by applicable federal and state law, including the City of Los Angeles’ Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring Ordinance relating to an applicant's criminal history (LAMC 189.00).
