Category: News

The Gamasutra Job Board is the most diverse, active and established board of its kind for the video game industry!

Here is just one of the many, many positions being advertised right now.

Location: San Mateo, California

Recognized as a global leader in interactive and digital entertainment, Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) is responsible for the PlayStation® brand and family of products and services. PlayStation has delivered innovation to the market since the launch of the original PlayStation in Japan in 1994. The PlayStation family of products and services include PlayStation®4, PlayStation®VR, PlayStation®Vita, PlayStation®3, PlayStation®Store, PlayStation®Plus, PlayStation™Video, PlayStation™Music, PlayStation™Now, PlayStation™Vue, PlayStation®Original and acclaimed PlayStation software titles from SIE Worldwide Studios. Headquartered in San Mateo, California, SIE is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sony Corporation and has global functions and regional headquarters in California, London and Tokyo. 

Sr. Technical Project Manager

San Mateo, CA 

The Sr. Technical Project Manager reports into the Platform Planning & Management (PPM) department’s “Business Operations” team and is primarily focused on “Go to Market” and in-life project management, communications & operations around the launch of platform products and features These projects are typically platform initiatives which vary in scope and subject matter, ranging from incremental feature planning through to new hardware and software releases. 

The PPM team works with a broad set of internal and external teams including global counterparts responsible for all aspects of product planning and development in the PlayStation family. As such, the ideal candidate has direct experience of platform planning and/or managing projects in a global digital media entertainment environment (gaming experience/interest strongly desired).

Responsibilities: 

• Work with cross-functional and cross-organizational teams to define/enhance, launch, and support products, services, or features that support strategic business initiatives
• Communicate and evangelize new platform features and services within the region & globally, and generally act as a point of contact regarding platform products for our business partners
• Develop an understanding of various  global business initiatives, objectives and guide discussion with product teams to influence product direction for market and operational fit
• Act as a contact point for external teams when working with counterparts around the world to plan for product launches
• Structure and execute initiatives by developing project proposals, recommendations, and planning delivery of platform products and programs such as PS VR, Pro and the system software Beta program
• Communicate platform objectives, status, expectations to global teams and management
• Create, manage, and track project schedules, processes dependencies, and deadlines, to ensure delivery and quality of product.
• Work closely with business (Business Development, Marketing, Legal, Third Party Relations, CS etc.) and product development (internal and/or external) teams to translate between business needs/opportunities and product requirements,
• Maintain a holistic view of product development and business direction to appropriately consult on prioritization requests so as to deliver platform products successfully and in the right timeframe 
• Motivate cross-functional and cross-organizational project team to work together in the most efficient and effective manner.
• Mentor other Technical Project managers to organize workflow, assign duties, projects and tasks.

Qualifications

• At least 4-7 years’ experience in a project management
• Demonstrated ability in leading strategic initiatives such as the launch of a new business, service, or product, or complex operational initiatives and processes, such as managing operations for an online site or service in a large-scale project team or company.
• Demonstrated experience of managing large projects/products within product and software development lifecycles
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills required.  Must be able to communicate with a wide variety of audiences ranging in skill set (highly technical to non-technical) and experience (individual contributors to executive management), cross-organizationally and with external partners. 
• Must be able to create and deliver informative, well-organized and engaging presentations as well project plans, reports, and other project documents.
• Excellent people skills required.  Must be able to build, lead and motivate a team in a matrixed project environment.  Must be comfortable with mitigating team conflict and resolving communication or other problems within the project team.
• Excellent problem solving and analysis skills combined with impeccable business judgment
• Must be resourceful and seek solutions through information gathering, stakeholder discussions, and/or judgment.
• Experience in the video game industry is not required, but interest in gaming is strongly desired. Experience in digital entertainment, consumer electronics, technology is a plus
• Possesses solid understanding in the areas of Internet, client/server technology, consumer electronics, and digital media.
• Maintains awareness of new and emerging technologies and the potential application for console gaming and digital entertainment
• Degree from a four-year college (i.e. BA, BS) in fields relating to business management, product development, engineering, communication,  media or product design or equivalent

Interested? Apply now.

Whether you’re just starting out, looking for something new, or just seeing what’s out there, the Gamasutra Job Board is the place where game developers move ahead in their careers.

Gamasutra’s Job Board is the most diverse, most active, and most established board of its kind in the video game industry, serving companies of all sizes, from indie to triple-A.

Looking for a new job? Get started here. Are you a recruiter looking for talent? Post jobs here.

The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community.
The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.

[Video Game Deep Cuts is a weekly newsletter from video game industry ‘watcher’ Simon Carless, rounding up the best longread & standout articles & videos about games, every weekend.

This week’s highlights include a look at the making of Cultist Simulator, behind the scenes on the relatively recent – and troubled – Splatterhouse reboot, and lots more.

One major game I didn’t feature (in the main links section!) this week is David Cage’s just a little bit divisive Detroit: Become Human. But it turns out Ars Technica’s Kyle Orland did a new version of his newsletter which focuses on some of that divisiveness re: unscored Metacritic reviews, so I’ll just link you to that – thanks, Kyle!

Other than that, enjoy the great writing & videos. Until next time,
– Simon, curator.]

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Splatterhouse 2010: What went wrong (Matt Paprocki / Polygon – ARTICLE)
“What came next involved finding an American development studio with a penchant for brawlers, a choice that would eventually haunt Namco Bandai. In retrospect, the casualties of Splatterhouse were significant: wasted development funds, a shuttered third-party studio and a newly opened first-party team — which then closed when Splatterhouse shipped.”

Opinion: So, you want to talk about porn on Steam (Katherine Cross / Gamasutra – ARTICLE)
“Thus, we come at last to Valve and their renewed effort to crack down on games with “pornographic content,” which is apt to repeat the mistakes of would-be censors and activists of decades past. In summoning these old ghosts, Valve could stand to learn the lessons so painfully absorbed by feminists in the 1980s and 90s: cultural criticism of erotic art is necessary, but categorical censure is next to impossible.”

An art gallery MMO – we spoke to the creators of Occupy White Walls about the AI that guesses which art you like (Matt Cox / RockPaperShotgun – ARTICLE)
“I had a few questions for developers StikiPixels about balancing money with creative freedom, whether OWW might become something that real world artists can use to support themselves, and how their fancy AI manages to suss out people’s artistic tastes. So CEO Yarden Yaroshevski collaborated with his team to give me some answers.”

Embracing Push Forward Combat in DOOM (GDC / YouTube – VIDEO)
“In this 2018 GDC session, id Software’s Kurt Loudy & Jake Campbell detail the philosophy behind the combat design of 2016’s DOOM and its implementation, and discuss the possibility for its inclusion in multiple genres.”

What makes a great idle animation? (Joel Couture / Gamasutra – ARTICLE)
“While very few devs agreed on what games had the most memorable or enjoyable idles (except Earthworm Jim, which everyone apparently loves), all pointed to just how much they made these characters feel alive for them, fleshing out the worlds they belong to with only a few frames of animation.”

A Video Game By Any Other Name (Chris Chapman / Video Game History Foundation – ARTICLE)
“In July 1976, a reporter named Wendy Walker wrote an article for the Associated Press about a new arcade game she’d seen children playing in a shopping mall. The machine, Exidy’s Death Race, featured player-controlled cars scoring points by running over what appeared, to the reporter, to be human beings. (In fact, both the manual and the instructions on the cabinet called them ‘gremlins’.)”

How ideas of civilisation have shaped gaming (Philip Boyes / Eurogamer – ARTICLE)
“When I was a kid, I played a lot of Civilization 2. I played a lot of strategy games in general, but having a deep love of both history and sci-fi, the epic sweep of Civ 2 from prehistory to the stars held a particular appeal. I loved taking my little people from their huts and ziggurats to the world of science and advanced space-flight.”

How To Animate A Fighting Game (Dan Root / YouTube – VIDEO)
“Want to know the difference between Street Fighter 2 and Street Fighter 5? Or the difference between Marvel vs Capcom and Marvel vs Capcom Infinite? Then just watch this video on video game animation!”

Nancy Drew is the most important game series no one talks about (Jess Joho / Mashable – ARTICLE)
“I will never forget the first time I became Nancy Drew. As a little girl, I wasn’t allowed to play video games — which meant I played video games, but only through well-executed schemes. At the crux of my early, forbidden play experiences was the Nancy Drew computer game series.”

Bungie, Naughty Dog, Sony Santa Monica and Blizzard talk about crunch (Robert Purchese / Eurogamer – ARTICLE)
“Senior figures from four of the world’s biggest developers – Bungie, Naughty Dog, Sony Santa Monica and Blizzard – have talked about their studio’s take on crunch. Crunch refers, if you’re not aware, to studios working extended hours as they push towards a major deadline, usually launch.”

Kingdom Hearts 3 gameplay world premiere: Pixar’s magic even works on RPGs (Sam Machkovech / Ars Technica – ARTICLE)
“From my admitted outsider perspective, Kingdom Hearts is two things: an action-RPG series that injected speed and Disney cuteness into Squaresoft’s sluggish early-’00s period… and a mess of confusing plots and spin-off games that combine underwhelming mechanics and nonsensical developments to make my head spin. [SIMON’S NOTE: there was a massive E3 critics week-themed hands-on for this title – here’s another useful take – and… I think I’m just a bit fascinated with KH3, which is SUPER weird for such a high-budget title.]

Yousif Alroumi – Don’t Die Interview (David Wolinsky / No Don’t Die – ARTICLE)
“All right, so let’s start this. My name is Yousif Alroumi, and I’m from Kuwait. I’m the founder of a company called Fikra, which is an event management company dedicated to doing videogame-related events in Kuwait and the Middle East. I’m 35 years old.”

Why the Cultist Simulator devs built their Lovecraftian game on a house of cards(Carli Velocci / Gamasutra – ARTICLE)
“Despite the shift in studio, however, Cultist Simulatorreads a lot like it comes from Failbetter. The world of the game is more akin to ours than the fantastical underworld introduced in Fallen London, but it still has those aforementioned trademarks dialed up to a whole other level. The UI is even more minimalist and the card system is front and center.”

‘I’m Han Solo’: The Story Behind Star Wars Kinect and the Most Infamous Jason Derulo Parody of All Time (Brian Feldman / New York Magazine – ARTICLE)
“Kinect Star Wars, which came out in 2012, is from a very specific time in the Star Wars universe, released just months before Lucasfilm announced that it had been purchased by Disney. It represented a major attempt by Microsoft to push the Kinect, a camera that connected to the Xbox 360 and tracked the player’s body…”

The CIA made a Magic: The Gathering-style card game for training agents, and we played it (Shannon Liao / The Verge – ARTICLE)
“Last year during SXSW, the CIA revealed it designs elaborate tabletop games to train and test its employees and analysts. After receiving a Freedom of Information Act request, the CIA sent out censored information on three different games it uses with trainees — and thanks to Diegetic Games, an adapted version of one of them will soon be available to the public.”

‘Cost Per Hour’ Is a Terrible Way to Judge a Video Game (Matthew Gault / Motherboard – ARTICLE)
“What I’m not interested in, however, is a breakdown of the worthiness of a game based on its cost divided by the time I’ll likely spend playing it. I don’t need to know how many dollars each hour of content will cost me. Green Man Gaming (GMG)—a digital storefront for video games—thinks players might want to know, though.”

Inside the Indie Mind: Zach Barth (Zachtronics) (GDC / YouTube – VIDEO)
“In this 2018 GDC talk, Gamasutra EIC Kris Graft talks to Zachtronics founder Zach Barth (TIS-100, SpaceChem, Opus Magnum, Shenzhen I/O) discussing topics such as inspiration, puzzle design, and his overall game development philosophy.”

Even Fleeting Time With ‘Dreams’ Is Memorable (Brian Crecente / Variety – ARTICLE & VIDEO)
“With just a dozen or so minutes to spare, a Media Molecule spokesperson walked Variety through an abbreviated version of its demo, explaining the process of making games out of existing pre-created art, while slapping together a level in almost no time. [SIMON’S NOTE: linked this so you can watch the video at the bottom of the story, which is impressive. Dreams is another title I’m fascinated with, but also a little confused by re: mainstream popularity. But we’ll see!]”

Being The Boss Of Dragon Age (Wesley Yin-Poole / Eurogamer – ARTICLE)
“Mike Laidlaw can still remember his first day at BioWare, even though it was over 15 years ago. He even remembers the date he answered the phone and found out he had got the job: 23rd December 2002. Laidlaw was used to answering the phone; at the time he was working at Bell, Canada’s largest telecommunications company, in the province of Ontario.”

The Dynamic Interactive Narratives Of Dynamix (Jimmy Maher / The Digital Antiquarian)
“Yet in the vast territory between these two poles were many other developers experimenting with the potential of adventure games, and in many cases exploring approaches quite different from either of the two starring players. One of the more interesting of these supporting players was the Oregon-based Dynamix, who made five adventure or vaguely adventure-like games between 1988 and 1991 — as many adventure-like games, in fact, as LucasFilm Games themselves managed to publish during the same period.”

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[REMINDER: you can sign up to receive this newsletter every weekend at tinyletter.com/vgdeepcuts – we crosspost to Gamasutra later on Sunday, but get it first via newsletter! Story tips and comments can be emailed to [email protected] MINI-DISCLOSURE: Simon is one of the organizers of GDC and Gamasutra & an advisor to indie publisher No More Robots, so you may sometimes see links from those entities in his picks. Or not!]

Game development can be a long, arduous process. Triple-A games can take years to produce, even with team sizes in the hundreds; with a smaller team, the development cycle can take even longer. Just look at Owlboy, the indie platformer that took nine years to develop or, on the other side of things, Duke Nukem Forever, which took 15 for various reasons.

Spearhead Games didn’t have years. Luckily the studio’s made a habit of creating games with a quick turnaround. Its latest game, Omensight, somehow hit platforms after just 18 months of development time, according to co-founder Malik Boukhira. Its previous title, Stories: The Path of Destinies, was made in 11 months. Taking it one step further, the team that worked these titles never exceeded more than 20 people.

“We have a reputation for being super fast,” Boukhira revealed in a recent stream on Gamasutra.

Although Spearhead has that reputation, Boukhira explained that it’s in spite of (and really, because of) small budgets. When you have limited funds to work with, it pays (no pun intended) to cut down on production time.

“One of the big reasons why we do games quickly is because at some point we run out of money. We have limited budgets so we have to do the most out of these budgets,” he said. “With the budget we have we try to be as smart as possible in how we create a good game.”

So what does that entail? Boukhira laid out how the studio cut corners, but still managed to engage with smart design. With Omensight, Spearhead created a game that was ready to ship and that they were proud of.

Reuse assets

Omensight tells the tale of a powerful mage and warrior that experiences the end of the world. However, he has the chance to stop it by solving a murder mystery. With magic, hand-to-hand combat, and time manipulation, you can learn about the experiences of the dead while also visiting familiar locations.

“One of the big reasons why we do games quickly is because at some point we run out of money.”

Boukhira said that one of the main things the studio did to save money was to reuse environments and other assets. Backtracking is common in games and developers use a lot of similar tricks to cut down on production time and funding, but a lot of thought has to go into how the assets are used.

For its previous game, Stories, Spearhead also reused assets, mainly by having players return to familiar locations, but the issue was that the studio didn’t do enough to ensure it felt exciting. Boukhira admitted that it felt repetitive to the player, which in a way exposed their trick.

“It didn’t break the experience except, at some point, by playing it a few times you start to realize ‘this is the same place again,’” he said. “At first you don’t realize, but the problem with Stories is the more you play it, the more that trick is revealed.”

So for Omensight, the team wanted to solve that problem.

“How can we make something that’s reusable, replayable in a way that’s still interesting and in such a way that we can optimize every hour we put in … without having to create a lot of unique content?” he asked.

Because of the game’s more open structure, which is essential if the player wants to feel like they have control over solving the mystery, Spearhead ensured that each path felt important and had a different outcome. There are a limited number of narrative branches, but each is designed so players are incentivized to try new routes and uncover new details. So even if the player had to go back to a previous location, there was variation.

“That’s one of the challenges: make things that are versatile enough that they don’t feel repetitive without being [an asset] that’s super expensive but yet you only see once,” he explained.

A basic and purposeful art style

Boukhira gave a lot of credit to his art team for how they managed to create a distinct and appealing aesthetic without using a ton of money.

Omensight looks like a graphic novel come to life, so the colors are vibrant but the environments are generally monotone and flat. The characters are detailed, but are mostly seen from a semi top-down view.

“We control how much you can see and that saves 30-40 percent of our bandwidth when we’re making the game.”

It’s when you look closer that you can see the purposeful design. There are textures on the environments, but just enough to give the player a vision of rocks, or another material. Grass dots the landscape, but it isn’t overwhelming. It’s there just enough to support the idea of grass. This was all done to save money, but you couldn’t tell just by looking at it.

Boukhira said that the his art director came from a graphic novel background, but that didn’t completely impact the style.

“It’s also a style that can be very cool, very expressive without requiring super detailed meshes and textures,” he added. “It can still be very expressive and very fun to explore at the same time.”

Smart camera movement

The player can control the camera in Omensight a bit, but for the most part, the game takes the reins. This is so the player knows where they need to go and what they need to observe, but it’s also a sneaky way to save time and energy. If you don’t have to animate an entire space, then that will save you time.

“Well first thing to know is if you don’t have a free camera you don’t have to art every angle in the world,” Boukhira said, pointing out some examples on the stream. “So you can’t see the ceiling in the room, nor can you see behind you and that’s a trick to save art time.”

But as with reusing assets, Boukhira emphasized making sure that the choice seems purposeful. In Omensight, the camera, while out of the player’s control, does give the game a cinematic feel, which the developers liked. It also allows the player to see what they need to see.

“As you can see, it’s still interesting from a visual perspective. It’s more cinematic because we control the point of view,” he said. “We control how much you can see and that saves 30-40 percent of our bandwidth when we’re making the game.”

With a small budget and small team, Spearhead Games needs to cut corners somewhere. However, what sets them apart from other obviously low-budget games, and what garnered their reputation for speed, is that each move — whether it’s not animating a whole scene or reusing assets — doesn’t distract from the game. It’s all done to enhance the game, not just to hit a monetary goal.

And the best part? When a player doesn’t notice.

“I’d like to think our return rate is so low because we’re very clear about the experience the player should expect.”

– Former Dragon Age director Mike Laidlaw on the development of Dragon Age: Inquisition

In an interview published by Eurogamer earlier today, former Dragon Age director Mike Laidlaw discusses his personal achievements and failures while working on the Dragon Age series before departing Bioware (after 14 years!) last fall. 

While Laidlaw doesn’t credit himself as the visionary behind the Dragon Age series (he credits former BioWare developer David Gaider with building the game’s lore), he does carry a lot of guilt for things like developers having to go through crunch or failing to deliver content based on demos. 

The development team for Dragon Age: Inquisition did experience crunch, but it wasn’t the same kind faced by those who worked on Dragon Age 2, which Laidlaw describes as a “heavy push” followed by a “how dare you!” reaction after the game was released.

Dragon Age: Inquisition was received more positively, making the long and steady push of crunch feel less emotionally taxing. “It wasn’t a breeze by any means and people worked very hard,” Laidlaw notes. “But it came out and people went, wow, okay, that’s good.”

But what about failed promises from demos shown at big events? Players noticed that some significant content was cut from a demo shown during PAX 2013, where Laidlaw showcased features like environmental interaction, keep capturing, and burning boats to prevent enemies from escaping. None of this ever made it to the version of Inquisition that shipped in 2014. 

“I feel very bad about that PAX demo that had some features we eventually had to cut. I feel very bad about that…That’s the reality of development,” Laidlaw explains. “It’s certainly the reality of, oops, you’re on five platforms and two of them are significantly older than the other three.”

“There were some really good ideas in there and I wanted to see them, but at the same time they were not fleshed out and proven enough,” Laidlaw said, noting he now prefers promising less before the release of a game, opting for a show, don’t tell approach.

“I look at it and go, these days, my ideal marketing line would be three days before the game comes out, run a demo that’s actually a final code and go, ‘okay everybody, that was our video game, I hope you like it, it’s available for sale soon,'” he said. “And then I sit down and go the hell away. Perhaps not the most practical PR! But still, it’s real honest.”

Be sure to check out the entire piece over at Eurogamer, which goes into more detail about Laidlaw’s experience working at BioWare during his 14 years at the studio. It’s well worth the read. 

The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community.
The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.

The rise of kickstarter and crowdfunding has had the impact of pulling back the curtain on game development. Consumers now have a chance to actively watch a game go from a prototype to a full release. With that said, a little knowledge can go a long way, and presents an interesting debate on how much should consumers know about making games.

How the Sausage Gets Made:

Game Development for a lot of consumers is still a mystery; even for people working on their first game. It’s one of those things that you don’t really know about it until you start doing it. This makes it very difficult for journalists to cover games who have no experience on the dev side, and hard for developers to explain what goes into a title.

Speaking to developers over the last few years, what can be near impossible to do is to convey the scope of a game to the consumers. What happens when a promised game mode has to be cut? Can you explain that to thousands of people without them wanting to riot?

We are starting to see consumers who are at least somewhat knowledgeable about design, thanks to watching a game grow through early access or watching videos on the subject. However, this comes with a catch — You have consumers who think they know better than the designers and feel entitled to demand features.

Early Access and crowd-funding have allowed consumers to see behind the curtain

There was the infamous case last year of someone claiming that multiplayer should only take a week to develop. Just because one game does X, doesn’t mean that the same can be done with other games.

That takes us to the big question for today’s post: How much should someone know about game development to enjoy video games?

Making and Playing Games:

Video Games can be appreciated by a wide audience. Our audience ranges from kids and casual players, to experts who may even mod their favorite games. You don’t need to understand how a progression system works in order to enjoy a game like Diablo 3 or Cookie Clicker.

And because of that, it’s not a necessity to cover game design or industry topics on major sites. A few weeks ago, there was the slight hubbub over frustum culling with Horizon Zero Dawn– Common knowledge for designers, but not so well-known for the general market.

But this represents part of the problem: Where can someone go to actually learn about game development? We talked about the issues with video game journalism a few weeks ago and how major sites spend more time on news of the day rather than design pieces.

Most major sites don’t have the time or resources to dedicate to this part of the game industry. There still is the issue of how much would an audience want to learn about game development.

In the last section, we talked about how you don’t need to understand game design in order to enjoy games; just like you don’t need to build cars for a living to enjoy racing. Another point is that there is no way to know the knowledge base of the people you’re talking to.

The knowledge base of consumers is all over the place

As an example, I’ve talked to people who play games or know about the industry, but have no idea what Undertale or the Humble Bundle were.

For you reading this right now, I know that may be a shock, but there is a big difference between the general and enthusiast sides of the game industry. For someone who just plays games casually and visits one of the major sites, would they want to read an article about procedurally generated design?

In fact, we’re going to have a little test right now, and yes, I’m talking to you. You may or not may not know this, but I do crosspost my pieces to various game sites on the Internet to help spread awareness for Game-Wisdom. This next part is going to be different on each site, and I want to see how knowledgeable you are about game design. Here we go:

What are the main factors that determine if a game is pay to win or not?

A Little Knowledge Goes a Long Way:

Video games are no longer a niche genre, but a multi-billion dollar industry. And yet, so much of what goes into making and working on games is still a mystery. I personally think that there should be more articles and discussion on the industry and the design process. With designers being more transparent about working on games, giving consumers the ability to understand will ultimately be a benefit.

If you want the consumer to understand what it takes to make a video game, then we need to provide the necessary information for them to learn. Of course we need to mention that not everyone is going to want or use this knowledge, but that’s okay; the point is that it’s out there.

If we want the next generation of designers to grow, then we need to stop hiding the information.

For those of you reading this, besides my site and YouTube channel Game-Wisdom, be sure to check out the GDC Vault and Gamasutra for more industry-related topics and discussions. And if there are any other useful resources, please let me know in the comments below.

The Gamasutra Job Board is the most diverse, active and established board of its kind for the video game industry!

Here is just one of the many, many positions being advertised right now.

Location: Santa Monica, California

About Us:

PlayQ is a rapidly growing mobile gaming studio based in the heart of sunny Santa Monica. Our titles have been downloaded over 60 million times worldwide, with millions of users playing our games every day!

Our goal is to deliver tomorrow’s nostalgic game experiences to a global audience and we rely on our dedicated team to craft these unforgettable games that our users love. We believe that the best games come from diverse teams with a shared desire to create something amazing. From our beachfront headquarters to our innovative tech stack, it’s no surprise that PlayQ was named as one of the Best Places to Work in Los Angeles by the Los Angeles Business Journal.

We’re looking for people who have a genuine love for their craft and we invite you to join us in this exciting endeavor.

Job Overview:

PlayQ is looking for a UI/UX Designer to join our passionate team. As a UI/UX Designer you’ll be responsible for working directly with the product, design, and art teams to craft delightfully intuitive user experiences and design beautiful UI. Responsibilities in this role will span the entire development lifecycle, from wireframe and concept creation to final asset production and implementation. This position offers an exciting opportunity to design and deliver flawless user experiences to millions of daily players around the globe.

Responsibilities:

• Collaborate with Product, Design, and Art teams to design appealing, user-friendly and crisp 2D UI assets and implement intuitive user experiences for casual mobile games
• Designing from concept to completion all facets of the User Interface including: mockups, wireframes, flow charts, icons, and animation mockups
• Aid in the creation and maintenance of UI style guides and general art documentation
• Collaborate with the Senior UI Designer to provide UI style guides to ensure product consistency
• Create beautiful production UI design
• Integrate UI into Unity, working with engineering to ensure artwork is accurately and consistently represented in the game
• Optimize UI for best performance and optimal footprint on mobile devices
• Develop and maintain UI specifications and style guides

Requirements:

• B.A./B.S. degree from an accredited college / university
• 3+ years of UI/UX experience working in interactive media and/or mobile games
• Expert with Adobe Suite, including Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, & After Effects
• Extensive experience with Unity and various UI implementation methods within Unity
• Ability to work cross-functionally with Design, Art and Engineering teams to define and prototype the best user experiences
• Ability to translate flow charts and wireframes into fun, usable, visually polished UI systems
• A strong understanding of UI conventions and challenges for mobile and other emerging platforms, including UI optimization for best performance and optimal footprint on mobile devices
• Ability to produce high quality work quickly, iterating toward the best solutions
• At least 1 shipped mobile title as UI/UX artist
• Excellent organization and efficient time management skills
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills

Bonus Points:

• Love of casual mobile games and UX; puzzle games even better!
• Experience creating UI animations and transitions

Perks:

• Competitive compensation and equity options
• Comprehensive medical, dental, vision insurance
• Flexible time off
• 401K plan with company match
• Stocked kitchen with free snacks and beverages of your choice
• Catered weekly team lunches
• Brand new penthouse office space equipped with outdoor patios offering beachfront views
• Monthly team outings and volunteer opportunities
• Help build and support awesome GAMES. For a living! Who doesn’t love games?

Interested? Apply now.

Whether you’re just starting out, looking for something new, or just seeing what’s out there, the Gamasutra Job Board is the place where game developers move ahead in their careers.

Gamasutra’s Job Board is the most diverse, most active, and most established board of its kind in the video game industry, serving companies of all sizes, from indie to triple-A.

Looking for a new job? Get started here. Are you a recruiter looking for talent? Post jobs here.