Category: News

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.

Here are just some of the many, many positions being advertised right now. If you’re a recruiter looking for talent, you can also post jobs here.

Location: Nice, France

Wolcen Studio is looking for a passionate and ambitious Senior 3D Animator to bring to life the characters and creatures of its game, Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem. A solid grasp of the principles of body movement, anticipation, overshoot, follow-through, squash and stretch, forward and inverse kinematics, and other facets of both 3D and 2D animation is essential for this role.

Location: Remote

Crate Entertainment is looking for a junior or senior software engineer to join its remote team and contribute to its strategy and RPG titles currently in development. The position requires C++ proficiency and a degree in Computer Science, though applicants with C# experience and at least two years professional experience are preferred.

Location: Burbank, California

Insomniac Games is looking for a Lead Facial Animator who would be responsible for leading a team of face animators and/or technical animators in establishing, maintaining, and continuously increasing the quality of facial animations of both in-game and cinematic animation excellence on game productions. 

Location: Eindhoven, Netherlands

Eindhoven-based Gamehouse is hiring a Senior Release Manager to coordinate with a number of internal teams to streamline asset creation and testing efforts and additionally manage the various aspects of submitting game builds to the App Store, Google Play, Amazon, and Steam.

Location: Mountain View, California

Pixelbery is looking for a talented Engineering Manager to lead development for its mobile game Choices: Stories You Play. In this role, you’d be responsible for the development team delivering performant, well built, stable features to players across the world. You would lead projects by architecting features, managing their development and testing, and getting them shipped. 

Responding to an email query, New Zealand’s gambling regulator–the Gambling Compliance office of its Department of Internal Affairs–told Gamasutra that “the Department is of the view that loot boxes do not meet the legal definition of gambling.”

New Zealand’s is the latest regulatory agency to weigh in on the topic of lootboxes. Government officials, game developers, and players worldwide have been scrutinizing the lootbox monetization model, examining potential parallels with gambling. If officially categorized as gambling, loot boxes would require government regulation.

According to Trish Millward, a licensing compliance manager at the DIA, her office has been following the international debate closely. But, she said, they do not think that lootboxes meet the legal definition of gambling under New Zealand’s Gambling Act 2003. She added that, in any case, it was not illegal for New Zealanders to gamble online with overseas providers.

New Zealand’s government seems to be adopting a wait-and-see approach, which also hints at the complicated legal landscape awaiting game studios as regulators and legislators throw their gauntlets down on the lootbox issue.

There are, at present, a patchwork of legal frameworks to contend with; some regulators are taking an aggressive approach. From Belgium to Hawaii, officials are proposing laws to strictly regulate lootboxes.

New Zealand’s comments come after Victoria, Australia’a gambling regulator told a student, via email, that their department considered lootboxes to be a form of gambling. Hawaii and Victoria hint at another problem for game studios: competing legal approaches within the same country.

But for now, at least, New Zealand seems to stand united in their belief that lootboxes are beyond its regulatory perview.

Some in the industry will be cheered by the New Zealand approach, which mirrors the favored argument of the ESA and ESRB–that because lootbox contents supposedly cannot be traded for cash, they do not constitute gambling.

This argument has its flaws and will be tested, certainly, but for now it forms the basis of regulatory policy in an important Anglophone market.

The Department of Internal Affairs email is reproduced in full below.

“it was very stressful, because we were trying to show something to them that was the same quality and level of polish, but with a twist. Some craziness on it.”

–  Creative director of Ubisoft Milan Davide Soliani on pitching original ideas to Nintendo.

In a recent interview, Ubisoft Milan’s managing director Dario Migliavacca and creative director Davide Soliani discussed their experience working with Nintendo on Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle.

Migliavacca and Soliani mention their collaboration with Nintendo, citing how generating new ideas for a title with an established IP relies a lot on developers taking risks. 

Their prompt was pretty open ended, as Migliavacca recalls: “It started with a very simple mandate. We had to propose a concept with Mario and Rabbids, that’s all.”

According to Soliani, the challenge of pitching something original to Nintendo was daunting, saying that “It’s always better to dare. Worst case scenario, they say no. But at the same time they want to be surprised. Otherwise they will make the game themselves. So they really want you to try.”

Sharing his ideas directly to Miyamoto was a challenge as well, says Soliani. “Knowing that he was expecting something that would surprise him, it’s not so easy to live with. I would say that I was in front of this IP with a lot of respect, but also with the strong will to show my perspective.”

In the interview the pair also speak about the challenges of developing a game with someone else’s IP, as well as what the development process was like for the studio.

Check out the full interview available at Develop.

What do Amazon Prime and videos of a Yule log burning have in common with Little Inferno? As Kyle Gray points out, they serve as some inspiration behind the reason players set items ablaze in game. 

In this 2014 GDC session Tomorrow Corporation’s Kyle Gray discusses the development process of Little Inferno, where he goes over everything from early prototypes of the game to sharing concept art used to help flesh out the environment.  

Designers interested in learning how Little Inferno was developed can now go back and watch the talk completely free via the official GDC Vault YouTube channel!

In addition to this presentation, the GDC Vault and YouTube channel offers numerous other free videos, audio recordings, and slides from many of the recent Game Developers Conference events, and the service offers even more members-only content for GDC Vault subscribers.

Those who purchased All Access passes to recent events like GDC, GDC Europe, and GDC Next already have full access to GDC Vault, and interested parties can apply for the individual subscription via a GDC Vault subscription page. Group subscriptions are also available: game-related schools and development studios who sign up for GDC Vault Studio Subscriptions can receive access for their entire office or company by contacting staff via the GDC Vault group subscription page. Finally, current subscribers with access issues can contact GDC Vault technical support.

Gamasutra and GDC are sibling organizations under parent UBM Americas.