Lead Game Designer

We are currently hiring an experienced Lead Game Designer who has been involved in games from concept to production and has a vision for where the mobile games industry may go in the future.

As a Lead Designer at Outplay, you will be a key member of the Design department, helping establish world-class designs for your project and the company. You will be tasked with pushing the boundaries of our games, constantly on the lookout to innovate and iterate on successful ideas. You will be joining a team that strives for excellence and as such you will be expected to cultivate, support, and lead the game design for your project.

Requirements

• Demonstrated ability to lead others and a willingness and passion to manage a team to deliver exceptional quality.
• Significant experience in a previous game design role.
• Skilled in designing and documenting core loops, features, and limited-time events (including the creation of wireframes and flow diagrams).
• Experience successfully collaborating with a development team to bring designs alive.
• Knowledgeable about free-to-play games (and micro-monetization) and related key performance indicators.
• Familiarity and interest in the casual puzzle genre (as a player and/or developer).
• Experience with Unity is considered desirable.

Lead Responsibilities

As a Lead at Outplay, you may be required to take on a people management role, effectively and impactfully managing your direct reports. In this role, you will…

• Manage the continuous development process, training, technical and career planning, recruitment, and talent planning of those you manage.
• Guide (as required) Mid-Level and Junior Designers to ensure their work is up to par, supporting them as needed in design production, best practices, visual direction, and work behaviours, as well as keeping them meaningfully challenged in their work.
• Help assess and enhance the culture and morale of the design team.

Design Responsibilities

• Work closely with Department Manager and other Leads to establish and communicate the design approach and direction for the studio.
• Develop, maintain, and communicate creative vision and direction for your game.
• Spearhead one or more complex aspects of the game, such as new feature development, limited-time event design, and implementation.
• Supervise (and as required) and participate in live content creation, balancing, and revisions.
• Provide clear and insightful direction and troubleshoot issues, as required.
• Communicate well-considered, accurate timescales for delivery (for you and your designers, as required), and can anticipate where issues may arise ahead of commitment.
• Report on (and represent) design effort and progress on own project(s).
• Enhance design community and knowledge-sharing at Outplay via Academy workshops, etc., and represent Outplay externally at lectures, hiring fairs, conventions, etc.

About You

• Reliable, detail-oriented, and effective in time management.
• Eager to provide mentorship and training to more junior designers.
• Driven to establish and champion a standout creative vision for your game in collaboration with the team.
• Good self-starter instincts and an ability to work with little to no oversight. Can shift between micro-and macro-level views of the project as needed. Easily adapts to changes in production resources, project scope, and goals.
• Experienced in mobile and free-to-play game design with a passion for evolving and innovating the user experience to entertain, retain, and engage players.
• Understands the importance of player data analysis and is able to propose and implement the feature and content changes to improve a game’s key performance indicators.
• Takes pride in the craft of making exceptional games and embraces the responsibility for pushing the quality and success of each game and motivates the team accordingly.
• Appreciates that the team’s and company’s success is determined by the timely delivery of exceptional, optimised games and game updates and is committed to achieving each product goal accordingly.
• Actively researches and keeps up to date with new games, industry and market trends, platform and OS changes, and best practices to improve existing games and help innovate with future games.

About us!

Founded in 2010 and based in Dundee, Outplay Entertainment is the largest independent mobile developer in the UK.

To date, the studio’s games have received over 160 million downloads, have been featured multiple times as Apple’s Editors’ Choice, won TIGA awards, and received a BAFTA nomination.  

With a passionate focus on making the best games, our talented and dynamic team has developed several critically acclaimed and award-winning games. Gordon Ramsay’s Chef Blast and Mystery Match Village are the latest titles in the portfolio, bringing more of the high-quality visuals, production values, and casual yet engaging gameplay that Outplay is known for. 

With an exciting pipeline of future titles in development and continued growth on our existing games, Outplay is just getting started.