Staff Gameplay Designer - Social (Contract)

Are you on a mission to create games that bond players together into deeply invested communities? Do you spend your time thinking about how different game mechanics can come together to create emergent, dynamic, and frankly hilarious social moments? Are you excited to make gameplay that strongly cares about player intention, action game feel, and expressive communication?

We are seeking a highly technical, creative, and team-oriented contract Staff Gameplay Designer to contribute a new multiplayer action game on teamLFG. You will work closely with the entire Design Team prototyping, exploring, and implementing player avatars and their suite of verbs for the social area of a competitive PvP game. You will collaborate with team members from other disciplines to drive cohesive gameplay vision. You will help build the systems that enable our game to become a third place. Most importantly, you will work with a fun, dedicated, and cross-disciplinary team devoted to turning a creative dream into a new franchise at PlayStation.

RESPONSIBILITIES

Build and maintain the avatar movement and core sandbox systems that enable cooperative social gameplay and player expression, while building trust between players

Build the systems to allow for avatar customization, creating extensible opportunities for player investment and a progression economy, as well as player self expression and customization

Build compelling gameplay experiences through reusable sandbox mechanics, especially 3C (Character, Camera and Controls) design and implementation

Create endearing NPCs that improve IP quality, consistency, along with sandbox design principles

Work with audio, effects, and animation to clearly communicate gameplay affordances to players

REQUIRED SKILLS

Understanding of how modern multiplayer social games can leverage an intuitive and expressive action sandbox to create memories between players

Fluency for collaboration with designers, artists, programmers, audio professionals, quality assurance and producers to achieve a common goal, with adaptability for how to work in a flexible work environment

Broad T-shaped rapid prototyping skills, with enough multi-disciplinary knowledge to quickly stub out gameplay ideas to evaluate their potential

Strong technical scripting skills and understanding of how to structure game design tools to unlock player expression, content variety, and execution speed

Strong understanding of character motion and animation; momentum, timing, and their impact on player communication and tone

Proven ability to build alignment and productively own feature direction without sacrificing empathy and collaboration with team contributors

Ability to operate autonomously and handle ambiguity, including giving and receiving feedback despite that ambiguity

Ability to create plans and evaluate them for meeting the experiential needs of the players and markets

Outstanding oral and written communication skills

Demonstrated understanding of how systemically consistent, combinatoric game design can create player surprise and laughter

PREFERRED EXPERIENCE

Experience as a Staff Sandbox/Gameplay Designer on AAA or large-scale online action games, designing, documenting, and building character customization systems

Experience delegating work or ownership of an area to multi-disciplinary peers

Experience with social/cooperative game design and balancing for an active player base

At SIE, working with our partners, we consider several factors when setting each role’s base pay range, including the competitive benchmarking data for the market and geographic location.

Please note that the individual base pay range may vary based on job-related factors which may include knowledge, skills, experience, and location.

In addition, this role is eligible for benefit offerings that include medical, dental, and vision. Click here to learn more.

The estimated base pay range for this role is listed below, this is an hourly rate.

$76 — $115 USD

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