About this role

Your players are standing up, holding a gun that kicks, with friends watching from a couch behind them. Most are not gamers, nobody reads a tutorial, and a round lasts two to three minutes. In that time your design has to be legible, fair, and worth doing again.

That rules out most of what works on a monitor. It rewards a designer who thinks in systems, tunes by feel and by data, and will throw out a clever idea because a group of strangers didn’t understand it in ten seconds.

Every team either builds a new game for Obsidian or takes one already running in the bay and makes it better.

What you’ll do

Design the games

Design game modes for Obsidian — projected environments with targets that move, dodge and fight back.
Design tournament and playlist modes for multi-round group sessions.

Own the math

Design scoring systems, difficulty curves and competitive balance for head-to-head play.
Write the Game Design Documents specifying target behaviors, arena layouts, round structure and win conditions.

Prototype and tune

Greybox and prototype your own designs in Unity or Unreal — you should not wait on a programmer to find out whether an idea is fun.
Hand core systems to the programmers, then keep ownership of tuning and balance values in-engine through to ship.

Put it in front of people

Playtest constantly with real groups, and read what players do rather than what they say.
On an existing mode, diagnose why it underperforms before you redesign it.

What we’re looking for

Required

DigiPen graduate — any graduating class
Strong hands-on comfort developing in Unity or Unreal — able to greybox, prototype, and tune your own work in-engine without a programmer driving
Solid grasp of game mechanics, reward loops, and competitive balancing
Experience producing Game Design Documents from GAM project courses
Experience designing and playtesting in a team, and changing your design when the playtest disagrees with you
Ability to think about games as social experiences rather than solo challenges

Ideal degree tracks

ideal, not mandatory — a strong designer from any track is welcome

BS in Computer Science and Game Design
BA in Game Design

A master’s degree in a related field counts the same as the tracks above — an MS or MFA is equally welcome.

Preferred

Comfortable in both Unity and Unreal — the engine is chosen per team, so flexibility is worth real money here
Interest in competitive and party game design — games built for groups, not for one person alone at a desk
Experience tuning against playtest data, not just intuition
Familiarity with scoring design and difficulty progression
Interest in location-based entertainment and physical venue constraints

What you’ll learn

Designing for a physical venue with constraints a screen game never has: projection surfaces, floor space, sightlines, lighting, and group dynamics
Balancing for a mainstream audience — the bar is “anyone who’d go bowling,” not an audience that will study your systems
Designing for spectators, where being fun to watch matters as much as being fun to play
Running a design from prototype to shipped, tuned content inside nine weeks
Improving a game that already has players — diagnosing what’s wrong with something live, which is a different skill from designing on a blank page
Working a production pipeline alongside programmers, artists, and audio
Reading real playtest sessions with paying-customer groups and turning what you see into balance changes

Compensation

Total hours: 180 hours
Hourly rate: $23.50 / hour
Total earnings: $4,230.00
Expected pace: About 20 hours/week, roughly 9 weeks
Payment: Bi-weekly, direct deposit
Structure: 1099 contractor

The 180 hours are the commitment; the calendar is not. Twenty hours a week for about nine weeks is what we expect in practice, but the weeks don’t have to run consecutively and the pace can flex. We set a schedule with you at the start and work around holidays, travel, and your other commitments.

This is a part-time, paid position and does not include benefits.

How to apply

Apply for this role.

Email [email protected] with Game Designer in the subject line. Send all four of these — an application missing one of them is hard to act on, and we would rather not have to come back and ask.

01Your resumeAttached to the email — PDF preferred.
02Your GPARequired. Include it in the email body.
03A link to your portfolioA video reel and a portfolio site are preferred. Make sure everything opens without a login.
04Your general availabilityThe days and hours you can be on-site and reachable, so we can plan collaboration and playtesting around the people on your team.

Apply — Game Designer

Opens your mail client with the details pre-filled. Attach your resume before you send.