About this role

There is no controller. A player pulls the trigger, a laser hit lands on a ten-foot projection, and an external system hands you a coordinate over a socket. Everything your game knows about the player arrives that way — and fast enough that the recoil, the sound and the target’s reaction land as one event.

It also runs in a commercial venue with paying customers standing in the bay: a crash is not a bug report, it’s a refund.

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

Build the games

Build game modes in Unreal or Unity.
Implement target behaviors: movement patterns, AI, hit reactions, spawn systems and destruction.
Implement scoring engines, round timers, combo systems and game state.

Own the integration

Consume the hit-coordinate feed over the WebSocket game protocol, and handle session lifecycle and player registration.
Translate raw hit coordinates into in-game space, and keep trigger pull to on-screen reaction short enough that players never notice it.
Handle the failure modes that only exist in a venue — a dropped connection, a missed hit, a session that ends mid-round.

Make it hold up in the bay

Optimize rendering for large-scale projection.
Integrate art and audio assets into working modes.
Work with the Game Designer to turn Game Design Documents into playable systems, leaving the tuning values in their hands.

What we’re looking for

Required

DigiPen graduate — any graduating class
Proficiency in Unreal (Blueprints and/or C++) or Unity (C#)
Experience building gameplay systems: state machines, scoring, timers, spawn logic
Solid understanding of game loops, frame-rate optimization, and real-time rendering
Experience building games in a team from GAM project courses

Ideal degree tracks

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

BS in Computer Science in Real-Time Interactive Simulation
BS in Computer Science and 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 Unreal and Unity — the engine is chosen per team, so flexibility is worth real money here
Experience integrating an external input system, device feed, or API into a game engine — anything where input doesn’t arrive from a controller
Experience implementing AI behaviors: navigation, state-based behavior, difficulty scaling
Experience with particle systems and visual effects in-engine
Comfort debugging real-time systems where the bug is in the timing rather than the logic
Interest in competitive and arcade design — short rounds, high replayability

What you’ll learn

Building a game whose input is a physical system rather than a gamepad, and what that does to your architecture
Latency budgets that span hardware, network, and render — and how to find the frame you’re losing
Shipping into a commercial venue, where uptime is revenue and failure happens in front of customers
Optimizing for large-scale projection rather than a monitor
Working a real production pipeline alongside designers, artists, and audio
Improving a game that already has players, which is a different discipline from building on a blank page

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 Gameplay Programmer 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 — Gameplay Programmer

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