Game Design Director

Job Description

Game Design Director (Unannounced Mobile Game)
EA Mobile - Capital Games (Sacramento)

''Who is EA Capital Games?''

We're a mobile game studio located in Midtown Sacramento, home to Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes , the most successful Star Wars mobile game ever released, charting as the #1 grossing game in over 35 countries, and one of the Top 40 grossing games in the entire world across Apple and Google.

Collectively, we are a close-knit group of passionate gamers, obsessed with the creation of genre-defining mobile RPGs, and the vibrant live services necessary to support them. Our team culture is friendly, fast-paced, results-focused, and collaborative. We take our work – but not ourselves – very seriously.

While walking the halls of our brand-new 31,000 sqft studio, you'll hear the cacophony of epic console competitions, lively debates, and the rattle of dice thrown across a game board. Game nights, happy hours, weekend adventures, and a dog friendly atmosphere are all elements of who we are.

Recently, we've also developed a strong work-from-home process and are sensitive to the safety and well-being of our team. This opens up new opportunities, at least in the short-term, for employees to work remotely.

Capital Games is looking for a passionate, talented, and experienced Game Design Director with a proven track record of leading game design teams and developing successful games with amazing player experiences. You have experience with mobile game and live operations design and excel at empowering teams. You are curious, creative, collaborative by nature, and are adept at using telemetry to validate your design thinking. Additionally, you are a mentor and advocate of the Design team.

This is a unique opportunity to join the studio behind Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes and champion authentic features and content that delight players on an unannounced mobile game.

Key Responsibilities
• Champion design leadership and help deliver on the project's creative vision
• Collaborate with the Design and leadership teams to formulate strategies and feature/content plans that use live operations telemetry to validate decisions and improvements
• Advocate data and business needs as a part of game design culture, and partner with Product Management to set goals, define success, and make informed decisions
• Leverage your deep design and leadership experience to mentor the Design team, define career goals, review project work and develop a healthy team culture
• Meet with the team and IP brand holders to ensure the delivery of authentic and highly appealing features and content
• Where needed, contribute directly to the design of content, systems and features.
• Ensure the Design team develops concise and valuable game design specifications and effectively communicates those ideas to the development team and management
• Ensure execution of design deliverables on Live content and features from early roadmap planning, to defining goals through development and final polish
• Improve team efficiency by developing team skills, improving operations, and leading by example

Requirements
• At least 5 years of experience as a Lead Game Designer, Design Manager and/or Design Director on mobile and/or MMORPG projects with demonstrable success in live operations
• Excellent pitch, presentation, and public speaking skills
• Ability to provide both focused (low level) and inspiring (high level) creative leadership
• Passion for playing and making games, and the ability to articulate and discuss what makes them ''fun''
• Experience balancing complex game systems
• Solid understanding of social games and the mechanics that work well within them

Desired
• Experience with collectible character / turn-based role-playing games (or similar design models)

Sacramento hosts an approachable metropolitan lifestyle, where home can be established for anyone from the singleton who wants to live downtown, to the family whose top priorities are a yard and great schools, all within a reasonable commute to our studio. The city fosters a vibrant urban culture through weekend street festivals, professional sports teams, bustling farmer's markets, wonderful eateries, and award-winning craft breweries and coffee roasters. If connecting with nature is more your vibe, the Sierras are in our backyard in addition to many local hiking and biking trails.

''What's in it for me?''

Glad you asked! We love to brag about our great perks like free food, hosted happy hours, annual camping adventures, comprehensive health and benefit packages, tuition reimbursement, company matched retirement, and many others! And since we realize it takes world-class people to make world-class games, we offer competitive compensation packages and a culture that thrives off of creativity and individuality.

Jobcode: Reference SBJ-d8jomg-3-146-105-194-42 in your application.