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Systems Designer, Crystal Dynamics

Location: Redwood City, CA Crystal Dynamics, a part of the Square Enix family, is constantly on the hunt for top-tier gaming talent worldwide. We pride ourselves on attracting and developing the best talent available to concept, create, and contribute to the most exciting projects in gaming today. 20+ years of history creating fun and exciting titles for the world to enjoy as well as our studio’s 1000+ years of combined game industry experience provides a rich tapestry of tested and new ideas to draw from as have established us as one of the best studios in the world to work for. Join now to be part of our incredibly talented Design team working on the latest in our award-winning Tomb Raider reboot in our Redwood City studio, just south of San Francisco. Benefits for this fulltime position include competitive salary, health insurance options to suit all lifestyles, generous paid time-off, as well as other studio and corporate perks, such as a free gym and discounts on games and goodies. Position Summary: Reporting to the Lead Designer, Crystal Dynamics is on the hunt for an experienced Systems Designer. This Systems Designer will be responsible for working with the Lead Designer and Game Directors to plan, prototype and build game wide systems that impact all pillars of an award winning action adventure title. Design responsibilities include but are not limited to RPG lite elements, character progression, game difficulty, player mechanics, economy, combat difficulty, world systems design and general maintenance from concept to ship. Essential Duties: Lead and direct meetings, conduct brainstorms, promote collaboration amongst designers and directors, objectively breakdown design concepts and provide feedback when appropriate. Working with the Lead Designer and Directors, ensure all systems related game design meets project needs and have consistent demonstrable onscreen progress through rapid prototypes and routine onscreen maintenance of all systems. Coordinate closely with programmers and artists to communicate the goals and specific needs of various gameplay systems and provide regular updates to all related systems. Under minimal supervision, design, adapt and scope features and systems to the needs of production, the technical constraints of the project and the overall gameplay goals. Evaluate and initiate processes and features needed to improve and streamline production. Maintain, test, iterate system-based features and design from concept to execution to final tuning. Document game mechanics and features quickly, clearly and concisely in a provided specification format to serve as a resource for other designers in the studio to understand the various design concepts and the decisions made that support them. Help identify key tasks for supporting designers and work with Production and Design Leadership to allocate resources for supporting each system. Competencies, Skills & Knowledge: Clear, analytical thinker, with a proven ability to break gameplay design down into regular, reusable systems and articulate and document them. Understanding of system specific constraints as well as an understanding of game engine architecture and custom toolsets and able to deliver assets within the confines of real time engine constraints and programming demand. Experience spec-ing and tuning particular game systems such as player progression or game wide economies. Must have the ability to conceptualize, present, and execute ideas within a schedule, while actively participating in technical and design problem solving in engine. Demonstrable organized approach to problem solving and time-management to meet strict production deadlines. Current on industry trends as it relates to modern system’s design. Ability to work closely with all project disciplines to ensure clear communication, troubleshooting and efficiency. Excellent knowledge of game design theory and principles of what it takes to make a blockbuster triple A title. Essential Requirements: 2-5 years of game design experience. At least 1 AAA project shipped for current gen consoles in a system design capacity, including primary responsibility for one or more core gameplay systems. Pluses: Understanding of Maya. Understanding of Visual Layout Game Editors. UDK or Kismet related visual scripting experience. C#, Lua or Python related scripting experience. Interested? Apply now.

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