Welcome to Maxis, home to tinkerers, craftspeople, & storytellers. Our drive is to inspire everyone to make a better world through creative play. As the developer of The Sims, we create games and experiences for millions of people around the world and are always looking for new ways to inspire our players. Maxis is a place where you can do what you love and help others grow while doing it; a place where your unique voice can be heard and seen. We put creativity and inclusivity at the core of our work and don’t settle for seeing the world only as it is, but strive to build a world as it could be. Read on to see how you can join our team and dream big.As a Game Designer on The Sims 4, you'll work with a team of enthusiastic industry craftspeople from all walks of life. You will use your passion and knowledge to design player-first experiences that surprise, delight, and invite millions of Simmers around the world to Play with Life .You will report into our European Senior Development Director.
Responsibilities
- Design and own features from concept through implementation to completion.
- Be an active member of the development team using inclusive collaborative frameworks with diverse teams to decide on goals and establish the stories players want to tell within a given release
- Collect and organize feedback from brainstorming workshops to inform design goals, visions, and solutions, and provide feedback to other designers.
- Design, tune and bug fix entire systems within Maxis' proprietary tools
- Help establish best practices for the team.
- Become a mentor to more junior members of the team.
- Have a depth of knowledge across a majority of systems, being able to oversee entire pillars for a pack and train/support the team on its features.
- Determine gameplay experience goals for designs, and tune features to meet those goals.
- Improve designs based on playtests, game metrics, team input and community feedback.
- Be resourceful and solve problems using the tools and time/scope available to create unique and fun experiences for players.
- Collaborate with all team disciplines, including artists, animators, modelers, engineers and producers to get support from the team and guide a project from initial design to final production.
- Become an expert on the game and our community, drawing from our large, varied player base and our past games to make and defend intelligent design choices going forward.
- Have an eye for improving process and efficiency to make life easier for the Design team.
- Help establish best practices for the team.
Desirable Skills
- At least 4 years of game design experience on a video game development team.
- Excellent creative, analytical and organization skills with an ability to write detailed design documentation throughout a project life cycle.
- Progressive thinking while remaining energetic and motivated to overcome challenges with practical solutions.
- Interest in pushing boundaries telling inclusive human stories through systems and thematic storytelling
- Champion a design and get the team excited to work on it.
- Experience prioritizing multiple tasks.
- Experience using a variety of scripting solutions to implement, tune and bug fix features.
- Become proficient in multiple proprietary development tools.
- Sense of ownership and responsibility.
- Design and implementation experience with game features which focus on open-ended player creativity.
- Effective at working both autonomously and in groups of different profiles.
- Knowledge of and enthusiasm for gaming: playing, deconstructing and creating.
- Experience with simulation games.
Qualifications
- Shipped a AAA HD title.
- Bachelor's Degree or equivalent.
- Comfortable with MS suite (Word, Excel, PowerPoint), Google Docs, Miro, Visio, JIRA, and online collaboration suites such as Confluence.
More About Maxis
Many team members have a tenure of over a decade. Here are some top reasons folks join our team and stay:
- Work life balance. We work diligently to ensure we make incredible products while prioritizing our team member’s wellbeing. We uphold a people first mentality.
- Commitment to diversity. We take immense pride in the diversity of our team members. We know unique perspectives and experiences are critical to our success as a team in order to produce the leading simulation game in the world.
- Creative autonomy. We firmly believe good ideas come from anywhere. Joining the team means contributing to the whole production process, from concept through final in game experience.
- Purpose. We provide meaningful content that impacts our player’s in game and real world experiences, motivating us to push the boundaries of what’s possible.
- Community. We thrive at Maxis because of our incredibly supportive and creative colleagues and players that bring fun and positivity into doing what we love.