Lead Open World Designer

Summary 

As the Lead Open World Designer, you will be the primary vision holder for the open world, its systems, and content. You will lead a multi-disciplinary team to deliver a best-in-class open-world experience rich with characters, encounters, side missions, puzzles, secrets, discoverables, collectables, and more. 

Core Responsibilities 

• Drive the design and implementation of engaging, immersive, interactive open-world content that encourages exploration and emphasizes a mix of fun, varied gameplay, worldbuilding and storytelling. 
• Work closely with the narrative team to develop ideas for new content. 
• Develop and execute the design vision and strategy, ensuring that open-world content aligns with the game's overall narrative, thematic, and player experience goals.  
• Leverage the game's core systems and mechanics to create dynamic and unpredictable open-world experiences that adapt to player choices and actions.  
• Continuously seek opportunities to innovate, challenge conventions, and push the boundaries of open-world design.  
• Rally designers, engineers, animators, artists, and external co-dev partners to deliver playable progress at regular intervals as part of a rapid iterative process. 
• Incorporate feedback from peers, playtests, and senior leadership to refine and pivot as the game demands. 
• Go beyond documentation and management to lead from the trenches, with hands-on contributions to the playable experience. 
• Foster a culture of collaboration, innovation and iteration. 

Core Qualifications 

• 5 or more years of experience in open-world design. 
• Prior experience as a Senior or Lead Designer. 
• Knack and passion for blurring the lines between AI, systems, mechanics and scripted content to create deep, layered worlds in which stories can unfold organically through exploration and gameplay. 
• Strong understanding of population and encounter design and open-world content balancing.  
• Excellent communication, interpersonal and leadership skills.  
• Innovative thinker with creative problem-solving skills who thrives in a collaborative team environment.
• Experience leading multidisciplinary teams is a plus.  
• Experience in UE4 or UE5 is a plus.  
• Experience working with co-development partners is a plus. 

Description  

• Full time job with benefits  
•  Role is on-site in San Rafael, CA

The base pay range for this position is $125,000 to $165,000 per year. Actual compensation is based on market location and may vary depending on job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. We also offer a competitive package of benefits including paid time off, sick time, company holidays, parental leave, medical/dental/vision insurance, life insurance, disability insurance, and 401(k) to regular full-time employees. Certain roles may also be eligible for bonus and equity. 

About Absurd Ventures  

Absurd Ventures is a media company creating new IP across all platforms and for all formats. Absurd Ventures is building narrative worlds, creating characters, and writing stories for a variety of genres, without regard to medium, to be produced for live-action and animation; video games and other interactive content; books, graphic novels, and scripted podcasts.