Senior Game Designer | Riyadh Studio

About Sandsoft:

Sandsoft was formed by industry leaders from international video games publishers and local talents with the core ambition to help develop the gaming ecosystem across MENA, modernize the region and take MENA from an emerging market to a global market leader. Sandsoft has offices in Saudi Arabia, Spain, Finland and China.

Sandsoft is looking for talented individuals who share the same drive and vision.

About Riyadh Studio:

At Sandsoft, we do things differently.

Our Background. We are a new, dynamic games company based in Saudi Arabia focused on publishing, developing & investing in high quality, core mobile Free to Play and Play & Earn game experiences and studios across the world. Our seasoned team is composed of passionate game makers with vast experience in developing, publishing and leading some of the most highly successful game franchises ever released including FIFA, Candy Crush, Need for Speed, Angry Birds, World of Tanks and more. And we are backed by the resources of one of the largest, most successful and prestigious corporations in the Middle East (Ajlan &Bros).

We Value Independence. We create the best possible, small teams we call ‘Tribes’ and give them the freedom and independence to work together in pursuit of creating the highest quality games with high reliability and competition at the heart of the experience. Each Tribe has the freedom to pursue this goal as they see fit. It’s up to them to decide what is best for Sandsoft and for our players.

We Defer to Trust. We trust each other, even when we disagree. In this environment, you will work with your colleagues who will trust you to do what makes sense and give you the autonomy to do what is right for Sandsoft as only our game teams can make the decision to launch or shut down their project.

Everyone is a Game Maker. Everybody in our development team is first and foremost, a Game Maker and you will be no different. We encourage our people to use their talents where they have the most impact. We ask and give feedback proactively to inform our decisions. So while you are a master of your own discipline, you are also a key stakeholder and your role and voice is critical when it comes to concepting and designing Games.

About the Role:

We are looking for Senior Game Designers who will take a hands-on role working with those in your game teams to help steer and guide game vision, strategy and development from ideation through to live service. This role is for a highly creative, experienced designer with a deep understanding of how F2P mobile games engage and monetize. Your responsibilities will include everything from concept and ideation to driving design innovations. This entails tuning and balancing, collaborating with other designers, business lead, and game analysts on the economy and game modes, participating in planning future feature and live development.

The role can be located in Riyadh or Barcelona. 

If you are based in Barcelona, you will be asked to frequently travel to Riyadh, KSA.

About the responsibilities:

• Define, maintain, and develop the creative vision of the games you develop as you drive the ideation of new innovative mobile games ensuring that the whole development team shares and agrees on the vision.
  
• Work with the team to design and craft gameplay experiences and features that deliver strong player engagement, virality, retention, and monetization.
  
• Write, review and give feedback on game/feature design documents, builds, and game roadmap plans.
  
• Prototype game features during early development to find the fun. You will be prototyping innovative new F2P games from scratch, with the goal of providing an experience to players like no other has done before.
  
• Economy Tuning and Balancing. Highly numerate, with experience designing virtual currencies and managing in-game economies. Work with the team to create and craft game content to delight players, and devise & balance meta-game economies to maximise game performance.
  
• Define and assist with the development of the tools and systems necessary to deliver game features to the highest possible quality. Strong ability to implement gameplay using tools made by the engineers or yourself.
  
• Assist with scheduling & prioritising design team workload.
  
• Overseeing UX working with Artists, UX Specialists to create a seamless and player friendly experience.
  
• Collate and Manage Feedback. Open and flexible enough to receive & adjust design choices upon valid feedback, but strong enough to back your own ideas & opinions.

Requirements:

• 5+ years of experience as a Game Designer. Currently being Lead or Above. Deep experience in core gameplay design, game mechanics and creating concepts and leading their execution.
  
• Worked on at least 2 mobile F2P titles launched/live in Core F2P Genres from prototype to live operations.
  
• Strong & concise communicator of game concepts.
  
• Programming skills are a plus but not mandatory. Ability to think with the precision of an engineer and creativity of an artist is highly desired.
  
• Strong grasp of mobile user-experience design and ability to consider & empathize with many different types of players.
  
• Facilitate and contribute to group ideation sessions, gather feedback, & define action points for future iterations.