Game designers at Riot design and improve the player experience. Your analytical skills, player insight, and creativity help craft in- and out-of-game experiences that engage and surprise players. You will collaborate with devs from all disciplines and work with every tool at hand to create and polish player-focused designs that’ll delight millions around the world.
As a Game Designer III on the Live Pod, you will report to the Live lead. You will meaningfully contribute to ensuring the game lives up to its design goals: replayability, balanced gameplay, variety, and lots of high moments that keep players delighted with each patch! You’ll work on both week-to-week gameplay and balance improvement, and keep a close eye on win rate data alongside broader analytics to deliver regular balance updates and keep the game healthy. You’ll also work on longer-term prototypes and projects that affect TFT’s core gameplay across sets, therefore having an understanding of Teamfight Tactics or other deep strategy games will be crucial to understanding what appeals to our players.
Responsibilities:
- Work with the Live Team, greater design team, and team leadership to keep TFT healthy, fun, and balanced for all subsets of our player audience.
- Keep a close eye on the “state of Live” – monitoring metrics, using our simulation tools to anticipate and prioritize balance and gameplay problems, and be engaged in our community to understand and adapt to player sentiment.
- Openly share work in critiques and seek feedback from other designers
- Collaborate with design leadership and the wider design team to improve the game experience across many releases.
Required Qualifications:
- 5+ years of professional game design experience or equivalent.
- Deep analysis in your approach to design. You identify what creates interesting gameplay, what’s appealing to players, and why things work.
- Capacity to identify a problem, generate a range of solutions to it, and then identify the most appropriate one.
- A high comfort level when it comes to sharing and asking for feedback.
- Empathy and understanding with respect to many different player audiences and needs.
- The capacity to learn how to use design tools to prototype and build gameplay content within Riot’s tech base.
Desired Qualifications:
- Experience designing mobile games
- Strong understanding of TFT gameplay
- Practice giving detailed mentorship and feedback to other designers on their teams
- Deep familiarity with the auto-battler genre
- A structured approach towards complex game systems that maintains game quality while minimizing complexity and exploits.
- Experience with opportunity finding and early stage pitches that cover a broad range of possible approaches
For this role, you’ll find success through craft expertise and a collaborative spirit that prioritizes the delight of players. We will look at your past studies and experience, but for this role, we also look for dedicated people with a personal relationship with games. If you embody player empathy and care about players’ experiences, this is the role for you!
Our Perks:
Riot has a focus on work/life balance, shown by our open paid time off policy, in addition to other perks such as flexible work schedules. We offer medical, dental, and life insurance, parental leave for you, your spouse/domestic partner and children, and a 401k with company match. Check out our benefits pages for more information.
Riot Games fosters a player and workplace experience that values teamwork embodied by the Summoner’s Code and Community Code . Our culture embraces differences as a strength, and our values are the guiding principles for how we approach work. We are committed to putting diversity and inclusion (D&I) at the center of everything we do, and promoting a fair and collaborative culture where Rioters treat one another with dignity and respect. We encourage you to read more about our value of thriving together and our ongoing work to build the most inclusive company in Gaming .
- (Los Angeles Only) Base salary range between $140,100.00 – $195,700.00 USD + incentive compensation + equity + 401K with company match + medical, dental, vision, and life insurance + short and long-term disability + open PTO.
It’s our policy to provide equal employment opportunity for all applicants and members of Riot Games, Inc. Riot Games makes reasonable accommodations for handicapped and disabled Rioters and does not unlawfully discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, age, handicap, veteran status, marital status, criminal history, or any other category protected by applicable federal and state law, including the City of Los Angeles’ Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring Ordinance relating to an applicant’s criminal history (LAMC 189.00).