SOE Recruiting Lead Designer for New Flagship Title

Make of it what you will, but a posting on JobSeeker reveals that Sony Online Entertainment is looking for a lead designer for “a new flagship product”.

Sony Online Entertainment

Job Title: Lead Game Designer for New Flagship Project
Location: San Diego, CA

Based in San Diego, Sony Online Entertainment LLC (SOE) has an array of games in development at studios in Austin, TX, Denver, CO, Seattle, WA, and Taiwan including The Agency, Free Realms and DC Universe Online. These new titles are being designed to push the envelope of online entertainment quality, innovation and delivery.
SOE, the company responsible for the pioneering, global EverQuest® entertainment phenomenon, has developed and/or published a number of ground-breaking and genre-defining games, including EverQuest®, EverQuest®II, Star Wars Galaxies®, PlanetSide®, The Matrix Online™, EverQuest® Online Adventures, Champions of Norrath™, Untold Legends™ and Field Commander™.

This is an exciting opportunity to conceive and lead the game design of our new flagship project and we are looking for a Lead Game Designer to ensure its success!

Relationships
‘¢ Leads the design team, providing day-to-day and long-term direction, goals, mentoring, and guidance.
‘¢ Works with the Producer to define design goals, scheduling, and milestones.
‘¢ Works with other team leads to service their needs, champion the needs of the design team, and maintain an excellent flow of cross-disciplinary information.
‘¢ Works with the Franchise Creative Director to establish the creative vision, long-term design goals, and maintain the quality of the game’s design and content.
Responsibilities
‘¢ Owns the creative vision of the game.
‘¢ Responsible for the execution quality of the creative vision for the game.
‘¢ Manages the design team to successfully meet project goals and deadlines.
‘¢ Provides training, guidance, and feedback to the design team.
‘¢ Responsible for meeting design team deadlines and goals, and assuring the quality of all design work.
‘¢ Establishes and maintains a great, inclusive, creative working environment.
‘¢ Establishes and maintains best practices and processes for the design team.
‘¢ Creates and maintains design documentation, including the overall game design document.
‘¢ Establishes and maintains core gameplay mechanics and content guidelines.
‘¢ Makes decisions on how to accomplish current design goals.
‘¢ Coordinates workflow, scheduling and assignments with other team leads, and aids the information flow between both the designers and to other disciplines.
‘¢ Communicates the design vision for the product both internally to the team and company, as well as externally to the press and public.
Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities:
‘¢ Broad knowledge of game design / game mechanics / game balancing concepts and techniques.
‘¢ Strong leadership abilities and excellent verbal and written communication skills.
‘¢ Ability to create composition of story and game-flow.
‘¢ Strong knowledge of MMO development and the games industry.
‘¢ Ability to adapt quickly to a rapidly changing, fast-paced creative environment.
‘¢ Thorough understanding of programming concepts.
‘¢ Thorough understanding of game art production.
‘¢ Strong organizational and problem solving skills
‘¢ Ability to take and apply direction.
‘¢ Ability to work well in a team environment.
‘¢ Knowledge of scripting languages and concepts.