Senior Systems Designer

We’re ArenaNet. We make the games we want to play and infuse them with innovation, hand-crafted detail, and creative passion. As developer and publisher of the award-winning Guild Wars game series, we’re proud to share our passion for the online worlds we’ve created with over 11 million players worldwide.

Our studio is built on foundations of excellence with a focus on community. We constantly innovate, unlocking the true potential of online role-playing with game-changing titles like Guild Wars 2 and beyond. The status quo is not good enough for our dedicated worldwide community of players, which is why we question the de facto industry conventions and demand more from ourselves as developers.

We are looking for an experienced systems designer interested in driving and owning new feature development and maintaining existing features for Guild Wars 2. Do you love MMOs and the social experience of games? Are you passionate about designing and implementing systems that integrate with content to create holistic experiences? Do you have experience leading development of features from design to implementation? Are you familiar with the constraints and complexities of working on a live game? Do you enjoy driving standards and consensus around best practices? Are you the type of person that loves building consensus and creating a shared vision with a team? If any of this sound like you, we would love to hear from you!

Why Join the ArenaNet Design Team?

The Design team at ArenaNet are the ones responsible for envisioning and implementing the encounters, events, items, rewards, etc. that our players interact with in the game. We work collaboratively across multiple disciplines to create, iterate, and refine ideas and put them in the game. Our work requires empathy, patience, communication, the ability to understand a variety of players and playstyles, and attention to detail.

As a designer, you will utilize your love of games along with your innovation and creative problem-solving skills to define and craft experiences and features that affect our players over the lifetime of their relationship with the products that we (and you) develop.

We also believe that a healthy team is the first step to making fun, engaging games. And a healthy team is one of mutual respect, psychological safety, and diversity. We believe that new perspectives and voices help us to improve our game and find the best ideas.

TYPICAL TRAITS:

• Experience designing and implementing features from concept to release on at least 1 shipped title in a systems designer role
• A desire to work collaboratively with various teams and disciplines to bring ideas to life
• Understanding of player motivations and game reward systems
• Familiarity with maintaining live systems and games
• Experience with scripting languages like Lua, JavaScript, Python or Blueprint
• You have learned or imagined how to design systems that cultivate dramatic gameplay experiences.

NICE TO HAVES

• Passion for Guild Wars or other MMO games
• Experience working on multiplayer online games
• Knowledge / Experience of UX needs and working with UX designers and artists