Associate Design Director

About Splash Damage

We believe that games play better with friends. For more than 20 years, we’ve been creating team-based multiplayer experiences that have entertained tens of millions of players all over the world and forged countless new friendships along the way.

Our studio culture is rooted in our open, friendly, and collaborative environment. Our games are made by people from all over the world, from our entry-level Fresh Talent hires to industry veterans, and we believe that fostering that diverse culture is the best way to build both our games and our studio. We have won numerous awards, including a ‘World-Class’ accreditation by Best Companies and being named one of the UK’s 100 Best Large Companies to work for.

Our offices are based in Bromley, UK, and our teams have access to working patterns that work for them.

Benefits:

We offer a comprehensive benefits package for you and your family, including:

• On-site and Hybrid working patterns help us spend the right amount of time together
• Substantial performance-related pay system on top of your basic compensation, along with enhanced pension contributions and our life assurance scheme
• Bespoke VISA and relocation packages for you and your family, with support from our team throughout the whole process
• 25 days of holiday and 8 Bank Holidays a year, plus our annual studio closure between Christmas and New Year’s
• Private Medical and Dental Cover for you and your family, along with a 24/7 digital GP service
• Extensive Mental Health support, with Line Manager Mental Health training, a group of Mental Health First-Aiders, and on-site or remote counselling
• Our bespoke Learning and Development course framework to help you grow as an employee, manager, and leader
• Industry-leading fully paid 30 weeks maternity leave & 10 weeks paternity leave

The Role

As an Associate Design Director at Splash Damage, you will assist the Design Director in driving the execution of the creative vision, helping to direct the design teams and the successful delivery of a product.

As a natural problem solver, you can give examples of cross-team issues on previous projects and how you were able to reconcile them.

You will represent and support the needs of the business, the player, and team members’ needs on the project. You will be responsible for the output and growth of the entire design discipline on your project and for the morale, alignment and cohesion of all team members, across disciplines.

You will oversee the creation and maintenance of documentation including the GDD and wiki pages, though you will largely communicate verbally; spending time with each team member, ensuring they understand the vision and design, are “bought-in” and have what they need to do their jobs. You will ensure the team feel the progress they are making and what their work is in service of in the bigger picture.

You will regularly and effectively communicate with the Project Leadership Team, presenting the creative achievements of the team and negotiating feature / change requests.

You will manage, mentor, develop and coach Lead Game Designers. You will be integral to the planning on your project working alongside Production to create roadmaps, hiring and succession plans, and scoping exercises.

As a leader you will set the tone on the project and ensure Splash Damage’s values are embraced and embodied by you team; including ensuring your team have autonomy and do not feel dictated to.

Beyond your project you will work to share knowledge, improve standards and processes across the studio and across disciplines, albeit with a focus on design.

You have:

• A passion for making and playing games
• Extensive industry experience
• Shipped at least 1 AAA title in an equivalent role (current/last gen) working on it from start to finish
• Shipped multiple titles in a leadership role, including the running of a multi-person design team; people-management, mentoring, line-management;
• Experience of delivering on the project goals, translating the high-level vision into actionable tasks across all disciplines within the team
• Experience of being the flag-bearer / champion for a product at a project level
• The ability to work collaboratively with other disciplines
• Excellent verbal and presentation skills
• Excellent written communication skills, including writing high quality and thorough design documentation
• Experience with design documentation, diagram and flow-chart creation, including wiki-based design documentation and spreadsheets
• A deep understanding of all aspects of design with mastery in many areas including signs and feedback, controls, balancing, narrative, game-feel, retention, usability, on-boarding, social mechanics
• Deep player empathy
• An understanding of player psychology and motivations
• An understanding of systems, systemic design, emergent gameplay and the place of procedural content generation in development
• Knowledge of industry trends in regard to genres, gameplay, development models, and financial models
• Fierce attention to detail
• Strong problem-solving skills including lateral thinking

Bonus points for:

• At least one shipped title featuring post-launch monetization beyond simple DLC packs; ideally a Free-to-play title.
• Strong maths skills; formulas, probability, statistics and balancing
• Highly experienced with Microsoft Office Products and other business software including: Word, Outlook, PowerPoint, Excel, Visio, Adobe Photoshop or similar
• Experience in creating first or third person shooters
• Experience running the live phase of a game as a service, including using telemetry / metrics to inform design and content decisions
• Experience of parsing the results of, and acting on, market research e.g. Focus groups, qualitative and quantitative surveys etc.
• Experience of prototyping gameplay mechanics using UE4, UE3, Unity, or similar.