Game Designer – Japan & Global Game Development

Company Description

■ About Keywords Studios

Keywords Studios is a global provider of creative and technical services to the video games industry, with over 13,000 professionals across 70+ studios in 25+ countries. We support clients across the entire game lifecycle through three core Service Lines:

• Create — Game development, art production, and audio
• Globalize — Localization, localization QA, functional testing
• Engage — Marketing, LiveOps, community, and player support

In Japan, Keywords Studios delivers its full range of services across Create, Globalize, and Engage, supporting leading publishers and developers through both local and international production teams. Our presence includes the Tokyo-based development studio Wizcorp, alongside established localization, QA, player support, and marketing capabilities serving some of the most influential companies in the Japanese games and entertainment industry.

Keywords Studios is increasingly trusted by Japanese partners to support productions that span multiple regions—combining Japanese creative leadership with global delivery capacity across Asia-Pacific and beyond. These engagements require not only strong production execution, but creative sensibility and cultural understanding to align vision and delivery across teams.

As one of the world’s most influential and production-intensive markets, Japan represents a strategic growth area for Keywords Studios. This role plays a key part in strengthening client partnerships, driving business opportunities, and ensuring high-quality delivery across projects.

Job Description

Applicants must be currently residing in Japan and possess valid authorization to work in Japan. (Fully remote work may be available within Japan, depending on the project requirements/needs, candidate’s seniority, experience, and location.)

■ Position Overview

We are seeking a collaborative team player Junior to Mid-level Game Designer to contribute to game projects of varying scope, from small-scale productions up through AAA titles.

Working under the guidance of the Principal Game Designer, you will define, implement, test, and refine gameplay mechanics, systems, and content.

This is a hands-on individual contributor role for a designer who wants to develop broad design craft while making practical contributions. You will collaborate closely with cross-disciplinary teams across regions, turning creative direction into clear, playable results. Driven by a strong creative curiosity, you possess a keen eye for originality and innovation, constantly seeking proactive ways to raise the bar for player experience.

We value how you work with others as much as the experience you already have. The right person communicates openly, receives direction and feedback professionally, raises ideas or concerns constructively, and supports the team's decision once a direction has been set.

■ Key Responsibilities

Game Design & Implementation

• Feature Design: Design and refine gameplay mechanics, systems, rules, and content under the guidance of the Principal Game Designer.
• Design Documentation: Translate direction and design intent into clear, concise documentation that other disciplines can act on.
• Hands-on Implementation: Build and tune features directly in-engine using available tools, data, and scripting workflows.
• Iteration & Balancing: Use playtesting, feedback, and data to identify issues and improve usability, balance, clarity, game feel and other aspects.

Prototyping & Creative Development

• Concept Contribution: Participate actively in ideation, offering relevant ideas and alternatives while working within the project's creative direction.
• Collaborative Prototyping: Work with programmers, artists, and other team members to create playable prototypes that test ideas and reduce uncertainty.
• Player Perspective: Evaluate features from the player's point of view and communicate findings clearly to the team.

Cross-Disciplinary Collaboration

• Team Partnership: Work closely with programming, art, QA, and other disciplines to bring designs to life.
• Design Alignment & Risk Mitigation: Articulate design intent, align on project goals, and surface potential technical or scope risks early.
• Global Coordination: Collaborate effectively with distributed and multicultural teams, adapting communication to different working contexts.

Growth & Quality

• Ownership & Reliability: Autonomously drive and deliver assigned work, communicate progress and blockers, and follow tasks through to an appropriate level of quality.
• Feedback Engagement: Seek, receive, and apply feedback openly, while also giving useful feedback to teammates.

Qualifications

■Required

• Some professional game design experience, typically 1 to 4 years (including internships), or equivalent evidence of production-ready ability through strong prototypes, mods, game jams, student, or independent projects.
• A sound understanding of core game design principles and the ability to analyze why a feature does or does not create the intended player experience.
• Experience implementing or tuning content in a game engine or comparable development environment.
• Ability to communicate clearly, work toward shared goals, and collaborate reliably with people from different disciplines and backgrounds.
• Ability to work effectively within creative direction: contribute a point of view, discuss alternatives constructively, and align with decisions once made.

■Preferred

• A portfolio demonstrating your design thinking and your contribution to playable mechanics, systems, or content.
• Experience with Unreal Engine, Unity, visual scripting, spreadsheets, or other tools used to implement and balance gameplay.
• Experience working in co-development, multicultural or distributed teams.
• Working proficiency in Japanese, or a strong commitment to developing it in a professional context.

■ Skills & Competencies

• Design Fundamentals - Understands player goals, feedback, challenge, balance, usability, and game feel.
• Collaborative Maturity - Communicates directly and respectfully, handles feedback and disagreement professionally, and contributes to a stable team environment.
• Constructive Voice - Shares ideas and concerns with clear reasoning while respecting ownership, constraints, and final decisions.
• Execution & Ownership - Turns direction into clear, playable work and follows through reliably.
• Player-Focused Thinking - Evaluates design choices through their intended effect on the player experience.
• Adaptability - Ability to pivot smoothly when project priorities change, maintaining a positive focus on new goals with guidance from the team.
• Learning Mindset - Actively develops craft, seeks feedback, and applies lessons to future work.

Additional Information

■Application process 

① Online selection

We review resumes from all applicants within 2 weeks.

② Technical Test

If your profile matches our requirements, we will send you a test. Based on the results, we will contact you again to schedule an interview.

③ Interview

We conduct interviews to assess your technical skills, motivations, and interest in what we do. We also take the time to share our vision and values, as we believe you are interviewing us as much as we are interviewing you.

④ Offer

We make our final decision and send a detailed offer upon success.

■What We Offer

• Opportunity to represent a highly reputed global leader in game art services.
• Competitive compensation package with performance-based incentives.
• Chance to work with some of the biggest and most exciting game developers in Japan.
• A collaborative, growth-oriented global culture.

Role Information: EN

Studio: Keywords Studios

Location: Asia Pacific, Japan

Area of Work: Game Development

Service: Create

Employment Type: Full-time, Contract

Working Pattern: Hybrid/Remote

PERSONAL DATA PROTECTION POLICY

Keywords Studios is strongly committed to protecting your personal information. By sending your CV/Resume, you are agreeing to our terms and conditions and consent to your data being managed and retained in accordance with our data privacy and retention policy https://www.keywordsstudios.com/en/applicant-privacy-notice/.