Lead Designer

Electronic Arts is a leading developer of interactive electronic entertainment (e.g. computer and console games like Sim City, FIFA Soccer, and Madden NFL Football). Revenues exceed $2.9B with 7,200 employees in 26 countries.

EA is pursuing four strategic objectives:
- Be the place for great people to create and deliver great games
- Lead on next generation platforms
- Expand our business
- Deliver our operating plan

The EA Tiburon studio, located in beautiful Orlando, Florida, develops hit games for franchises such as Madden NFL Football, NCAA Football, NFL Street, NASCAR: Chase For The Cup, and Superman. With its past track record of very high quality on-time deliveries and stellar technology, EA Tiburon is looking forward to an even greater future and committed to staying at the bleeding edge of interactive entertainment.

Lead Designer

The successful candidate has at least 5 years of experience in the computer game industry as a full-time Designer, and will have been the credited Lead Designer of two or more critically acclaimed and commercially successful games.

Qualifications:
Had primary responsibility for the design and led a staff of designers on two or more ?successful? (i.e., 85%+ Metacritic score and/or >300k units sold) computer games on major platforms.

Avid game player with extensive knowledge and personal experience with every computer game genre and major platform.

Awareness and insight into game market trends ? when not playing games, the candidate is reading the latest game news and reviews.

Outstanding communicator with the ability to speak or write with equal poise and confidence to anyone from direct reports to executive management, and to audiences of one or a hundred.

Organized, efficient and self-motivated.

Finger on the pulse of popular culture ? knows what?s currently hot ? and not ? regarding: music, film and television, sports and leisure activities; technology and gadgets, celebrities, fashion, etc.

Demonstrable, well-honed analytical and lateral thinking skills.

Able to provide work samples, including: game design documents, scripts, and creative or technical writing samples.

Impressive references who can speak to the specifics of the candidate?s accomplishments and abilities.

Genuine interest in sports and sports games a plus.

Responsibilities:
The primary responsibility of the Lead Designer is to ensure the faithful execution of the game design. This may require working directly with every member of the project team, across multiple disciplines, to guide the implementation, iteration, tuning and balancing of gameplay.

Serve as the project?s creative center, providing leadership and guidance on the game design, including its creation, maintenance, evolution and responsiveness to production realities.

Regardless of where the ideas come from, the Lead Designer builds consensus with the team and senior management to support key gameplay goals and expectations.

Create, prepare and pitch formal design presentations for executive approval. Respond to questions, concerns and criticisms with grace, and then integrate executive feedback into the design.

Have a firm grasp of what is technically and artistically achievable and reasonably possible on all major game platforms, and use that knowledge to adjust design expectations to push the envelope but still work within these restraints.

Generate detailed design documentation ? each gameplay element must be accurately and explicitly described in detail, in such a way that development team members can implement the elements with little or no further input.

Personally implement and/or guide a design staff in the implementation of gameplay, from core mechanics tuning, to pacing, to challenges and rewards adjustments, to stats tweaking; using both proprietary and off-the-shelf tools and processes.

Champion the project and communicate the creative vision and outstanding characteristics of the game to any audience, including the team, management, other departments and the press.

Participate in the long range planning of game franchises. This requires an eye toward scalability of features and functionality, responsiveness to emerging trends and competition, establishing foundation elements for the franchise with future expansion potential.

Mentor junior designers in their craft.