Your responsibilities will include:

Required Skills:

Qualifications

Responsibilities

• 5+ years of professional and advanced leadership experience in entertainment and/or web games. Social or MMO games a plus.
• Bachelor’s Degree in Arts, Graphic Arts, or a related field is required. Masters a plus.
• Demonstrated experience managing multiple projects, priorities, deadlines, and varying personalities.
• Strong understanding of efficient techniques for game art asset production.
• Proven ability to think conceptually about projects and brand, while developing and evolving over time creative systems/processes.
• Demonstrated ability to work effectively with cross-functional teams.
• Excellent ability to communicate with Artists & Designers via voice or writing.
• Strong collaboration & influencing skills and attention to detail.
• Must be able to work with minimal supervision.
• Extremely proficient in Flash, Photoshop, Illustrator and other 2D design-oriented software programs.
• Experience with HTML CSS is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Creates concepts & key art examples to define overall look and feel for games being developed.
• Supports all visual direction with clear written & verbal communication to the development team.
• Manages & mentors internal artists day to day, by setting goals, reviewing and giving feedback on work, writing reviews, and providing ongoing performance feedback.
• Collaborates with Producers to create & assist with managing project schedules and art resource planning.
• Collaborates with Marketing to drive art direction on websites and other promotional materials.
• Manages art review process and conducts critiques with clear and concise direction to the art team.
• Collaborates with Designers to ensure games are accessible to users and have intuitive UI.
• Works with Producers to develop and manage team’s outsourcing capabilities, pipelines, and best practices.
• Work with Engineers and Producers to define technical requirements and optimize pipelines development processes.
• Actively play and analyze gameplay and best practices from competitive games in the social gamespace.

• 5+ years of game design experience; experience in social games and/or MMOs highly desired.
• At least 2 years of experience in Lead or Senior role, managing other designers.
• Demonstrated ability to design compelling game mechanics and features, and work closely with others to prototype, develop and refine them.
• Demonstrated experience managing multiple projects, priorities, deadlines, and varying personalities with minimal supervision.
• Strong collaboration & influencing skills and attention to detail.
• Excellent ability to communicate with Artists, Producers, and Engineers via voice or writing, and able communicate ideas through sketches and/or diagrams.
• Able to critically analyze gameplay mechanics & feature designs, and rapidly conceive achievable solutions to problems.
• Deep knowledge of video games, the industry, and current social game markets, with a passion for the craft of game design.
• Demonstrated knowledge of game production, programming, and art techniques & issues.
• Expert with math and formulas in game environment.
• Strong knowledge of game balancing and pacing.
• Adept with Office suite products with some art tool software experience.
• Experience with prototyping toolsets a plus.
• Bachelors Degree preferred; Game Design degree a plus.

Responsibilities

• Responsible for the design and gameplay implementation in each product, working closely with the Producer and other product Leads.
• Own and manage all phases of game design, including brainstorming, concept inception, game systems & mechanics, story creation, level design, and game flow.
• Manages & mentors game design team day to day, by setting goals, reviewing and giving feedback on work, writing reviews, and providing ongoing performance feedback.
• Manage rapid prototyping and proof of concept development for products.
• Ensure products are designed and developed to meet all established standards for quality, timeliness, budget, technological objectives, and feature set.
• Collaborates with Art Director and Producers to ensure games are accessible to users and has intuitive UI.
• Keep current on industry knowledge of competitive games, successful games, popular and ‘fun’ gameplay mechanics, and consumer demographics within the social game market.
• Naturally predisposed toward collaboration, invitation of peer reviews, and critiquing others’ work in a motivating way.
• Capable of communicating complex game designs clearly and succinctly to both development teams and internal leadership.

ohai, founded and headed up by angel investor, former VC, and serial entrepreneur Susan Wu, launched its first game, City of Eternals, a few months ago. The game combines some of the viral features and monetization strategies of traditional Facebook games with gameplay elements of massively-multiplayer online roleplaying games.

Oh Nick Saint, you are a saint. We’re aiming to shape the future of social games, so we appreciate the shout-out. And we’re honored to be mentioned alongside Stewart Butterfield and Sid Meier, two dudes we totally admire. Now to keep earning that accolade with more kickass games, starting soon with (drum roll) Project Unicorn Parade!

ABC’s review is by Games.com Editor-in-Chief Libe Goad, once named among the “50 Most Influential Games journalists” — but we want to nominate her Best Game Journalist EVAR. Because more than just liking City of Eternals, Libe really gets our vision of how games can foster more fulfilling social interactions and relationships. As she puts it:

“You can actually chat with people in [City of Eternals]… You see their little Facebook icon pop up and you can actually message them and get to know them. It’s taking social networking that we know on Facebook and taking it to the next level.”

Simply put, we are building games that are truly social. We at ohai believe that we’re still in the first generation of social games. Through more engaging stories, richer world environments, and deeper game play mechanics, we’re heralding an entirely new generation of social games. And, we’re just getting started. Our next game is going to rock.

Happy weekend from ohai!

Hamlet