Principal Game Designer, Monetization

As a Game Designer, you will design, tweak, and optimize the player experience. Your analytical skills, player insight, and creativity aid in crafting in- and out-of-game experiences that engage and surprise players. You will collaborate with interdisciplinary teams and work with every tool at hand to innovate and iterate player-focused designs that'll delight millions around the world.

As a Principal Game Designer working centrally across the entire Global Riot Games Pillar, you will help decipher Riot’s next big bets, specifically in the monetization space. You will work to build monetization (and interdependent systems, like progression) from the ground up for games in every stage of their life cycle, from R&D Prototype to globally shipped live games. Together with Team Leads, Product Managers and Systems Designers, you will work to maximize our business outcomes without compromising on what makes our games world-class in terms of fun, engagement, and player-focus. You will help solve the highest impact monetization design problems across our entire portfolio of games, through direct effort or in collaboration with stakeholders and designers on the game teams. You are comfortable operating in an ambiguous environment where goals and constraints are mostly team driven and where change, big and small, is a critical part of the process. You will balance meaningfully engaging with, questioning, and leveling up the product strategy especially as it intersects with monetization, while simultaneously inheriting and championing the game vision as stated by the team. 

As one of the most senior designers at Riot Shanghai, you will be responsible for truly understanding the markets and players within China and helping to drive our future games to be as amazing as possible for our Chinese fans. You will be given the opportunity to drive Riot culture and approach to monetization, especially in China, and in turn have the chance to leave a large footprint on the global games market. You will report to the Head of Operations for Riot China Game Studio.

Responsibilities:

• Work with game teams to design initial monetization and progression systems in a diversity of genres and under complex constraints: Design at all levels, from general business model to specific features and products that drive player behavior
• Assess teams’ revenue strategy needs and align with the leadership team on the solution
• Analyze existing genre-specific and broader market best practices to make recommendations for game teams & incubation pitches
• Stay apprised of current monetization practices and develop a view of the future of monetization, specifically within the China market
• Work with Monetization Designers and Product Managers across the organization to establish Riot best practices
• Communicate strategic recommendations in front of partners and senior leadership
• Operate within spaces that have little definition and high ambiguity
• Advise teams on product and game design problems by using a combination of a broad and deep gaming background, game design craft, and product strategy thinking
• Be a Global Riot-wide expert on trends, best practices, and player empathy for the China market
• Educate Rioters outside of China about this extremely important region and its unique characteristics, especially regarding monetization design

Required Qualifications:

• 8+ years of experience in professional Game Design
• 3+ years of experience designing a monetization product, distribution mechanism or system from scratch in the video game industry
• Shipped or worked on at least one AAA+ online game
• Can create and improve complex mechanics and/or systems with attention to the player impacts and downstream effects
• Experience creating impactful monetization projects covering ideation, scoping, design and execution

Desired Qualifications:

• Experience working on a live product 
• Experience working within Chinese-operated game development studios
• Proficiency in English language