Who We Are:
At NaturalMotion, we make games that wow people. We innovate to create previously impossible experiences that would not exist without us. We take pride in making titles that reach a large audience and creating communities that last. Our commitment to excellence has earned us recognition as one of the UK's Best Places to Work in games for eight consecutive years by gamesindustry.biz, and we're proud to be part of the Zynga and Take-Two Interactive family.
We are looking for an experienced metagame designer to join us at NaturalMotion/Zynga to help build a new, unannounced mobile free-to-play action game. As a senior systems/metagame designer, you will oversee the development of meta-features and systems that will excite and engage our players, and help define the game’s design in close collaboration with the development team.
In this function, you will be tasked with helping to design individual features, as well overseeing the harmonious integration of new systems within the existing framework of the game. Your experience on past projects will allow you to clearly articulate feature designs that are extensible, tunable, and live-ops ready. Finally, as a senior metagame designer, you will support and guide other team members to develop better understanding of metagame design expertise so that everyone can better understand the integration and impact of the design decisions you make.
We embrace a hybrid work environment. Within this role you will work 2 days per week in our London office and the remaining days at home.
What You'll Do:- Working closely with the development team, as well as product and analytics stakeholders to identify features that will support and grow the success of the game, helping shape roadmap strategy and prioritization.
- Creating design and getting buy-in for major game systems that marry KPI and design goals, while accounting for interactions with existing features and the game’s economy.
- Clearly present and communicate your designs to project leads and members of the development team.
- Developing extensible and data-driven solutions that can be easily operated in a live-ops environment.
- Experience as a metagame designer in the free-to-play market, preferably from the mobile gaming industry.
- Experience designing for a live-ops game with a strong understanding of key performance indicators and analytics.
- Experience in creating deep meta-systems with the ability to define data-structures and tuning parameters.
- Ability to effectively communicate and collaborate with stakeholders across multiple disciplines, including the development team, analytics, product
- Working within a live-ops environment; collaborating with analytics to understand user behaviour and react to live data.
- Experience working with action-oriented mid-core titles.
- Competitive salary and discretionary annual bonus scheme
- 26 days holiday, plus bank holidays & 2 paid personal days
- 6 months fully paid maternity/adoption leave and 16 weeks fully paid paternity leave (eligibility criteria applies)
- Pension plan, with a double matching employer contribution
- Private medical & dental insurance and healthcare cash plan
- Life insurance, personal accident insurance and income protection
- Mental health and neurodiversity support programs
- Company Employee Stock Purchase Plan (eligibility criteria applies)
- Fitness reimbursement plan, worth £600 per annum
- Flexible working hours
- Weekly happy hours, seasonal parties and monthly social events
- Annual rail season ticket advance and cycle to work scheme
#LI-Hybrid
#LI-NH3
We are proud to be an equal opportunity employer, which means we are committed to creating and celebrating diverse thoughts, cultures, and backgrounds throughout our organization. Employment with us is based on substantive ability, objective qualifications, and work ethic – not an individual’s race, creed, color, religion, sex or gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin or ancestry, alienage or citizenship status, physical or mental disability, pregnancy, age, genetic information, veteran status, marital status, status as a victim of domestic violence or sex offenses, reproductive health decision, or any other characteristics protected by applicable law.
As an equal opportunity employer, we are committed to providing the necessary support and accommodation to qualified individuals with disabilities, health conditions, or impairments (subject to any local qualifying requirements) to ensure their full participation in the job application or interview process. Please contact us at [email protected] to request any accommodations or for support related to your application for an open position.
Please be aware that Zynga does not conduct job interviews or make job offers over third-party messaging apps such as Telegram, WhatsApp, or others. Zynga also does not engage in any financial exchanges during the recruitment or onboarding process, and will never ask a candidate for their personal or financial information over an app or other unofficial chat channel. Any attempt to do so may be the result of a scamp or phishing attack, and you should not engage. Zynga’s in-house recruitment team will only contact individuals through their official Company email addresses (i.e., via a zynga.com, naturalmotion.com, smallgiantgames.com, themavens.com, gram.gs email domain).
Top Skills
What We Do
Our goal is to wow people with creativity and technology. We like making stuff that seems impossible. The thrill of achieving this together in a team – and seeing the result played by millions is what makes us tick. Our hit games include CSR2 and Dawn of Titans, we’re currently developing our first Star Wars game for mobile and Nintendo Switch, Star Wars: Hunters™. NaturalMotion was founded in 2001 and has three studios in the UK: London, Brighton & Birmingham. For the past five consecutive years (2018 - 2022), NaturalMotion studios have been listed as one of the Best Places To Work in the UK video games industry, at the Gamesindustry.biz Awards. NaturalMotion is proud to be a Zynga studio. Zynga is a global leader in interactive entertainment with a mission to connect the world through games and a wholly-owned subsidiary of Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. With massive global reach in more than 175 countries and regions, Zynga has a diverse portfolio of popular game franchises that have been downloaded more than four billion times on mobile including CSR Racing™, Empires & Puzzles™, FarmVille™, Golf Rival™, Hair Challenge™, Harry Potter: Puzzles & Spells™, High Heels!™, Merge Dragons!™, Merge Magic!™, Toon Blast™, Toy Blast™, Words With Friends™ and Zynga Poker™. With Chartboost, a leading mobile advertising and monetization platform, Zynga is an industry-leading next-generation platform with the ability to optimize programmatic advertising and yields at scale. Founded in 2007, Zynga is headquartered in California with locations in North America, Europe and Asia
