World Builder

About the job

What’s It All About:

You are the architect of the environment in the game, building visually stunning areas where players can’t quite decide whether to stare in awe at their surroundings or concentrate on killing each other. It’s your responsibility to make sure the environments aren’t just attractive, but functional as well – providing interesting tactical choices that draw attention to important aspects of the game play experience. In addition to crafting the play spaces, you also excel at making the world come to life by populating it with objects, NPCs and encounters. By working closely with other artists, designers, and programmers, you devise ways to structure your landscapes so players can use all their characters’ abilities and all their own game play skills to discover and overcome challenges and opponents.

A Typical Day:

After reviewing the latest art assets and character abilities, you discuss with designers ways you can structure any given region to take advantage of particular character abilities and highlight important mission storylines. You begin laying out the general theme for the area, noting combat “choke points” and non-combat challenges that can occur in the environment, as well as collaborating with other artists in the creation of new doodads and other game elements to plug into the map. Additionally you’re putting the final touches on a multi-player PvP map that incorporates different aspects of gameplay. You organize sessions where you, along with a few artists and designers (and anyone else available), log in and run around the map. You’ll demonstrate how your world design highlights the art and game elements, check the area for bugs and missing features and finally develop alternative tactics for exterminating one another in virtual reality. In addition to crafting your own playable spaces you will also work shoulder to shoulder with other world builders, coaching them on their work and helping make the game the best that it can be.

Who You Work With the Most:

You work hand-in-hand with other game designers, environment artists, 3-D artists and concept artists, making sure your areas fit consistently and seamlessly into the world at large. By coordinating your efforts with the design team, you’re able to build environments that showcase different game elements at all the appropriate times and introduce new challenges that correspond with new abilities and new items. Since the artists and the modelers create visual assets you’ll use to design the levels, making sure they know the needs of the game is vitally important to the task at hand. What excites them, excites you, and will likely excite the players at the end of the day.

What You’ve Done Before:

Experience with UnrealEd, Radiant, or equivalent level-building tool
Playable level portfolio
Proficient skills in Photoshop and 3D-Max
Experience with scripting missions, npcs and events
Strong sense of architecture
Strong sense of geography
Familiarity with texturing and lighting for next-gen engines
Passion for games and multiplayer shooters