D&D 5E Another job at WOTC - Digital design

[Kobold Stew]

New jobs at Wizards of the Coast, focusing on Magic: the Gathering. Be the change.

first one: a senior content designer.

Content Generation

• Work with the Lead Designer and key stakeholders to generate content for our digital offerings.
• Generate VO lines for key characters, and work with the appropriate contacts within Wizards to shepherd them through the approval process into the game.
• Generate deck lists for players, and work with analytics to improve them over time.
• Work with team members to craft custom events that drive player engagement.
• Explore the back catalog of Magic content for key cards that can be used to create engaging puzzles for players to solve and expand their understanding of the deep nuances of Magic card interactions.
• Interface with the table-top teams to determine which products can make the transition to digital and what design changes will be necessary allow them to flourish in the digital space.
• Explore and iterate on new play modes that can take advantage of the digital space in ways our table top foundations cannot.
• Iterate over content with an eye towards improving flow and the play experience.

Feature Training

• Own and execute on the new player experiences for digital products
• Create the initial design for the new player experience, and work with the team to execute on that design.
• Continuously refine and improve the experience based on analytics and feedback from the community.
• Work with key stakeholders to ensure that the new player experience brings players smoothly into the product.
• For each new feature, analyze it and design a tutorial teaching players how to interact with the feature.
• Work with the team to execute on the feature tutorial design.

General Design

• Contribute to the overall design of the game by providing feedback on other designs as part of the larger design group.
• Read and comment on specs generated by others
• Coordinate with the economy systems designer to ensure that content is appropriately monetized and balanced within the economy.
• Create designs for new content as needed
• Generating and maintaining design documents and socializing them with the larger team.

Education and Training:

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience

Prior Related Experience:

• 3+ years of content design experience or an adjacent design discipline.
• Experience with designing tutorials.
• Experience with organizing a team and leading them to drive a feature to completion.

Knowledge, Skills and Abilities:

• Knowledge and Passion for Magic: The Gathering
• Experience with owning a section of a game and driving it to ship.
• Comfortable with working with evolving requirements for a design.
• Experience with teaching others to play Magic.
• Experience with Unity or similar game development platform.
• Experience with using analytics to iterate on and improve designs.
• Skilled in writing specs for consumption by other developers to achieve the design vison.
• Time Expected to Reach Full Performance Level in Position:
• Three Months

Physical Requirements:

• Standard office environment, ability to travel

And the second one, Design Manager:

• Engaging and developing the best people – Weekly one-on-ones and regular daily contact with team. Creating and monitoring individual development plans for their people. Actively and directly giving guidance and feedback, and working quickly to ensure any issues or problems with behavior/outcomes get addressed.
• Measuring and improving work – Partnering with appropriate design architects to define standards for quality work and skills; creating and executing measurements for qualitative and quantitative assessments of work and skills. Working with people through one-on-one training, peer training, and seminars to improve work and skills.
• Managing current and new workflow process for team – Assessing current workflow process through participation in work teams. Ensuring optimal performance in workflow, and iterating and improving upon current workflows. Creating new workflows when required for new products and experiences.
• Getting the best people – Ensuring best hiring practices for their team, including tests, interview process, and selection criteria. Ensuring proper introduction and ramp-up for new employees.
• Workload planning – Providing weekly and monthly snapshots to team and to operations on workload for their teams. Partnering with Operations Producer for workload estimates for quarterly, semi-annually, and annual snapshots.
• Future planning and strategy – Working with Operations Director to ensure we have best structure and people for future challenges and opportunities.
• Participating in Design Teams and projects – As time and interests permit, leading and/or serving on various design teams.

PROBLEM SOLVING

• Determines all design teams and design team leads for all set products.
• Determines process for design teams and handoffs to other teams downstream from design.
• Partners with Operations Director to determine overall R&D card and people processes.

AM I QUALIFIED? (Knowledge, Skills and Abilities)

Knowledge, Abilities and Characteristics of the Ideal Wizard:
The successful candidate must embody the Magic R&D principles –

• We are stewards of Magic
• We are passionate about Magic
• We believe Magic makes a difference
• We focus on growing Magic’s audience
• We believe in discovery, surprise, and strategy.
• We listen.
• We improve.
• We collaborate.
• We debate.
• We are inclusive and respectful.
• We expect greatness.

Physical Requirements:

• Office environment, able to work on computer or phone for long periods of time.

Third is a Digital Product Marketing Manager.

Go-to-market

• Develop best-in-class product and consumer marketing plans including positioning, go-to-market tactical plan and on-going player acquisition
• Orchestrate the execution of product and consumer marketing plans in cooperation with cross-functional marketing, creative and product development teams and in coordination with the Magic franchise marketing team
• Partner with the user acquisition team in the execution of on-going consumer acquisition plans (owned, paid and earned media) to meet business and revenue objectives
• Expand and optimize the distribution of the mobile games and apps by developing publishing plans with each platform (Apple, Android, etc.)
• Deliver regular presentations and updates to internal stakeholders and senior leadership team

Product Lifecycle Management

• Articulate marketing objectives that aid in the development of actionable plans and roadmaps for the product/service
• Regularly provide detailed and prioritized data-driven marketing requirements based on analysis of consumer/market insights, to ensure the product/service delivers exceptional user experiences
• Regularly report on key marketing metrics to inform feature design, development, and prioritization
• Partner with Consumer Insights team to collect and organize player feedback through surveys and focus groups, and partner with development on play tests, to constantly improve the quality of the play experience and player satisfaction rating

Community Development and Activation

• Design and execute community development and out-of-game activation plans including influencer, streamer, and user-generated-content community
• Act as an advocate of the consumer and orchestrate communications to the player community re: features, functionality and design to get buy-in and sustain engagement over time
• Partner with the Consumer Insights team and Executive Producers to implement sets of detailed consumer-insights driven marketing requirements to develop player acquisition and out-of-game engagement and advocacy

AM I QUALIFIED?

Experience Creating and Casting these Spells:

• 5+ years of mobile games or apps product marketing

Knowledge, Abilities and Characteristics of the Ideal Wizard:

• Expertise in digital product/game marketing
• An insatiable appetite for understanding and incorporating consumer insights and analytical data into product marketing
• Self-motivated, creative, and resourceful, with a desire for doing what has never been done before
• A deep-rooted passion for digital games, those who make them, and the fans that love to play them
• Exceptional communication and presentation skills
• Experience directly leading and influencing cross-functional product/service development and operations teams in a matrixed/diverse organization
• Ability to inspire the best work from creative partners, from briefing through execution
• Expertise driving actionable plans aligned to strategic vision and goals
• Capable of ruthless prioritization – handling multiple projects simultaneously, under tight time constraints and within budget parameters
• Experience collaborating closely with partners

Education and Training:

• B.A./B.S. or commensurate experience required, preferably with a concentration in Marketing or related coursework
• MBA preferred

Time Expected to Reach Full Performance Level in Position:

• 3 Months

Physical Requirements:

• Office environment, able to work on computer or phone for long periods of time.

Also a Customer service rep.