I've got job openings for a server programmer, a designer, and an
animator in my R&D group, located in San Diego.
My R&D group is:
- small. We'll grow to a half dozen people this year. I run the
group; there's a producer reporting to me that everyone else
reports to.
- doing wacky cool stuff. We did a demonstration of artificial
life as a worldbuilding tool that was one of the Playstation 3
tech demos.
- focused not on tools but on useful stuff. We don't build
libraries for other people. We build proofs of concept of stuff
that nobody else would make.
- nimble. If something isn't showing results in two weeks, we kill
it and move on. We have stuff like a working plot generator for
arbitrary numbers of characters shelved because we didn't know
what to do with it. The research agenda is largely whatever
strikes me as being interesting to pursue.
- working on actual gameplay. We don't just make tech. We make
actual games to prove the tech. At some point, we'll actually
release one, we hope.
Programmer:
The position is for someone to work on the server. They should be
capable of tackling stuff like shardless world architectures and
also stuff like combat systems based on actual fencing rules. They
should be less worried about shipping a box than they are about
making cool stuff. They should be people willing to question
basic assumptions about how games are made, while having a solid
knowledge of the stuff they are questioning. They should not be
exclusively specialists--we have no room for such on a team with
only two programmers. They should not be overly academic or overly
engineering-focused; we do hack a lot, and cut corners, because we
want to see whether things work. We clean it up afterwards if
somebody wants to use it.
Designer:
The position is ideally for someone detail-oriented, interested in
doing gameplay that isn't like current MMO/MUD gameplay,
interested in audiences other than the typical elves-and-swords
audience. Someone capable of filling in endless tables for stats
and also of designing a nifty embedded minigame and then implement
it using code or a scripting language.
Animator:
Some level of 2d or classic animation background preferred.
I believe that the standard job description gobbledegook is up on
the SOE site or will be shortly. The jobs do require relocating to
San Diego.
Email me if the above sounds of interest.
-Raph