Game Designer - Legends of Runeterra

Game Designers at Riot craft the systems, mechanics, and content that make up a resonant player experience. We explore how to best push the boundaries of that experience to build new and engaging moments for players. 

As a Game Designer at Riot Sydney, you’ll work directly with the Lead Designer to create world class content for Path of Champions, a roguelike gamemode in Legends of Runeterra. You will be responsible for delighting players around the world with mechanics and features that evolve the game and resonate with the universe of Runeterra. You will deeply understand how to balance complexity and depth to create gameplay that’s intuitive and satisfying run after run after run.

Internal Job title: Game Designer II. This is a full-time role, based in Sydney, Australia. 

On this team, you will be:

• Player-Focused: You have strong player empathy, and you want to find solutions that make players excited to experience our game. 
• A Collaborator: You want to work elbow-to-elbow with members of other disciplines (such as Engineering or Art) to build a whole experience. You are excited to see problems from a different point of view, and make hard tradeoffs to meet multiple goals.
• An Optimizer; Tuning is in your heart: Inefficiency bothers you and you work to create well-oiled machines whenever you can.
• Adaptable: You understand and are comfortable with switching gears between development, prototyping, iteration, and understand the need for rapid re-prioritization.
• Inclusive: You resist siloing yourself, you seek input, feedback and ask a lot of questions whenever you can to build understanding and empathy for others.

• Design champion kits with new cards, powers, items, relics, and constellations that excite players.
• Design content to challenge these champions like adventures, event mechanics, and quests.
• Own the implementation of your designs through python scripting.
• Work collaboratively with a tight interdisciplinary team to implement content on a live service cadence.
• Playtest and provide clear, actionable feedback on upcoming content and systems.
• Execute on design goals within defined frameworks, adapting to constraints while maintaining player-centric outcomes.
• Communicate design decisions with clarity across teams, ensuring alignment with partners in engineering, product, and art.

• 3+ years of professional experience in game design.
• Demonstrated ability to build and iterate on player-facing content that complements existing game systems.
• Able to integrate feedback from leads and peers into rapid iteration cycles without losing sight of player goals.
• Thrives in small team environments, creating high quality player experiences from limited resources.
• Strong implementation skills, able to prototype and build content with sustainable, production-ready execution.
• Demonstrated clarity in communication, with a strong ability to convey concepts to remote and interdisciplinary teammates.

• Deep player experience with strategy or card games, especially Legends of Runeterra or other deckbuilding roguelikes.
• Experience designing for hero collector or strategy mobile games.
• Experience mentoring or providing design process feedback.
• Experience with developing games in Unity.
• Experience with scripting languages, preferably Python.

For this role, you'll find success through craft expertise and a collaborative spirit that prioritizes the delight of players. We will look at your past studies and experience, but for this role, we also look for dedicated people with a personal relationship with games. If you embody player empathy and care about players' experiences, this is the role for you!

At Riot we strongly believe in work / life balance, and we encourage that with our open paid time off policy, paid parental leave (for both primary and secondary carers) and flexible work schedules to fit your lifestyle. We also believe that work should be fun, we have co-op gaming areas, a play fund so you can broaden and deepen your knowledge of players and community, and all the snacks you would ever need to power through your day (even healthy snacks!). And that’s not all we offer, there’s also:

• Medical Insurance that covers you and your dependents
• Employee Assistance Program
• Wellness fund
• Donation matching of time and money to registered charities
• Learning and Development opportunities

Riot Games fosters a player and workplace experience that values teamwork embodied by the Summoner's Code and Community Code. Our culture embraces differences as a strength, and our values are the guiding principles for how we approach work. We are committed to putting diversity and inclusion (D&I) at the center of everything we do, and promoting a fair and collaborative culture where Rioters treat one another with dignity and respect. We encourage you to read more about our value of thriving together and our ongoing work to build the most inclusive company in Gaming.