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It's worth applying to if you live in Nottingham. Outside of it you get a polite note saying they only hire people in the Nottingham area.

Voss wrote:
No?
Its a commentary on forum posters who think themselves 'expert game designers.' It has _nothing_ at all to do with any company.

But those forum posters aren't wrong in thinking they could make better rules than GW

Nurglitch wrote:
It's worth applying to if you live in Nottingham. Outside of it you get a polite note saying they only hire people in the Nottingham area.

But what about working remotely? GW should get on with the times

Nurglitch wrote:
It's worth applying to if you live in Nottingham. Outside of it you get a polite note saying they only hire people in the Nottingham area.

I'm sure they consider those outside of Nottingham for employment when hiring. However GW are unlikely to pay for someone to move from abroad to take a position unless they are very highly skilled/critical worker.




It might be that GW is restructuring and if so having someone passionate about the game and about the finances in a lead role like this could do really well for bringing out a more united front on the games. Heck it might be GW even trying to avoid being purely "Design team led" and imposing some order on that aspect which can sometimes result in armies being "ignored" for long periods. Whilst Sisters of Battle have sold really well GW should never have reached the point with them that they did - same for a lot of similar armies geting "left behind"


That said this could purely be GW restructuring roles internally and just putting ads out as normal even if behind the scenes its just shuffling staff around a bit.

It's not worth applying to whether you live in Nottingham or not. This is the lead design position of the crown jewel of a company worth billions. If you aren't currently at least a senior designer of a big-name game company, your application won't be given more than the 3 seconds of attention required to scan the resume to see that you aren't.

Even if they don't have someone already selected internally, the number of people on the planet who would get serious consideration for this roll is in the low dozens.

Where the person is currently located is 100% irrelevant; they would have to move to Nottingham if they got the role, but GW is not going to blink for a moment at offering a very competitive relocation package if they actually do end up hiring someone outside the company, because that would 100% be because they were headhunting someone from another major game company.

Man...dem benefits. Almost 7 weeks vacation...7.5% match...god damn...


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 tauist wrote:
Only 33 days of holiday per year? meh

Interesting perspective - you must not live in the US?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Crimson wrote:
Considering that half of the Dakka thinks that they understand game design better than GW's designers, I expect all those armchair experts to start furiously typing their applications!

I have no credentials other than angry forum posting, but it would be a dream job if I could afford the likely pay cut.

 Daedalus81 wrote:
I have no credentials other than angry forum posting, but it would be a dream job if I could afford the likely pay cut.

Would it really? Have you read the interviews with people who quit? You get bean counters coming from upstairs saying things like "Unit X is underselling, up the stats and slash the points" or "About the boxed game you've been writing, I didn't feel like ordering the card deck you said you needed, but we have some spare custom D12s from Blackstone Fortress, change the rules to use that instead"

I dunno why people are complaining about the 33 days. I rarely get the actual holidays being in Healthcare!

Anyway if I lived in the UK I'd entirely apply but since I don't, oh well. I'm sure they're gonna hire someone for enthusiasm and they'll be just as bad as the other designers have been.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 lord_blackfang wrote:

Voss wrote:
No?
Its a commentary on forum posters who think themselves 'expert game designers.' It has _nothing_ at all to do with any company.

But those forum posters aren't wrong in thinking they could make better rules than GW

Exactly. We get some pretty bad posts here, but as a whole it says a lot that what we're seeing from GW was NOT the tossed out ideas.

I’m just glad they aren’t looking for a Head Games Developer.


“If enough people buy $100 orders, they’ll each get coupons worth different values they can spend next month on whatever new release we are Crafting. Could be anything in the World.

But you didn’t spend enough, so it’s Primaris Leftennants. You brought this on yourself.

I never said that.”

"Here's an idea... we double the prices, and halve the number of models. That way, each model is worth twice as much to the player, and everyone wins!"

Lead Games Developer?!

At least!

An end to plastic, resin and pewter and a return to the true path of lead!

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
I dunno why people are complaining about the 33 days. I rarely get the actual holidays being in Healthcare!

Anyway if I lived in the UK I'd entirely apply but since I don't, oh well. I'm sure they're gonna hire someone for enthusiasm and they'll be just as bad as the other designers have been.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 lord_blackfang wrote:

Voss wrote:
No?
Its a commentary on forum posters who think themselves 'expert game designers.' It has _nothing_ at all to do with any company.

But those forum posters aren't wrong in thinking they could make better rules than GW

Exactly. We get some pretty bad posts here, but as a whole it says a lot that what we're seeing from GW was NOT the tossed out ideas.

Yeah, as someone noted above 33 is pretty average for the UK (especially for private sector) and is a week above the minimum. Google says 33.5 is dead average and that’s going to be skewed by teachers and the public sector who get excessive amounts (and I’m saying this as a public sector worker who gets crazy amounts of leave and struggles to use it all).

We get 20 days here in Oz.

Unless you're a teacher, in which case you make 2-3 times the average Nurse, and get 10 weeks off a year.

But you also have to spend the rest of the year dealing with whole cohorts of other peoples’ kids... noooooooooo thanks you...

I know the UK has a huge problem retaining teachers right now and from speaking to those in teaching its become a very high stress job now. They get long holidays, but there's an overbearing amount of paperwork that they have to produce and keep up with just to enable teaching itself. Plus a lot of it is record keeping paperwork that's basically never looked at until OfCom come around to do an inspection.

Plus a lot of state systems have seen budgets cut and cut and cut so classes end up getting bigger; teachers have less money to do things and less reliance. Heck I've seen them cut budgets mid-year .

So even those teachers who remain are far less energised and motivated to teach.

Voss wrote:

 Crimson wrote:
Considering that half of the Dakka thinks that they understand game design better than GW's designers, I expect all those armchair experts to start furiously typing their applications!

Nah, that's not how it works. They won't be able to apply on time 'because reasons,' but if they could have, they would have been a shoe-in for the job, so GW missed out on saving their game.

I suspect that more of them simply wouldn't apply because the money is likely rubbish and GW is notoriously awful to work for as a creative.

if your a teacher who actually takes all that holiday as holiday you'll loose your job really fast, a whole bunch is taken up with lesson prep etc

(although it does give you a lot more flexibility than folk in jobs with fewer holidays)

Where I live teachers get hated on for their "3 month holiday" but the fact is they get as many off days as everybody else and have to make up the extra days when there's no classes with field trips and conferences and such, and they're not even allowed to count all the evenings and weekends they spend grading tests and gak towards that. Bottom line they work loads of unpaid overtime and at the same time struggle to somehow make up the hours lost to forced vacations.

And then the more unscrupulous schools (even public schools) just straight up put teachers on 10 month contracts so they don't get paid during summer.

Boy did I open a can of worms.

Back on the actual topic, I do love how there are people here who immediately start attacking Dakka's membership for being self-proclaimed "expert game designers" and having the temerity to think they could do better than GW.

Umm... hello? Have you not been paying attention for the past 20 years? GW are terrible at rules, and a group that's been at it this long should improve over time, yet they don't. Of course there are going to be people here who are better at writing rules, and not just the few among us who have written game rules professionally. There are people at Dakka who either work in that industry right now, or have had formal training in such things. To simply dismiss them as armchair rules writers to get in a few cheap jabs is quite pathetic.

For me the illusion of the ivory tower vanished 5 years ago when I saw a job opening for the studio and it hit me all of a sudden that these people aren't gods, they're just wage slaves like everybody else and there's absolutely no reason why incompetence would be any rarer in game design than it is in, say, customer service call centres.

I think the real difference between now and twenty-five years ago is that back then, you probably could just walk in off of the street and land a pretty significant job without a track record of game writing. These days, they probably don't consider people without time in the industry, or at least some other professional writing experience.

Don't forget we have had at least one person go from Dakka to a rules writing position in GW. Sam Pearson used to be a user here. Then he designed Warcry.

 lord_blackfang wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:
I have no credentials other than angry forum posting, but it would be a dream job if I could afford the likely pay cut.

Would it really? Have you read the interviews with people who quit? You get bean counters coming from upstairs saying things like "Unit X is underselling, up the stats and slash the points" or "About the boxed game you've been writing, I didn't feel like ordering the card deck you said you needed, but we have some spare custom D12s from Blackstone Fortress, change the rules to use that instead"

You know, for a while when I was trying to publish my game through Kickstarter this was the main driver of my development too; not point in designing a game you can't afford to produce.

Chikout wrote:
Don't forget we have had at least one person go from Dakka to a rules writing position in GW. Sam Pearson used to be a user here. Then he designed Warcry.

I haven't had the time or money to get into Warcry. Is it any good?

 Vector Strike wrote:

Nurglitch wrote:
It's worth applying to if you live in Nottingham. Outside of it you get a polite note saying they only hire people in the Nottingham area.

But what about working remotely? GW should get on with the times

You expect this from the company that admitted not doing marketing/customer research or that in the past treated the internet as a passing fad?

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Chikout wrote:
Don't forget we have had at least one person go from Dakka to a rules writing position in GW. Sam Pearson used to be a user here. Then he designed Warcry.

I haven't had the time or money to get into Warcry. Is it any good?

The fansistem he designed for Skirmish was much better than the official AoS Skirmish ruleset (I would know. I followed it closely, played it with friends and family, and made a ton of suggestions). Warcry is good but is not as good as the works he did as a fan rule writter. So personally I believe GW rules writter get a ton of gak when probably most of the problems they have are not for lack of skill but born of the corporate culture and way of working that GW has internally.

In the case of WarCry, we have to presume that a heavy part of the design brief was set miniatures, virtually zero options, and no trading post or anything like that.

WarCry is what GW wish Necromunda could be. It's like their 'end game' for specialist games, if they could get away with it.

Chikout wrote:
Don't forget we have had at least one person go from Dakka to a rules writing position in GW. Sam Pearson used to be a user here. Then he designed Warcry.

Damn, that's rad!!

Imagine making a game, then GW higher up tell you that your game is too complicated and their consumers wouldn't understand.

Only AT and BB still have a decent core rule that aren't simplified and stripped to the bone. Game like Aeronautica Imperialis got simplified and people still complaint "its too complicated, because of the attitude and speed stat". These people aren't stupid, they're just really lazy, so GW want to design games just for these people, like instant ramen.

Chopstick wrote:
Imagine making a game, then GW higher up tell you that your game is too complicated and their consumers wouldn't understand.

Only AT and BB still have a decent core rule that aren't simplified and stripped to the bone. Game like Aeronautica Imperialis got simplified and people still complaint "its too complicated, because of the attitude and speed stat". These people aren't stupid, they're just really lazy, so GW want to design games just for these people, like instant ramen.

Well, it's going the same way video games did, shooters and sports sims that haven't had a meaningful advancement in gameplay in 25 years are the best sellers. Anything that takes effort to develop and to play is a fringe market. But we're also seeing a booming indy scene in both markets for people who want more than catering to the lowest common denominator.