The Job of a Studio Design Director
I am the studio design director at Obsidian Entertainment. This is, for lack of a better term, the “top” design position at the studio. A few people have recently asked me what it means for me to “give feedback” or “advise” on a game that I am not working on. Some people may also wonder what else the job entails. It comes down to five things:
- Meeting regularly with design directors at the company to talk through what they’re working on.
- Playing builds of the company’s games at important milestones and providing feedback.
- When asked, reviewing design documentation or attending design meetings to offer feedback and ideas.
- Maintaining and updating the company’s internal design standards and applicant tests.
- Depending on the position, filtering design resumes and attending interviews with other designers.
The regular meetings are just that. They are informal, unstructured, and usually 15-60 minutes long, depending on how much there is to talk (or rant) about. If I think it could be helpful, I offer advice, otherwise I listen and give opinions. Sometimes these meetings help me recognize when someone is having a problem that someone else at the company can help with. I then try to put those people in contact with each other to move things forward.
I don’t play every team’s games all the time. I play them when they have important milestone builds or when someone on the team specifically wants my feedback on some new feature or piece of content. I play the build, I write up notes, and I give feedback based on those notes. I try to orient my critical feedback around what sort of experience the team has said they are going for and how the experience actually plays out. I also often try to put myself in the position of an ordinary person playing the game for the first time. There are a lot of things a team gets used to and doesn’t realize how aggravating it is to experience fresh. When it comes to either an existing IP or a new IP, I give feedback on how that IP is being used or developed and how I think the audience will receive it.
I can’t review all of the design documentation at the company, but when my feedback is requested or when I think it’s an area where I could be of help, I do review documentation and provide comments and comprehensive feedback. It’s much easier to course correct in the documentation phase than when you’re knee-deep in implementation.
Obsidian has a number of internal documents detailing our expectations of designers at each seniority level and also our expectations of what each sub-discipline should be focused on doing. We also have design tests that go out to applicants. These tests are separated by sub-discipline and (recently) by seniority. Finally, we have company-wide and IP-specific writing standards documents. I did not write all of these documents in the first place, but I am responsible for updating them or asking/allowing someone else to update them based on the needs of projects and the company.
I also don’t sit in on every design interview, but depending on my schedule and the type of position being interviewed, I will either do some of the up-front reviews of applications/tests or I will sit in on interviews and provide my feedback to the people making the hiring decision.
That accounts for about 90% of my day to day responsibilities at the studio design director. The remaining 10% is spent on drop-in design talks and handling all of the quarterly reviews for the company’s many designers.
I hope that explains it somewhat. Thanks for reading.
