Tradeskill Designer

ABOUT THE ROLE:

We’ve implemented our tradeskills system, but to make Eth-ur truly feel like a world, we believe we need to push harder on this front.

For us, the term “tradeskills” encapsulates everything from blacksmithing and leatherworking to archaeology, astronomy, diplomacy, and more.

In this role, you’ll be responsible for these tradeskills, along with harvesting skills, fishing, and other similar activities. This also includes the integration of these concepts into the game world.

We want tradeskills to matter and contribute to our sense of place, but they need to be properly positioned relative to adventuring. As such, you’ll be working with content and systems designers to ensure everything is properly integrated and balanced.

You’ll need to be able to work relatively autonomously while keeping stakeholders tightly looped in, balance a long-term plan with what’s realistically possible given the ebb and flow of code support, and be someone that can clearly articulate your designs in concise, audience-specific terms and formats.

A NOTE ON TIME COMMITMENT:

Our team is made up of volunteers who work in their spare time. Folks have families, jobs, and other real-life responsibilities. We take vacations and have random emergencies.

That said, the team consistently engages with the project and dedicates significant amounts of their spare time to it.

This is not a social club.

We’ve got a big project ahead of us, and we’re very serious about making it happen.

If you love what we’re doing and are excited to help, but aren’t in a position to dedicate at least 10 hours a week to the project, this probably isn’t the right fit for you.

We’d love for you to be part of the community, but now is likely not the time to join us.

THE ROLE:

  • Design, integrate, balance, and maintain tradeskills (i.e., “crafting” or non-combat “professions”)

  • Maintain long-term plans for expanding existing skills and developing additional tradeskills through Early Access, 1.0, and beyond

  • Collaborate with key stakeholders to bring our ideas to life

  • Collaborate with tech to create the systems and UI

  • Collaborate with content and systems designers to ensure the proper integration and balance of each skill

  • Create clear, concise documentation, diagrams, and mock-ups

  • Communicate and collect feedback from the community in an open development process

QUALIFICATIONS:

  • Strong, pre-existing knowledge of Monsters & Memories and our team by way of our VoDs, Discord, etc.

  • A strong understanding of existing MMORPG tradeskills, professions, etc., with the ability to properly contextualize them against what we’re doing in MnM

  • A strong understanding of non-MMORPG crafting systems

  • Demonstrable experience with the previous two points and the ability to clearly articulate them

  • The ability to constructively, diplomatically, and concisely communicate ideas and feedback, both verbally and visually (including diagramming, wireframing, etc.)

  • Experience with, or the ability to learn how to work with relational databases

  • Exceptionally proactive, self-managed, solution-oriented, and patient

NICE TO HAVES:

  • A passion for classic MMORPGs, survival, crafting-focused, and pen-and-paper games

  • Familiarity with Unity

  • The ability to work with SQL

  • A programming background (ideally in C#, since we’re working in Unity)

  • UX experience

COMPENSATION:

  • We’re all working on this as a passion project, with no immediate compensation

  • Profit-sharing and/or equity options will exist in the future

  • We don’t make exclusive demands on your time during this stage of development—you’re still free to take on other work, as long as their NDAs or non-competes don’t impact our work together

  • When we transition to the Early Access phase, you may be compensated under terms to be negotiated (based on revenue at that time)

ABOUT US:

We’re a small team working toward the Early Access phase of a new indie MMORPG. Learn more at https://monstersandmemories.com/.

This phase of development is self-funded and focuses on getting us to Early Access. 

The pipelines, tech, gameplay, and assets developed during this phase are all 100% valid and foundational. While we may rework content to fit the broader game as we progress through Early Access, we’re not creating one-off demos, smoke and mirrors, or throwaway work for the sake of getting funding.

TO LEARN MORE:

Please DM Shawn, Ali, or Nick in our Discord if you have any questions or want to discuss a role in more detail.

TO APPLY FOR THE ROLE:

  • Reading all the way down to this bullet is step 1; if you didn't do this, that counts as strike 1

  • Please write a clear and concise description of your interest in the project, your background with tradeskills, and what you hope to achieve in the role before we enter Early Access (no more than one page, please)

  • Describe and diagram your favorite tradeskill implementation in an existing game (this doesn’t need to account for every skill type or interdependency, just enough to illustrate the key pillars, inputs, mechanics, and outputs)

Bonus:

  • Describe and diagram MnM’s current tradeskill implementation, and provide half a page (a bulleted list is fine) of thoughts on it

PLEASE SEND US YOUR SUBMISSION IN A PDF VIA DM IN OUR DISCORD.