Senior Level Artist

Who We Are: Ghost Story Games is a self-publishing game development studio founded by Ken Levine (Creative Director of System Shock 2, Bioshock, and Bioshock Infinite) and former Irrational Games developers. The studio’s mission is to create narrative-driven experiences rooted in immersive world building and gameplay. The Challenge Ghost Story Games is seeking a talented Senior Level Artist to join us on Judas, the highly anticipated game led by Ken Levine (System Shock 2, BioShock series). Unique in its bold, creative vision, Judas is also built upon novel technology by which the visual world, gameplay, and story unfolds in meaningful, dynamic ways. The result is a significant and personal journey adapted to each player’s experience and offers a new approach to the art and storytelling of video games. For the Senior Level Artist role, you should be passionate about telling compelling stories through environmental art, all while thoughtfully crafting spaces and visuals with the needs of gameplay in mind. And you should be excited to immerse yourself in novel technical pipelines, and willing to embrace the opportunity to learn and grow in an all-new way of crafting games. With the unique technology unpinning Judas, it is particularly essential the Senior Level Artist fully leverages the world and storytelling systems. We both expect and welcome you to contribute creative and technical suggestions to elevate it further, and work closely together with Narrative, Design, and other Art counterparts, to bring the best vision of Judas to life. At Ghost Story Games we place the utmost importance on memorable, immersive visual storytelling, through all aspects of the game experience, and the close team collaboration necessary to realize a shared vision together. Join us and play a key role in Judas’ success! What You’ll Take On: • Prototype and execute on visually stunning environmental spaces that are both well attuned to the gameplay experience and tell bold, cohesive visual stories in support of the script and overall vision of world. • Collaborate with level design to support gameplay, keeping in mind things such as navigation, pacing, compositional sight lines, cover, verticality, and AI. • Serve as the key driver of all visual assets supporting spaces under your responsibility. This includes highly proactive and collaborative engagement with Art Leadership, Level and Narrative Design, Concept Art, and External Art Vendors to plan, prototype, and implement supporting assets, within an established pipeline and technical specifications. • As a Senior Level Artist, you are also expected to keep active tabs on the performance profile of all levels under your responsibility, ensuring visual content is authored efficiently and fits within established memory and performance budgets. For the Senior role we expect active collaboration beyond just your own content responsibilities, including working cross-functionally with other content disciplines to analyze the overall performance profile of spaces and strategize together on any balanced plans for optimization. What You Bring: • Established experience in the game industry as a mid-level to senior Level Artist, preferably with experience working with larger, complex productions. • Proficient art and technical experience within a real-time Game Engine (Unreal 4 is a plus). • Experienced eye for form, line, value, rhythm, composition, and crafting deliberate visual hierarchy reads (focus direction, small-medium-large shape balance, ‘80/20 rule’). • Familiarity with performance evaluation and optimization – working mindfully within metrics to maintain a smooth player experience. • Experience with effective team-based iteration techniques, including a thoughtful consideration of th