Games Designer, Worlds

Research – Discrete Teams      ·         London, UK         ·       Full time

At DeepMind, we value diversity of experience, knowledge, backgrounds and perspectives and harness these qualities to create extraordinary impact. We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of sex, race, religion or belief, ethnic or national origin, disability, age, citizenship, marital, domestic or civil partnership status, sexual orientation, gender identity, pregnancy or related condition (including breastfeeding) or any other basis as protected by applicable law. If you have a disability or additional need that requires accommodation, please do not hesitate to let us know

About us

The Worlds team collaborates with DeepMind Researchers to design and create new kinds of AI environments. These environments range from bespoke mini-games sought at answering specific research questions, to expansive first-person virtual environments powered by modern game engines. The team is vital in helping steer DeepMind’s research forward.

Projects we’ve worked on include AlphaGo, DM Lab, DQN on Atari, and multiple custom 3D environments built in Unity.

DeepMind’s AI systems are the best in the world. They have surprised the world by learning to play video games, mastering the ancient Chinese game of Go, making inroads into solving protein folding, and powering agents that can interact with simulated 3D environments. The systems have been trained to perform visual processing tasks, exhibit cognitive abilities like memory and planning, and can learn to control physical bodies. Much of what you understand as a Games Designer is potentially of huge value to us, as we strive to build more complex environments for increasingly general-purpose learning systems.

If this challenge intrigues you, then get in touch.

Snapshot

We’re looking for a Designer with a passion for behavioural and results oriented design to help us implement a range of challenges and tasks for our AI agents to solve! To succeed in this role you will need a foundation in games design; to enjoy working on ambitious problems within a mission driven team; and a curiosity about learning to apply games design skills in a non games.

The Role

You’ll work with individuals in the Worlds team and Research to develop new AI environments and iterate on existing ones. We design and implement our environments carefully as it’s likely we’ll live with them for many years to come, so we apply thoughtfulness to everything we do. We carry out a variety of rapid, creative, ideation and prototyping exercises. But we also take robust design and implementation seriously, to ensure the delivery of high quality, repeatable, research environments. You’ll join a diverse, close-knit team of talented and supportive individuals who openly share ideas with one another.

About You

In order to set you up for success as a Games Designer at DeepMind, we look for the following skills and experience:

• Strong experience working on professional game design
• Understanding of goal/task based game design
• Understanding of gameplay balancing
• You can rapidly prototype and deliver whitebox levels in the 3D tools of your choice
• Experience using text and visual scripting systems
• You enjoy working with others to solve complex problems
• You enjoy learning new concepts and skills

In addition, the following would be an advantage:

• Working on console or PC 3D titles useful
• Unity experience
• 3D content creation skills, such as Blender or Maya experience a plus
• Interest or experience in procedural generation systems a plus
• Experience of leading design teams

No AI, machine learning or research experience is required

Please click here to apply.