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.