Senior Game Designer

About Us Imagine if someone built a game engine — but the game world was your actual city, the players were real people, and the quests produced real outcomes that made the city better. That's what we built. And it works. General Temple is constructing AION, a real-time civilization engine where progression isn't measured in XP — it's measured by a 2,400-year-old mathematical framework for happiness that we turned into working code. One founder wrote 2.3 million tokens of production code in 7 weeks: matchmaking, squad formation, AI daemon, virtue calculus, universal game engine. The system is live. Now we need the designer who makes it impossible to put down. We're a Delaware C-corp raising $3M. Our first market is 2.2 million people with zero competition and no existing platform. This hasn't been done before because the technology to do it didn't exist until now. The Role You design engagement systems for reality. Not dark patterns — real progression toward things that actually matter. You'll own mission design, player progression, multiplayer dynamics, and the entire reward economy. Your players aren't avatars. They're your neighbors. Every system you design has to work on a Tuesday afternoon in a real city. What You'll Do - Design engagement loops for real-world civilization building: missions, squads, progression, rewards - Create and balance the economy: virtue points, pleasure ratings, mathematical happiness scoring - Design mission templates across categories: community service, skill-building, team challenges, creative projects, city improvement - Build progression systems that map to real achievement — ranks, badges, mastery paths that mean something beyond a screen - Design multiplayer dynamics: squad formation, matchmaking, cooperative and competitive modes — all in physical space - Playtest relentlessly in the real world. Your design lab is the city around you. - Work directly with engineering and AI to ship systems, not documents Requirements - 4+ years in game design, with shipped titles or live-service products - Deep understanding of progression systems, economy balancing, and engagement loops - Experience designing multiplayer or social mechanics - Systems thinking: you model how a change in one reward curve cascades through an entire ecosystem of player behavior - You write design docs that engineers build from without needing a meeting - Based in or willing to relocate to Kansas City, KS Nice to Have - Experience with real-world games, ARGs, or location-based products (Pokemon GO, Ingress, geocaching) - Behavioral psychology, motivation theory, or gamification research background - Familiarity with tabletop RPG design, badge systems, or scouting programs - You've designed for communities, not just consumers - You've thought about what games could do if the stakes were real What We Offer Competitive salary ($100K-$140K) plus highly competitive founding equity — you're joining before employee #5. We're raising $3M to build the team and launch. Salary begins at close of round. This is a founding role. We're looking for people who are financially positioned to join early — ideally with at least a year of runway — because we're building something that requires conviction, not just a paycheck. You're not joining a game studio. You're inventing a new medium. Based in Kansas City, KS — relocation welcome and encouraged. How to Apply Send an email to mars@generaltemple.com with your resume and 1-2 paragraphs on what makes a great real-world game loop. Bonus: explain why most gamification fails and what yours wouldn't. Pay: $100,000.00 - $140,000.00 per year Benefits: Flexible schedule Work Location: In person