New Netflix games job ads suggest it is making an AI-powered Stardew Valley-style life sim and a ‘dual-screen, narrative-driven, action-arcade game’ playable through the cloud.
It’s also continuing to offer huge salaries – one engineering role is offering up to $1.2m.
One job ad for a lead designer on Mike Verdu’s new AI-based games innovation team seeks experienced developers with “familiarity with the life-sim genre, especially Stardew Valley”, plus “experience working with procedurally generated content” and “social design experience with an emphasis on emergent multiplayer joy”.
Netflix’s games innovation team is also looking for an art director with experience building mobile games and a senior producer who has previously helped build games “for early or unfinished platforms”. Each role is based in California and offers a salary of up to $600k.
Elsewhere, job ads for a game designer and artist to work in its California-based games studio contain references “a narrative-driven, action-arcade game delivered directly to TV via Netflix’s proprietary cloud streaming platform”.
The game will be “an innovative dual-screen game experience that will immerse players in a beloved Netflix IP punctuated by frenetic action gameplay with a light-hearted twist”. The art role asks for “expertise in lighting and shaders in cell shading styles”. There’s also mention of experience with legacy platforms like Switch.
Netflix also continues to build out its games platform. A job ad for a principal engineer in Netflix’s ‘Games Experience Engineering’ team refers to both mobile and cloud games, and offers a salary range from $240k up to a whopping $1.2m. The experience required matches the renumeration – the job ad asks for at least 13 years of development experience.
Netflix is also building out its social and party game studio, which appears to be making the forthcoming Squid Game tie-in. It’s looking for a producer with a potential salary of up to $600k.
After a flurry of big-name hires throughout 2022 and 2023, it has been a slightly more turbulent year for Netflix as it continues to gain a foothold in the games business. Former Netflix games boss Mike Verdu made headlines when he stepped aside to form a new AI-focused games team at the streaming giant, with Netflix later announcing that former Epic Games exec Alain Tascan would be taking over.
It didn’t take new boss Tascan long to make his first big call – disbanding the superteam of triple-A talent it had assembled to make a live service multiplayer game.
We also reported back in September that total lifetime Netflix game downloads had passed 210m, with GTA: San Andreas its most popular title by far, having generated 25m installs to date.
