You know it best as the place where you can buy second-hand books for a penny, and find pretty much any obscure item for home delivery. But online retailer Amazon is extending its games division beyond the ‘Videogames’ section of its catalogue. The company wants to make PC games now, and has advertised 26 positions for Amazon Game Studios in hope of attracting PC talent.
The job listings have been posted to industry site Gamasutra and Amazon’s job site, and the description details that Amazon is looking for people with AAA experience to make an “ambitious new PC game”. So far it sounds like it has the staff required for such ambition, with veterans of Portal, World of Warcraft, BioShock, Half-Life 2, Left 4 Dead, Dota 2, Halo, Infamous, Shadow of Mordor and The Last of Us all on board already.
We already know that Portal designer Kim Swift, Left 4 Dead 2 project lead Tom Leonard, and Far Cry 2 director Clint Hocking are part of the bunch, so it’s already a promising team.
The new positions are for artists, tool/platform engineers, lead visual effects artists, and numerous more key roles. One role is Senior Game Economy Designer, which involves “analyzing community behavior in order to pinpoint potential new virtual goods and services, and incentivize purchases,” making it sound as if Amazon’s PC game could well be a free-to-play, microtransaction supported game.
Thanks, PC Gamer.