How to Write a Game Job Description That Attracts the Right People

Writing the posting is the most frequent hiring task at any studio and the one most likely to be delegated, rushed, or copied from the last role. It’s also the single cheapest place to fix a search that isn’t working. Here’s what goes wrong, what the evidence says, and what a good one actually contains.

Start With the Question That Decides Everything

Before any structure or template, one question determines whether a posting works:

Am I trying to attract the right candidates, or deter the unsuitable ones?

Most job descriptions are unconsciously written to do the second. The requirements section grows because someone wants to filter, the responsibilities are kept vague to preserve flexibility, and the result is a posting optimised to reduce applications rather than to reach the right people.

Filtering is legitimate. But a posting is a terrible filter and an excellent advertisement, and studios consistently use it the wrong way round. The people you most want are the ones with options, which means they are also the most likely to self-select out of a posting that reads as a wall of demands.

The Most Common Mistake: Vagueness

Here is a posting of the kind we receive regularly. Nothing in it is wrong, exactly. It is simply too vague to do any work.

Read it as a candidate. What engine? What language? What kind of game? Gameplay systems or tools or backend? Which platform? Is “similar position” the same discipline or roughly adjacent? What does the team look like?

A strong gameplay programmer reading this cannot tell whether they’d be a good fit, and neither can a recruiter. The posting has no keywords to be found by, no signal about the actual work, and no way for a candidate to picture their week. It will attract volume and very little relevance, which is the worst combination because it transfers the filtering work to your hiring manager.

Here is the same role, specified:

Note what changed. The verbs became specific (design, prototype, implement, optimise rather than “creating and developing”). The technology is named. The relationship to other disciplines is described rather than asserted. A candidate can now decide, and a recruiter can now search.

The Second Mistake: Describing a Candidate Who Doesn’t Exist

The requirements section is where most postings do their real damage, because it accumulates. Each stakeholder adds a line, nobody removes one, and the result describes an ideal that no actual person matches.

The cost isn’t abstract. Candidates read the requirements list as a specification, not a wish list, and they act accordingly.

What to do about it

Split must-have from nice-to-have, explicitly. Two headed sections, and be ruthless about what goes in the first. If your team could succeed with someone lacking it, it is not a must-have.

Cap the must-haves. Four or five is usually enough for any role. If you have eleven, you are describing a team rather than a person.

Say so in writing. A line such as “if you meet most of the must-haves, we’d rather hear from you than not” costs nothing and directly addresses the mechanism Mohr identified. Candidates are deciding whether applying is a waste of their time. Tell them it isn’t.

Interrogate the AAA requirement. “At least one AAA title shipped” is one of the most common over-specifications in games, and it frequently excludes excellent candidates from strong mid-size studios for reasons unrelated to capability. Ask what the requirement is actually proxying for, then specify that instead.

Drop the degree line unless it is genuinely load-bearing. “(Ideally) Masters or Bachelor from a top university” filters on background rather than ability, and in a portfolio-driven industry it rarely predicts anything useful.

The Third Mistake: Buzzwords Instead of Information

Friendly atmosphere. Dynamic team. Industry leaders. Competitive salary. Fast-paced environment. Passion for games.

Every studio says these things, which means they carry no information. Worse, they occupy the space where genuinely attractive specifics would go, and experienced candidates read them as an absence rather than a presence.

The fix is to replace each claim with the fact underneath it. “Friendly atmosphere” becomes something concrete about how the team works. “Competitive salary” becomes a number. “Industry leaders” becomes what you have actually shipped. “Dynamic team” usually means nothing at all and should simply be deleted.

A useful test: could a competitor publish this sentence unchanged? If yes, it is doing no work.

The Fourth Mistake: Hiding the Salary

A posting without a range invites every candidate to guess. The ones who guess low apply, and the ones who guess high do not. You lose precisely the senior people you were hoping to reach, and you never learn why, because nobody emails to say they assumed you were paying under market.

Publishing a range also front-loads a conversation that otherwise surfaces at offer stage, which is the most expensive possible moment to discover a mismatch. By then both sides have spent weeks, the hiring manager has invested in a candidate, and the alternative shortlist has usually moved on. A number in the posting costs you a few applications you were never going to convert and saves you the ones you would have lost late.

It also changes who applies rather than just how many. Candidates weighing several opportunities use salary to prioritise where they spend their limited time, and a posting with no range tends to get deprioritised rather than queried.

Our own Gamedev Salary Pulse exists partly so studios can set those ranges against real regional benchmarks rather than internal guesswork or last year’s offer.

One practical note worth adding: pay transparency requirements are tightening across Europe, and several jurisdictions now require a salary or range to be shared with candidates during recruitment. Implementation differs by country and is still changing, so if you hire across borders it’s worth confirming the current position for each market with employment counsel rather than assuming a single rule applies everywhere.

Alongside salary, state the employment form. Permanent, B2B, or contract, and the expected arrangement around remote, hybrid, or on-site work with the location or time zone expectation. These materially change whether a role is viable for a candidate, and leaving them out wastes applications on both sides.

The Fifth Mistake: A Title Nobody Searches For

Your internal title and the title candidates type into a search box are frequently different things, and the posting should use the second.

“Game Developer” is the clearest example. It could mean a gameplay programmer, an engine programmer, a tools engineer, a generalist at a small studio, or something else entirely. A candidate searching for their actual specialism will not find it, and the ones who do find it cannot tell whether it is for them.

The fix is to write the title the way the market describes the role: discipline, seniority, and where relevant the engine or platform. “Senior Environment Artist, Unreal Engine 5” is findable in a way “Senior Artist” is not. “Gameplay Programmer, Unity and C#” is findable in a way “Game Developer” is not.

This matters more than studios expect, because it governs discovery on both sides. Recruiters and candidates both search by keyword, and a posting that does not contain the words people search for does not exist for them, however good the rest of it is.

What a Good Job Description Contains

Pulling the above together into a checklist.

A Structure You Can Copy

Adapt freely, but this order works because it front-loads what candidates decide on.

Title. Discipline, seniority, engine or platform if relevant.

One-paragraph summary. What the role is, what project or product it sits on, who it reports to, and where it is based or whether it is remote. A candidate should be able to stop reading here and know whether to continue.

Salary range and employment form. Early, not buried at the bottom. Include the arrangement: permanent or B2B, remote, hybrid, or on-site, and the location or time zone expectation.

What you’ll actually do. Four to six specific responsibilities with concrete verbs and named technology. Written so someone can picture their week.

Must-haves. Four or five. Genuinely non-negotiable.

Nice-to-haves. Everything else, clearly labelled as such, with an explicit line encouraging people who meet most of the must-haves to apply.

About the team and the project. What you’re building, how large the team is, what stage the project is at, and what the studio is actually like, in specifics rather than adjectives.

The process. How many stages, roughly how long, and what each involves. Almost nobody includes this and it is one of the cheapest trust signals available.

How to apply. Clear, short, and without a portal that demands a candidate retype their CV.

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Common Questions

What should a game job description include?

A searchable title with discipline, seniority, and engine. A one-paragraph summary of the role, project, reporting line, and location. The salary range and employment form, stated early. Four to six specific responsibilities with named technology. Must-haves and nice-to-haves clearly separated. Information about the team and project stage. The interview process. And a short application route.

Should I put the salary range in the job posting?

Yes, and the commercial case is strong regardless of where you hire. Without a range, candidates guess: those who guess low apply and those who guess high don’t, so you lose the senior people you wanted and never find out why. A range also surfaces any mismatch early rather than at offer stage, which is the most expensive moment to discover it. Separately, pay transparency requirements are tightening across Europe and several jurisdictions now require a range during recruitment, with rules differing by country, so check the current position for each market you hire in.

How many requirements should a job description list?

Four or five genuine must-haves, with everything else in a clearly separated nice-to-have section. If you have eleven must-haves you are describing a team rather than a person. The test for each line is whether your team could succeed with someone who lacks it. If yes, it isn’t a must-have.

Is it true that women only apply when they meet 100% of the criteria?

No, and the claim is worth retiring. The Behavioural Insights Team traced it to a never-published internal Hewlett-Packard report, likely originating in a speculative executive comment rather than data. The Harvard Business Review piece usually cited actually argues against the confidence interpretation: its survey found the top reason for not applying, for 41% of women and 46% of men, was believing they wouldn’t be hired and not wanting to waste their time. There is a real gap in application behaviour, but the mechanism is how people read your requirements list, which is something you control.

Why is “Game Developer” a bad job title?

Because nobody searches for it and it could mean five different jobs. A candidate looking for gameplay programming, engine work, or tools engineering won’t find your posting, and those who do can’t tell whether it’s for them. Write the title as the market describes the role: discipline, seniority, and engine or platform where relevant. “Gameplay Programmer, Unity and C#” is findable in a way “Game Developer” is not.

Should I require a shipped AAA title?

Usually not, at least not as written. It’s one of the most common over-specifications in games hiring and it excludes strong candidates from mid-size studios for reasons unrelated to capability. Ask what the requirement is actually proxying for, whether that’s experience with production scale, working within an established pipeline, or exposure to a certification process, then specify that instead.

What phrases should I avoid in a job description?

Anything a competitor could publish unchanged. Friendly atmosphere, dynamic team, industry leaders, competitive salary, fast-paced environment, passion for games. They carry no information and occupy the space where genuinely attractive specifics would go. Replace each with the fact underneath it: “competitive salary” becomes a number, “industry leaders” becomes what you’ve shipped, “dynamic team” usually means nothing and can be deleted.

Should I include the interview process in the posting?

Yes, and almost nobody does, which makes it one of the cheapest differentiators available. State how many stages, roughly how long the process takes, and what each stage involves. Candidates weighing several opportunities use this to decide where to invest their time, and a studio willing to publish it signals a process that has actually been thought about.