Game Economic Designer

Game Economic Designer Role Overview As a Game Economic Designer at HighStack, you are the architect of our digital ecosystem’s monetary and behavioral flow. You don't just build paytables; you design the "invisible hand" that balances player excitement, long-term retention, and house sustainability. You will bridge the gap between high-fidelity iGaming mathematics (RTP, Volatility) and virtual macroeconomics, ensuring that every gold coin, crypto-bonus, and VIP tier interacts perfectly to create a thriving, non-exploitable gaming economy. Key Responsibilities ● Systemic Economy Design: Design and manage the end-to-end lifecycle of virtual resources (currency, experience points, boosters). Define how players earn, spend, and trade value within the HighStack ecosystem to ensure an optimal "faucet and sink" balance. ● Mathematical Modeling: Build complex models that simulate how game mechanics (Slots, Crash, Sportsbook) interact with meta-features like VIP levels and loyalty rewards. You ensure that as players progress, the economy remains challenging and rewarding without breaking the platform’s net margin. ● Behavioral Balancing: Use player data and psychology to set numerical thresholds (prices, drop rates, level-up requirements). You adjust these values to optimize the player journey, ensuring the game is neither too "blocking" nor too inflationary. ● Economy Guardrails & Risk: Quantify the systemic impact of promos and crypto-linked bonuses. Design automated "throttles" and limits to protect the economy from hyper-inflation, bot farming, and bonus abuse while maintaining the "Provably Fair" integrity of the RNG. ● Validation & Simulation: Conduct multi-million-iteration Monte Carlo simulations to validate not just game-level RTP, but Session-level Effective RTP. Model "Whale" behavior and "Heater" scenarios to ensure the economy survives extreme volatility. ● Cross-Functional Technical Writing: Collaborate with Lead Game Designers and Product Managers to translate economic theories into technical specs. Produce robust documentation (Jupyter/PDF) that explains the "Why" behind the numbers for developers, investors, and regulators. Core Tech Stack ● Python/Jupyter: Primary for economic simulations, Monte Carlo modeling, and resource flow analysis. ● Excel/Google Sheets: For rapid economy balancing, pricing scales, and sensitivity "what-if" analysis. ● Data Visualization: Tools like Tableau, Looker, or Matplotlib to track real-time economic health and player spend patterns. ● Modern Workflow: Git for versioning math specs and LLM-assisted workflows for drafting economic logic and test cases. Required Skills & Experience ● 4+ Years in Quantitative Design: Background in game economy design, mathematical modeling, or tokenomics (ideally in iGaming, Free-to-Play, or Crypto-gaming). ● Systems Thinking: Ability to visualize and model how changing one variable (e.g., a 2% increase in a VIP rebate) ripples through the entire multi-game ecosystem. ● Statistical Mastery: Deep expertise in probability, stochastic processes, and heavy-tailed distributions. ● Market Fluency: Strong understanding of current gaming trends, player preferences, and the psychological drivers of "high-stakes" engagement. ● Communication: Proven ability to explain abstract economic trade-offs (e.g., "Player Value vs. Operator Margin") to non-technical stakeholders. Nice to Have ● Advanced Degree in Economics, Game Design, or Mathematics. ● Experience with Sportsbook Risk or market-making mechanics. ● Familiarity with Live-Ops—tuning a game economy in real-time based on live data.