Description
RealPlay is a fast-growing Tel Aviv startup in the gaming industry. At the heart of how we operate is a fascination with what moves people, and the craft of creating experiences that do. That's where you come in.
As a Game Economist, your medium is numbers that become feelings. You set prices, odds, rewards and pacing; players experience anticipation, the rush of a long shot landing, the pride of a goal reached on their own terms.
It's the work of an empath with a system. You imagine the experience from the player's side, then model the economy that produces it. The theory underneath is behavioral economics (in its broad sense): how people actually experience reward, risk and progress. The aim is an experience that's exciting in the moment and meaningful over time.
In this role, you will:
• Shape the rhythm of the player experience: anticipation, reward and progress.
• Set the terms of exchange: what things are worth, what they cost, and how value flows between players and the game.
• Author the economy's logic: one coherent intent that every part of the system serves.
• Prototype before you ship: model, simulate and playtest your designs.
• Close the gap between intent and reality: run experiments, read how players actually respond, and refine until the experience matches what you meant.
Who You Are
• You speak from the player's point of view. You explain a design by what it makes people feel, and argue with specific player moments. Asked to add a new currency, your first question is "what's the fantasy here?"
• You have a feel for economies, and you audit it. You often sense a price is wrong before you can say why. Then you work out why, and keep score on how often your instinct was right.
• You think in mechanisms. When a number moves, you want the incentive that moved it. You distrust a result you can't explain, and one that explains too much.
• You hold strong intent loosely. You're committed to the experience, not to your current version of it. When players respond differently than you predicted, you change the design; when a metric looks great and the game feels hollow, you notice.
• You play the long game. You hold a clear view of where the economy should be in a year, and you defend it against short-term wins that cost more than they return. You're not rigid either: you know which tactical moves serve the strategy, and you make them.
Requirements
• Academic research background, especially in economics, psychology and the wider social sciences and humanities.
• Behavioral economics and psychology, in the broad sense: how people perceive value, price, risk and reward.
• Applied microeconomics: pricing, elasticity, price discrimination.
• Modeling dynamic systems, from a spreadsheet to a simulation in Python or similar.
• Statistics, experimental design and causal inference.
• Game theory and mechanism design.
Game Economist
