With over 10-million of them around the world, and with a number that grows every day, our players are at the heart of what we make at Hinterland. We are looking for a Player Support Specialist to help us provide best-in-class support for anyone encountering technical or quality issues with the experiences we make.
In this role, you will take ownership for the Player Support portal, responding to support queries and keeping the portal up to date with well-researched FAQs. You will monitor social channels and forums (both official and external) with an eye to reports on issues being experienced by players. You will need to be able to process highly technical information about the game and players’ platforms, collect details about bugs, handle reporting diagnostics, and communicate effectively as a bridge between players and the Test team.
Your effectiveness will shine when we see the team’s ability to quickly respond to player support issues with information or hotfixes due to your excellent, clear, and specific communication. Player good-will is protected when support issues are resolved quickly, transparently, and to their satisfaction.
As the first point of contact for many of our players, and sometimes those who are having a frustrating experience with our games, it’s important that you are able to maintain a professional demeanour and not get easily phased. You are a representative of Hinterland and therefore should consider yourself as a kind of concierge service, providing friendly, helpful, and professional communication with a customer-centric mentality. We also pride ourselves in protecting our staff from online harassment of all kinds, and so you will work through anonymous studio accounts, and we will hold all issue reporters to the same high standards we hold our player community to. We have a zero-tolerance for abuse of any kind, and will always prioritize team safety above all things.
The Player Support Specialist role stands at the crossroads of community, customer support, technical support, and is a great opportunity to get a bird’s eye view of many different areas of game development and operations at Hinterland, an independent self-publishing developer. You’ll get to experience what it’s like to work alongside the project development teams, as well as within the broader publishing and operational infrastructure of the company.
Your Contribution
Through your hard work, player issues will be communicated to the development and test teams so that they can be resolved quickly and efficiently. Players will feel heard and will appreciate their issues being addressed, which will then strengthen their good feelings towards our games and our studio.
Your Responsibilities
Your Skills & Experience
Salary Range: $55,000 - 70,000 CAD annually
Hinterland is an equal employer and as a remote-first organization, we hire the best talent globally. To ensure we are equitable and fair, the salary range listed above is provided as a gauge and is indexed specifically to candidates based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, where our studio is headquartered. This range represents multiple skill levels, as we encourage candidates from all backgrounds to apply with us, acknowledging that cultural disparities historically disadvantage non-white and non-male applicants. The range is generated based on research using a combination of publicly and privately available data. We take a holistic approach to compensation and consider factors such as skills, experience, and cost of living, to ensure we pay fairly and equitably within our team. This means we may modify the range based on the candidate's location. In addition to an annual salary, we have no probationary period, and all employees receive our health & wellness benefits package on their first day.
In an industry not known for taking care of its people, Hinterland strives to be different. We believe that the diversity, points of view, experience, and individual backgrounds of our team members contribute to a rich mosaic that helps us create better experiences, and helps those experiences reach a wider audience.
Hinterland is an equal-opportunity employer. We encourage applicants from all backgrounds to apply for our positions, regardless of ethnicity, social class, sexual orientation or identity, or religious affiliation. We value seniority and experience for our senior and leadership roles, but are always looking for ways to bring diverse viewpoints and experiences from across the spectrum of entertainment and technology.
We embrace a flexible working environment that focuses on high-autonomy balanced against high personal accountability. All our positions are remote-first, focused on finding the best fit for culture and talent. This remote-first flexibility is balanced with a physical studio in Vancouver, which is optionally available (COVID-permitting) to anyone on the team who wants to use it. We strengthen our team bond through offsite retreats, where we focus on creating memories together. We feel this balance of remote and in-person opportunities creates the strongest alloy for our culture.
We encourage everyone on the team to find balance between work and life, and never ask anyone to compromise one for the other. We are a No Crunch studio. We have high expectations of the level of commitment and the quality of the work done by our team, and trust everyone to manage their own schedule and workload. We offer a generous bundle of benefits and vacation time, and strongly encourage our team members to enjoy the 5+ weeks of paid time off we offer annually. We are a family-first studio and offer a range of tools to support our team and their growing families.
Our Culture
We have a high-autonomy, high-accountability culture. Project teams work to support a clear direction, and individuals are expected to sign on to accomplish their goals with the minimal amount of supervision. We don’t want to micromanage and we can’t have people who need that.
We believe that to create thoughtful entertainment, you need thoughtful people. We want people who appreciate the value of discourse, and aren’t afraid to present an alternative opinion. Our aim is to attract the best collaborators we can, and great collaboration comes from a willingness to share your point of view within an environment where there is a clear direction and strong decision-making can happen.
We have a light project-management infrastructure that emphasizes communication and collaboration over “time in your chair”. We believe everyone on the team has a stake in work being completed on time, and we expect everyone to be active contributors to the planning process.
We believe that anyone good enough to join Hinterland is good enough to be trusted to make a meaningful contribution in a way that aligns with company and project goals, without needing to be closely managed. Success with this approach depends on having mature people with a wealth of experience. We recognize that not everyone can work this way, which is why it’s good to talk about it up front.
We believe that being given a high degree of autonomy means you have the responsibility to be accountable for the commitments you have made to your team-mates, your project, and the studio at large. Accountability without autonomy is not fair to the individual, but autonomy without accountability is not fair to the team.
We strive to do things differently, to ensure they are always done to the highest ethical and moral standard, both in work and in business. We take care of each other, we take care of our projects, and we collectively take care of the company. In turn, the company takes care of us.
We expect anyone who joins Hinterland to be committed to having a respectful work environment. We do not crunch, we do not do office politics, and we do not abuse people. We want you to have a life outside of work, so that you can bring positive energy to the team dynamic and help us achieve great things.
We also acknowledge that our culture may not be for everyone, and that’s ok. In the hiring process, we are filtering our fit to you, as much as your fit for us. In the end, we want you to be happy at Hinterland, and nobody benefits from a missed alignment in goals or culture. The longer we can work together, the stronger we can become as a studio, and we think it’s worth taking the time that’s needed to ensure there’s a good fit, for you and for us.
Our purpose is to make Hinterland the best creator of interactive experiences in the world. We won’t get there without you. Join us in our mission.
Life at Hinterland
Join Us on Our Journey
We are a diverse group of creators who care as much about how we make things, as what we make. We care about our worlds, our players, and our people. We believe passion for work and balance in life are not only compatible ideas, but are symbiotic. If you want to help craft the future of interactive entertainment, join us on our journey.
Imagine the lights go out, never to return. Bright aurora flare across the sky, and all humanity’s technological might is laid to waste, neutralized in a kind of quiet apocalypse. Everything that has shielded humanity from the disinterested power of Mother Nature is suddenly wrenched from us, dropping us a few links down the food chain. Food and water are scarce. The roads are no longer safe. And winter approaches…
Welcome to The Long Dark —an immersive survival simulation set in the aftermath of a geomagnetic disaster. Experience a unique first-person survival simulation that will force you to think and push you to your limits with its thought-provoking gameplay.