John Comes

John Comes

Design Director, AI for creative teams

Seattle area

jcomes@gmail.com

linkedin.com/in/john-comes

johncomes.com

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I’ve spent 25 years designing and directing games, with 35+ shipped titles across competitive multiplayer, strategy, and live service. I designed the first commercial MOBA, directed a free-to-play shooter past 3 million players, and wrote the AI for Supreme Commander. Today I build human-in-the-loop AI workflows that make designers and artists faster without taking the creative calls away from them, and I teach teams to do the same.

Studios

  1. Bacon Dragon

    Founder

    • Developing an unannounced dungeon crawler with an AI-assisted design loop.

  2. World’s Edge (Microsoft)

    Lead Technical Designer, contract

    • Lead technical designer on contract at Microsoft’s Age of Empires studio.

    Age of Empires

  3. Galactic Annihilation

    Design Director, Senior Engineer

    • Helped architect Industrial Annihilation, bridging Unreal Engine 5.4 with a proprietary simulation engine.
    • Directed balance, unit design, and single-player missions; key driver of crowdfunding on StartEngine and Kickstarter.

    Industrial Annihilation

  4. Team Grit

    Designer, Engineer

    • Helped design Grit, a Wild West battle royale, wrote gameplay code, and built over 15,000 NFT outfits.

    Grit

  5. tinyBuild

    Production Director, CTO

    • Ran tinyBuild’s porting studio, taking PC games like Hello Neighbor, Graveyard Keeper, and Party Hard 2 to Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo Switch.
    • Helped with production on Rapture Rejects.

    Hello Neighbor, Rapture Rejects, Graveyard Keeper, Party Hard 2

  6. Uber Entertainment

    Creative Director, Game Director

    • Directed Super Monday Night Combat (3M+ players) and assisted in design on Planetary Annihilation (1M+ units, $2.2M Kickstarter).
    • Lead Designer on Monday Night Combat, the first shooter–MOBA hybrid.
    • Game Director on Toy Rush, a mobile tower-defense game.

    Planetary Annihilation, Planetary Annihilation: Titans, Super Monday Night Combat, Monday Night Combat, Toy Rush

  7. Gas Powered Games

    Lead Designer, Lead Content Engineer

    • Lead Designer on Demigod, the first commercial MOBA.
    • Led a team of 13 on Supreme Commander and wrote its entire AI and mission framework; design consultant on Forged Alliance.

    Supreme Commander, Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance, Demigod

  8. Electronic Arts / Westwood Studios

    Senior Designer, Software Engineer

    • Lead designer and engineer on Command & Conquer Generals: Zero Hour.
    • Architected the skirmish and campaign AI for The Battle for Middle-earth; Senior Designer on Earth & Beyond.

    Command & Conquer Generals: Zero Hour, The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth, Earth & Beyond

Skills

Design and leadership
Design direction, competitive multiplayer and strategy, live service and free-to-play, game balance and economies, UI/UX, mentoring, teams up to 13
AI for creative work
Agentic workflows and multi-agent loops, Claude Code and custom skills, prompt and model chaining across Claude, Gemini, and ChatGPT, AI-assisted asset generation
Engineering
C++, C#, Unreal Engine 5 (C++ and Blueprints, Niagara, materials), Unity (editor tools, UI Toolkit), TypeScript and Next.js, game AI, networking

Speaking and education

  • Gave “Puns & Game Design” at several game conferences.
  • Expert talks, mentoring, and project critiques at the Academy of Interactive Entertainment.
  • B.S. Mechanical Engineering, University of Akron.