# Colman Bryant

> Game and XR Design Player-Coach

Location: San Francisco Bay Area, United States
Profile: https://flows.cv/colmanbryant

I love building fun innovative products with amazing people! Game & Product Designer Player-Coach with 18+ years leading products and incubators transforming ideas into reality at the intersection of Games, AR, and AI.

Design lead and co-creator of hit games including "Smite" and "Jetpack Fighter." I've prototyped and led multiple games and products from initial concept to international success, growing them into mature, accessible, sustainable businesses with tens of millions of MAU and generating nearly a billion in revenue over the span of a decade. A pioneer of GaaS and Free-to-Play who first introduced these new paradigms to Steam (with "Global Agenda") as well as to consoles (with "Smite"), I believe teams that design viable growth and business models into their products get to build more and better products. I help them "Find the Fun" and the Funds!

At Magic Leap, I was fortunate to collaborate with legendary game developers, NASA scientists, creators of IP including The Matrix and Guardians of the Galaxy, companies including Disney, LucasArts, and Walmart, and the sci-fi writers who originally coined the (now-ubiquitous) term "Metaverse." Together we introduced Spatial Computing to the world with Magic Leap: Creator Edition and Magic Leap 2. I led Engineering, UX, and Research teams through the development of key platform features, apps, the introduction of Gaze and Gesture interactions, and launch of the world's first persistent spatial UGC platform. I led R&D for the internal incubator, where we answered questions like "how might a user control 3D spatial interfaces using their hands, eyes, and voice?" Together we built hundreds of platform features, interactive demos, and full products in Unity and Unreal to discover and demonstrate the possibilities of this powerful new computing paradigm. Our creations advanced and evangelized the medium, seeded new industries, attracted new partnerships, and raised nearly a billion in funding from Fortune 500 companies and government agencies.

I've also led creation of innovative new products including an AI-powered character-driven UGC game platform (Moemate), a spatial computing exhibit for the Dubai World's Fair, and partnered with the White House and numerous Fortune 500 Companies to battle COVID and other infectious diseases using AR, AI, and CV, scaling small startup eMed from 15 employees to the world's largest digital diagnostics company in only a year as its Principal Designer.

Let me know how I can help your team!

Check out some of my prior work here: https://www.colmanbryant.com/

## Work Experience
### Product Designer / Prototyper - Wearables Product Experience @ Meta
Jan 2024 – Present

### Owner / Principal Designer @ Dark Star Interactive
Jan 2022 – Present | San Francisco Bay Area
Providing Game Design and Product Design services, strategy, and consultation for teams working on and at the intersection of Games, Spatial Computing, and AI.

Types of technologies and project collaborations span AR/VR/XR, Wearables, PC/Console/Mobile Games, Apps, AI-powered Games, Products, and Platforms, MedTech, Data Products, ML/CV, and Web3.

### Product Owner - Business Intelligence @ eMed Digital Healthcare
Jan 2021 – Jan 2022 | Miami, Florida, United States
As eMed’s business grew from an initial pilot to the world’s largest all-digital diagnostics and treatment lab over the span of a year, providing the company and its partners in government and enterprise with reliable real time data became a huge priority. I leveraged my past F2P game and product analytics backgrounds to bootstrap a new Business Intelligence unit, staffing and leading a brand new team to supply the company and its stakeholders around the world with real time dashboards, reporting, and other data products and integrations needed to monitor operations, product metrics, individual user and population health parameters, as well as financials while steering the company toward SOC2 certification and protecting individual user data PII and PHI.

### Principal Designer @ eMed Digital Healthcare
Jan 2021 – Jan 2022 | Miami, Florida, United States
I joined eMed when it was still a small startup of less than 15 people with the goal of democratizing healthcare and utilizing emerging technologies like AR, AI, and CV to stop the spread of COVID during the height of the pandemic. I led design efforts for the R&D team, pioneered new use cases for technology in medical diagnostics, led AR and AI experience and platform feature designs, and worked with creative technologies and a dedicated patent team to generate new IP and file dozens of patents addressing novel use cases and technologies applied to digital healthcare. I helped build out new initiatives like our Test to Treat™ program (revealed by President Biden in the 2022 SOTU), which was the first of its kind to provide access to free COVID medication for users who test positive. Together with a small team of like-minded innovators, we enabled a small start-up to become the world’s largest all-digital diagnostic-and-treatment lab, re-opening schools, government offices, and businesses around the world in the middle of a crisis with safety and trust as key operating principles.

### Design Lead - Gesture & Gaze Interactions and Systems @ Magic Leap
Jan 2019 – Jan 2020 | Miami-Fort Lauderdale Area
After kicking off the enterprise solutions effort, I was given the opportunity to lead design and vision for gesture and gaze based interactions for Magic Leap's next gen product (ML2). This enabled me to leverage and apply my previous experience leading interaction and enterprise solution design and R&D for partners and customers including Walmart, Home Depot, Google, Alibaba, Mayo Clinic, DHL, and others, who needed a way to use the device without a peripheral controller

Key Deliverables:
+ Defined the user experience, interactions, system mappings, audio/visual feedback, and platform needs for Gesture, Gaze, and Multi-modal approaches
+ Led prototyping, research, and user testing efforts working with prototype engineers, system architects, and researchers
+ Specced sub-systems, SDK outputs, and dev tools to aid developers in creating high quality interactions and capturing user intent
+ Turned on Beta Gesture inputs at the OS level

### Design Lead - Product Experience and Platform @ Magic Leap
Jan 2018 – Jan 2020 | Miami-Fort Lauderdale Area
Led design efforts for the Product Experience and Platform team, including development of core XR platforms, interaction models, and first party enterprise solutions, building upon my prior work leading R&D efforts for the Interaction Lab.

Key Deliverables:
+ Worked with Biz Dev, Sales, and Product Managers to outline potential use & business cases for XR and identify market opportunities to pursue
+ Met with key customer reps (execs and SMEs) to understand industry needs, worker roles, tour facilities, identify pain points, and define potential spatial computing value prop against existing solutions
+ Led design and production efforts for internal prototyping teams to rapidly develop functional prototype solutions to address customer needs
+ Demoed alpha solutions for Magic Leap's board and SLT as well as external investors, state officials, and executives from companies such as Walmart, The Home Depot, Google, Alibaba, Mayo Clinic, DHL, and others
+ Created functional experiences addressing use cases such as remote assistance, spatial guidance and training, shipping and receiving, assembly line operations, room and waypoint finding, home contracting, spatial measuring, language learning, real time translation, data viz, radiology, hospital operations, and other market needs
+ Working with product and engineering leads, defined product and feature roadmaps to take prototypes with high potential ROI from internal prototypes to pilots to full products
+ Advocated for platform feature priority adjustments to be able to more quickly accommodate customer needs and drive enterprise sales

### Design Lead - Interaction Lab @ Magic Leap
Jan 2017 – Jan 2018 | Miami-Fort Lauderdale Area
I was originally hired to lead prototyping and exploration of novel use cases and user interactions for Magic Leap's pre-release hardware. I lead prototyping and product discovery for new inputs and platform features as they came online, iterating on APIs, documenting learnings, and sharing them externally via published developer lessons, workshops, public and internal facing talks, and consultation.

Key Deliverables:
+ Turned on new platform features, discovered and prototyped new interactions and experiences that utilize them, gave feedback and direction to SDK and platform teams
+ Defined, documented, and evangelized best practices for interacting with and rendering content on a new medium using natural human and multi-modal inputs (Gestures, Gaze, Speech, etc.)
+ Developed cross-platform experiences linking Magic Leap hardware with smartphones, IoT, VR, Bluetooth accessories, and PCs
+ Led design for several advanced "Magic Kit" developer samples and tools featured on the ML Creator Portal. Wrote accompanying design diaries to teach developers advanced concepts in experience design, interactions, and UX for mixed reality platforms

### Lead Interaction and Experience Designer @ Magic Leap
Jan 2017 – Jan 2018 | Miami-Fort Lauderdale Area
While balancing my primary roles and responsibilities, I contributed to numerous other projects ranging from writing the use cases that would inform Magic Leap's next gen hardware to contributing designs for city-scale LBEs, creating healthcare apps, defining platform features, consulting, and more.

Key Deliverables:
+ Wrote the North Star product journeys, use cases, and personas to inform the ML2 and ML3 PRD and sensor and system architectures
+ Defined and implemented new processes to mitigate risk, reduce cost, and "fail fast" in dev environments utilizing experimental new technologies, building on over a decade of agile game development, rapid prototyping, and games as a service experience
+ Design advisor for Healthcare. Performed field research and embedded with radiologists, doctors, therapists, and other healthcare workers to learn their roles and current technologies. Identified opportunities and prototyped solutions to hand off to the Healthcare team
+ Contributed to platform designs including app publishing, privacy, and content discovery for location-based experiences
+ Led design for city scale experiences and partner projects including Dubai's 2020 World's Fair and a partnership with Miami University, making them the first official "Magicverse" destination outside of Magic Leap HQ
+ Public speaker and Spatial Computing advocate. Spoke on the Future of HCI at QConSF, shared best practices for building multi-user experiences at LEAPCon, and was featured on Magic Leap's Twitch.tv stream to discuss design best practices
+ Consultant/advisor for partners including Royal Shakespeare Company, Magic Leap indie dev grant winners, UK Future of Media grant winners, university research and media labs, and other external developers, running workshops, demos, discovery sessions, and giving talks on platform capabilities, interactions, best practices, development processes, and special considerations when developing for spatial computing and additive light displays

### Creator, Product Owner, and Design Director - Jetpack Fighter (iOS / Android) @ Hi-Rez Studios
Jan 2014 – Jan 2017 | Atlanta, Georgia, United States
After Smite's launch and critical success path were clear, Hi-Rez, under advisement from partner Tencent, took an interest in mobile gaming. I was tapped to lead prototyping and product discovery. My first prototype, a fast-paced swipe-based action slasher, was demoed by and received strong interest from Steven Ma, the head of Tencent Games, allowing me to staff and kick off a new team of Unity devs focusing on mobile games.

+ Created the initial concept, built the original prototypes, and led the project from prototype to launch, receiving 5 stars and multiple features on the iTunes and Android stores
+ Prototyped and scripted control schemes, gameplay systems, levels, bots, and equipment in UE3, UE4, and Unity3D
+ Staffed, trained, and led a team of over 20 new hires across all disciplines on an aggressive timeline
+ Led project direction, sprint planning meetings, and daily stand-ups and playtests
+ Assigned tasks and performed art, gameplay, and system reviews
+ Key liaison for Hi-Rez SLT, partners at Tencent Games, press, and Apple and Google app store publishers
+ Designed new and reusable systems for studio's first Unity/Mobile project with goal of creating a reusable mobile platform for future projects
+ Defined and implemented in-game analytics events, built reporting, ran A/B tests, and made gameplay adjustments based on the results to improve retention and monetization achieving industry leading mobile game retention (>60% D1)
+ Worked directly with marketing and video teams to define the public face and promotional media for the game
+ App earned 5 Stars and was regularly featured on the iTunes and Google Play Stores under Best New Games, Best New Updates, and other categories

### Creator and Lead Designer - Smite (PC / Xbox / PS4) @ Hi-Rez Studios
Jan 2010 – Jan 2014 | Atlanta, Georgia, United States
While prototyping and building expansion content for Global Agenda, I built the original Unreal prototypes and led game and champion design for Smite. My prototype greenlit the kickoff of a brand new product and team, and Smite's 40+M user growth and $700+M revenue financial success and profitability over 10+ years ultimately introduced F2P to consoles and allowed Hi-Rez to grow from 60 employees to over 400.

+ Prototyped the original Action/FPS-MOBA gameplay hybrid out of MMO systems originally created for use in prior game Global Agenda
+ Conducted playtests with the CEO and SLT, who greenlit Smite as a new product
+ Created retention and monetization systems that, combined with the success of the product, allowed Hi-Rez to grow from 60 empoyees operating at a loss to over 400 and profitable
+ Launched Smite as the first F2P game on Xbox and Playstation stores
+ Led ability, role, and thematic design for many of the original launch gods and goddesses (player characters)
+ Designed and scripted map, encounter, and gameplay systems in Unreal
+ Owned and maintained balance of gods and items, leveraging analytics and pro/community feedback
+ Oversaw design and portions of deployment for Live Ops on a bi-weekly content release schedule
+ Worked with eSports, Marketing, and Community teams to reveal new gods and patch updates
+ Introduced Twitch integrations to help spur Smite's viral growth and status as a Top 10 Twitch game
+ Working with an AI programmer, designed and rolled out a custom node-based AI systems with a designer-friendly GUI. Built reusable component AIs for gods, practice modes, minions, map bosses, and player pets using this new system. These logic and system improvements improved AI behaviors and reduced bot server CPU load from ~60% of CPU cycles to <5% (massively reducing server costs and enabling offline play)

### Senior Level Designer - Tribes: Ascend (PC) @ Hi-Rez Studios
Jan 2011 – Jan 2012 | Atlanta, Georgia, United States
Between converting Global Agenda to Free-to-Play and starting up Smite, I also briefly assisted the Tribes team in creating additional levels, a new game mode, and some tutorial content to help get Tribes: Ascend out the door.

+ Prototyped and introduced the new Team Deathmatch mode
+ Created and scripted levels for Team Deathmatch and Capture the Flag modes
+ Created and scripted tutorials, bot AIs, and training modes for the new player experience

### Lead Designer - Global Agenda (PC) @ Hi-Rez Studios
Jan 2010 – Jan 2011 | Atlanta, Georgia, United States
After Hi-Rez acquired the Tribes IP, the entire company pivoted to work on "Tribes Universe" (which later became "Tribes: Ascend"). I inherited Global Agenda as the new design lead, ultimately converting the game to Free-to-Play (the first of its kind on Steam), making Hi-Rez a pioneer and industry leader in the still early F2P market, all while re-tuning the game and shipping several well-received expansions, leading a small but effective core team.

+ Pioneered Free-to-Play, making Global Agenda the first such title on Steam. Transitioned and re-tuned the game's economy, balance, and monetization systems, and was debuted as a launch title for the brand new Steam F2P section
+ Led design, content, game balance, and product direction for post-launch updates
+ Steered Hi-Rez executive leadership away from a pay-to-win short term payout business direction that would have prevented us from pursuing the competitive eSports future that ultimately made us profitable and drove appeal with fans
+ Defined content scope for expansions and content updates, working with a small team of artists, programmers, and level designers to ensure timely and high quality delivery
+ Led PvE design, developing new bot and boss encounters, scripting AIs and map/mission/progression events, and owning new weapon/ability design and config
+ Designed, built, and launched new game modes including 10-man Raid encounters, open zones, high end dungeons, and solo/co-op missions
+ Mapped out and worked with a small team to build the new zones, create the plotlines, and write the NPC text for expansion content
+ Owned and led character/ability, gear, and reward progression design for all PvP and PvE content
+ Maintained balance of classes, weapons, and devices. Reworked and improved legacy skill trees, leveraging community feedback to improve variety and depth of play, ultimately improving balance and fun factor for both PvP and PvE modes as expansion content and F2P systems were added to the game

### Senior Designer - Global Agenda (PC) @ Hi-Rez Studios
Jan 2009 – Jan 2010 | Atlanta, Georgia, United States
+ Prototyped and scripted the core PvP and PvE game modes and level formats
+ Designed and scripted bots, encounters, and hazards in PvE missions
+ Built level layouts using BSP and rough assets
+ Worked with story and art teams to realize thematic visions and create world context within each level
+ Adjusted layouts and level parameters as needed for balance based on analytics and player feedback

### Level Designer - Global Agenda (PC) @ Hi-Rez Studios
Jan 2007 – Jan 2009 | Atlanta, Georgia, United States
+ Built layouts and scripted in-mission events for PvP and PvE gameplay modes
+ Prototyped new game modes using Kismet (Unreal 3's node-based predecessor to Blueprints) and in-house tools
+ Designed and scripted bot and boss AIs and abilities for PvE modes
+ Prototyped and introduced trap, hazard, and other environmental mechanics to PvE missions

### Level Design Intern - Global Agenda (PC) @ Hi-Rez Studios
Jan 2006 – Jan 2007 | Atlanta, Georgia, United States
+ Built levels for PvE and PvP game modes in Unreal Engine 3
+ Scripted bot behaviors and pathing
+ Scripted environment events and level game logic


## Education
### BS Computational Media in Game Design and Computer Science
Georgia Institute of Technology
Jan 2002 – Jan 2007

### High School
Creekside High School
Jan 1998 – Jan 2002


## Contact & Social
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/colman-bryant

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Source: https://flows.cv/colmanbryant
JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/colmanbryant/resume.json
Last updated: 2026-04-07