Game Designer
Call of Duty: Black Ops 6
Combat/Systems Designer
Released: Oct 2024
Studio: Treyarch
Time: 2 Years
Call of Duty: Zombies has a long legacy round based carnage and deeply satisfying combat loops. When I joined the Zombies Design Team at Treyarch for Black Ops 6. The challenge was expanding the roster of zombies enemy types in a way that felt unique. Every new archetype had to challenge players in different ways while preserving the core of what makes Zombies... Zombies.
I was responsible for the enemies. How they moved, how they attacked players, how they died, and for the systems that determined when and how they generally showed up. The question driving most of the decisions was, "Is this enemy easy to understand?" Zombies puts players under constant pressure. An enemy that players can't immediately understand isn't a challenge, it's feels unfair. Clarity is what makes a threat feel intentional and fun.
Ownerships
I was in some degree responsible for the zombies enemy experience for almost every AI type that was shipped. Some enemies were entirely new, others were inherited and reworked in all cases it involved a lot of moving parts from pitching a new archetypes in pre-production/production, to tuning and bug-fixing post-launch. Needed to wear a few different kinds of hats.
Enemy Archetype Design Pitched, designed, and shipped a wide range of enemy types across multiple maps. Each archetype required defining its behavior pillars, threat pattern, and how it layered with other enemies.
Cross-Department Collaboration Worked daily with Engineering, Animation, VFX, SFX, Art, and UI/UX to bring each enemy to life.
Round Spawning & Scaling Systems Inherited and implemented the round spawning, health scaling, and damage scaling systems across multiple Zombies maps. This became one of the most visible (and educational) parts of my work at launch.
Boss Fight Design After contributing to boss iterations post-launch, I was given the opportunity to design and ship my own boss. The Z-Rex, a full multi-phase encounter for the Shattered Veil main quest.
Working on both enemy design and the spawning system meant every tuning decision had two audiences: the enemy that players were reacting to, and the system quietly deciding which enemies they were reacting to
Key System and Design Contributions
Enemy Archetypes
The guiding principle for every new enemy was role clarity: what does this enemy pressure the player to do? Some enemies punished players for staying still. Others punished clustering to closely with teammates. Others forced players to make the hard choice between the immediate threat and the growing one.
The Elder Disciple was built around that last idea. It would trigger an evolution on a nearby enemy, which meant players had a decision to make in real time: handle the horde in front of them, or break off and deal with the Disciple before the buffed enemies became unmanageable
Round Spawning & Scaling
I inherited this system and took worked on of its implementation across multiple zombie maps. The spawning logic, health values, and damage scaling all needed to feel coherent together as the player's power level increases across rounds, and getting that right required a lot of testing and learning. I had opportunities to support improvements to enemy testing and iteration workflows as well
I was able to even capture footage, for the April Fools content using some skills learned from working on so many different maps.
The Z-Rex Boss Fight
The Z-Rex is an undead tyrannosaurus.
The fight concludes the main quest for the Shattered Veil map, a no-checkpoint experience that plays like an action-adventure escape room inside Round Based Zombies. The Z-Rex, much like most boss fights, needed to feel like an appropriate finale to that journey: overwhelming, spectacular, and fair enough that completing it feels earned.
The core design goal was simple: Make players feel hunted.
The Attacks
Each attack was designed to address a specific player behavior.
-
Long-Range Puke Attack
-
When players keep their distance, the Z-Rex vomits zombies with noxious cloud residue. The cloud is semi-permanent. It doesn't just add damage, it reshapes the arena. Over time, playing defensively becomes too dangerous. As the players escape becomes more limited
-
-
Mid Range Jump Attack
-
The Z-Rex can close the distance with a large leap. Surprising everyone with the agility of the Boss.
-
-
Close Range Bite
-
Direct Forward attack and is an iconic part of the T-Rex. Since the mouth is so large reads immediately as I don't want to be hit by that...
-
-
Tail Smack
-
Attacks players flanking behind. It also launches players into the air which was designed to lead into an emergent mechanic.
-
Mounting Opportunity
-
The tail launch developed to allow players to land on the Z-Rex's back. This created a high-risk, high-reward moment that emerged organically from an existing mechanic.
-
-
-
Design Insight
Every attack is also a behavior modifier. The puke attack doesn't just deal damage. It progressively eliminates safe zones. The tail attack doesn't just punish flanking it opens a new dimension of play. A learning from this I had was when attacks serve double duty like this, the fight feels more alive than mechanical.
Ribcage Weak Point
The Z-Rex can be damaged anywhere on its body. Players can achieve significantly more damage when targetting the zombies embedded in its ribcage. The Z-Rex replenishes these by consuming nearby zombies. Creating a layered economy of risk and reward.
Letting the Z-Rex eat creates vulnerability windows for high-damage moments. But those same consumed zombies could have been adversaries, and the eating behavior keeps a variable number of enemies in play. Encouraging players to experiment and adapt while leaning into the fiction of a Undead Dino.
Design Insight
We wanted the ribcage mechanic to feel rewarding without feeling mandatory. If the only "correct" way to fight the boss was to exploit one mechanic, it would punish players who didn't discover it. The solution was to make the standard damage path viable with Crit location during certain attacks such as the puke and the eyes. While making the weak point from the ribcage feel exciting as a bonus, not a requirement.
Richtofen
An ally companion (Richtofen) assists during the fight by throwing helpful items, armor plates, equipment, self-revive kits, based on a prioritized logic system. The goal was clear: Richtofen should help, not solve. The player is the hero.
This meant building specific guardrails: Richtofen would never deal the killing blow. His drops would always be supplemental rather than necessary. The companion had to feel like an effective teammate, not a safety net, and not competition for the moment players had been building toward.
Key Design Takeaways
Clarity is the most important thing an enemy can have. A threat that players can't read in seconds isn't a challenge. Every attack should communicate its intent before it connects.
Design for the player who doesn't read patch notes. The best mechanics are ones where optimal play feels natural to discover, not mandatory to research.
Owning a live system, not just a feature, is a different kind of responsibility. Spawning, scaling, and AI pacing interact constantly. Getting good at one requires understanding all three.
Tool Design is design work. Time you invest in reducing iteration friction pays compound interest across the entire project and the entire team.
When something goes sideways publicly, lean in with honesty and humor. The community respects self-awareness. "Opps All Manglers" became an incredible moment that I'm proud of.
The player is always the hero. Every companion mechanic, every system, every tuning decision should make that feel more true not less.
Zombies is at its best when it feels barely under control. Throughout this project, my focus was on building enemies and systems that push players into areas where pressure is constant and decisions matter