Great Developers Joined Before There Was Any Money
Every hire came through a relationship. Most of the core team shipped Game of the Year titles with me, and some of us worked side by side for a decade. Senior developers don't join a self-funded startup because of a slide deck. They joined because they believed in the game and in each other. Personally, getting this group to say yes is one of the things I'm proudest of.
They are great people, and very good at what they do. For example, Joel is a fifth-degree black belt in Shotokan karate, so our lead character artist was also our fight choreographer.
The roster
CORE
- Roy McCormack · Lead Systems Design · designer of the Nemesis System
- Joel Blakely · Lead Character Art · Lead Character Artist on Shadow of Mordor
- Dan Burdick · Card & Systems Design · core-game designer on Magic: The Gathering
- Branden Conley · Lead Gameplay Engineer · Lead Client Engineer at Dire Wolf Digital
SPECIALISTS
- Kobi Levi · Monetization · nearly 20 years at Playtika, Wildlife Studios, and PLAYSTUDIOS; pitched Rift Fighters to his contacts at Playtika
- Kris Havlak · Analytics · 11 years of Shadow of Mordor and Shadow of War data at Monolith
- Vuong Vu · Marketing Strategy · WB Games and Xbox
- Tymon Johns · Financial Modeling · finance lecturer, UW Bothell
- John Santiago · Backend Engineering · stood up our UE5 and Perforce infrastructure
- Marcello Sarmento · UI/UX Design
- A technical artist from Mortal Kombat 11 and Injustice 2 · engine integration and VFX
COUNSEL
- Don McGowan · former Chief Legal Officer, The Pokémon Company International; led the legal work on Bungie's $3.6B sale to Sony
The advisors
Mitch Gitelman, co-founder of Harebrained Schemes, was our most involved advisor. We met one-on-one regularly, and he gave me design advice, production advice, and blunt reality checks. Dave Luehmann ran four Microsoft game studios as a GM and later served as Director of Game Development at Netflix. He advised on strategy. A deal advisor with 2 major studio acquisitions behind him reviewed every version of our financial model. A startup CFO advised on funding.
How do you get 4 busy industry veterans to give a full day to a startup with no funding? You show them work worth their time. In April 2026 I brought all 4 into one room for a strategy summit. That day we:
- Set the MVP scope: premium game, minimum fighters, minimum cards
- Made the vertical slice the gate for funding
- Sent the vision video back for relationship dialogue
- Moved our AI advantage to the front of the pitch
I kept the team and our network up to date with monthly team reviews and company updates to more than 20 industry contacts. I also met with about 7 studio founders to pressure-test the plan.
FEATURED AT SLICE · SEATTLE INDIES FOUNDERS CLUB · JUNE 2026
Rift Fighters was the featured project at a Founders Club session hosted by Mitch Gitelman. I pitched the game and premiered the vision video to a room of indie studio heads, founders, and investors. Seattle is one of the biggest game development hubs in the world, and it was a great room to be in. Their feedback was pivotal in helping me find the right games for our competitive analysis. Those comparisons helped us get real about the project finances and eventually led to the decision to close the project.
