MILES GERMER · TECHNICAL ARTIST · CINEMATIC SYSTEMS · AI-AUGMENTED PRODUCTION
Slip Theory Studios · Founder's Record

Five core devs.
Seven specialists.
Studio-scale output.

In July 2025 I founded a game studio believing that a small senior team running AI woven into every discipline could produce at the scale of a much larger organization. This page is what happened, including the ending, which is where the data led.

5core devs
7specialists
12months
4playable prototypes
1UE5 vision video
100%self-funded
01 · The production

What five people shipped

Rift Fighters, a deck-driven, real-time cinematic fighting game built in Unreal Engine. Think Nemesis-System relationships meets card strategy meets action-movie spectacle. In one self-funded year, a five-person senior core produced a UE5 cinematic vision video (directed, shot, and cut in Sequencer), four playable prototypes built with AI-assisted engineering, a complete game design document, and an evidence-based financial model that ultimately decided the company's fate. The video premiered at a Seattle Indies Founders Club session where Rift Fighters was the featured project, hosted by Harebrained Schemes co-founder Mitch Gitelman.

Rift Fighters logo, chrome lettering over a swirling blue rift
Rift Fighters
Rift Fighters gameplay: two martial artists mid-fight in a candlelit temple, playable cards along the bottom edge, health bars and a round timer up top
In-engine gameplay: cards drive real-time combat

The core team I recruited: Roy McCormack (designer of the Nemesis System), Joel Blakely (Lead Character Artist on Shadow of Mordor), Branden Conley (Lead Gameplay Engineer, six years on Magic: The Gathering Arena), and Dan Burdick (core-game designer on Magic: The Gathering).

Around that core I ran a specialist bench, bringing people in as the work demanded it: backend engineering, technical art, UI/UX, monetization design, data analysis, financial modeling, and marketing. Seven disciplines, seven people, inside twelve months.

Advising us: Mitch Gitelman (co-founder, Harebrained Schemes), with informal counsel from Dave Luehmann (GM of four Microsoft game studios; Director of Game Development at Netflix) and a deal advisor with two major studio acquisitions behind him.

Watch on YouTube →

This is the Portfolio Cut — the vision video with protected design elements removed, cut to music. The complete cut, with dialogue and interface intact, is the Master Cut. Ask to see it →

Vision Video · Credits
Relationship System DesignRoy McCormack
Character Design, 3D Character Modeling, Skinning and TexturingJoel Blakely
UI/UX DesignMarcello Sarmento
Cameras, Motion Graphics, Music, Audio Mix, Dialogue, Lighting, Character Materials, Renders, Editing, Compositing, UI/UX Design, Creative Direction, Art Direction, Fight Animations, Dialogue Animations, AI Lip-syncMiles Germer
Story DevelopmentBranden Conley
Miles Germer presenting at the Seattle Indies Founders Club, smiling at the microphone with a thumbs up
Presenting Rift Fighters at the Seattle Indies Founders Club, June 2026
The audience at the Seattle Indies Founders Club session, seated and watching the presentation
The room
Official Seattle Indies Founders Club event banner listing Miles Germer on the speaker lineup, hosted by Mitch Gitelman of Harebrained Schemes
The official event lineup

TIMELINE: JUL 2025 — JUL 2026 · CLIP PLACEMENT APPROXIMATE

02 · The production system

How the studio actually ran

The structure was a small senior core, a specialist bench called in by discipline, and AI connecting every discipline to the rest.

The multiplier wasn't any single tool. It was treating AI as infrastructure with a memory, not a chat window, then holding every output to production standards. By March 2026 the studio's living use-case log recorded more than twenty distinct AI use cases across eight departments, with average time savings around 60%.

Company memory

Claude connected to our ClickUp docs and Google Drive, plus a shared library of markdown files that served as the company's persistent brain. Decisions, design rationale, and pipeline knowledge stayed queryable instead of trapped in threads. Fully wired together May–July 2026.

DCC tooling

AI-assisted Python tools for Maya (animation fixes and a WYSIWYG slow-motion authoring workflow) built in days instead of sprints, by an artist, without waiting on an engineering queue.

Playable iteration

Four playable prototypes stood up with AI-assisted engineering, letting design questions get answered by play instead of debate, backed by an automated tuning harness that ran thousands of simulated fights.

Content & research

AI-assisted deep research, generative image and video for pre-vis, and music production feeding the vision video and pitch materials. One person covering ground that used to take a department.

03 · The verdict

The part I'd hire someone for

■ Final take
The model said the game can't earn back what it would cost to build. So I believed my own instrument.

I rebuilt our financial model from the ground up: 21 formula-driven tabs, more than twenty versions, every load-bearing assumption validated against 15+ sourced research briefs. I gut-checked it against genre reality, and the answer came back unambiguous. On July 21, 2026, I put the conclusion in writing to my team and advisors and wound down development. The methodology outlived the game. Proving a small senior team can produce at studio scale, then stopping when the numbers said stop, is what I bring to whatever I build next.

04 · Track record

Three decades of solving the hard ones

2025 — 2026
Founder & Creative Director — Slip Theory StudiosBuilt and led an AI-augmented studio developing Rift Fighters; a five-person senior core plus a specialist bench, self-funded, full arc from founding to wind-down.
2002 — 2025
Principal Artist — Snowblind Studios / Monolith Productions (WB Games)22 years as the technical artist they called for the impossible problems. Combat cinematography on Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor (2014 Game of the Year, 160+ awards and nominations) and Shadow of War; built Nemesis System player experiences including Domination, Finishers, and Last Chance; architected cinematic, camera, lighting, and conversation systems across proprietary engines. Finished as Principal Artist on WB's Wonder Woman, spearheading cinematic tools and systems design and directing motion capture, until WB cancelled the project and closed Monolith in early 2025.
2000 — 2002
Co-founder & Art Director — Tanga Networks (Uberplay)Handheld-games startup: co-founded the company, helped raise ~$500K in angel capital, and art-directed an RPG project with 80+ characters and procedural environments.
1993 — 2001
Lead Artist → Partner — Salt Lake City post housesMedia Makers, Jewkes & Germer, and Counterpoint Studios: led art production across broadcast design, 3D/2D animation, and live event staging, and co-owned two of the three.