David Geisert, smiling in sunglasses and a light blue shirt, in front of an illustrated map of London.

About me

David Geisert

Game developer turned prototyper turned AI founder. I host Jamference, run Story Machine AI, and spend my weekends making small games with models in the loop.

Why I run a game jam about AI

I've spent my career at the point where games, new hardware and new tools meet: shipping a VR game on a brand-new headset, prototyping experiences for AR glasses that hadn't been released yet, and now building products where AI does a lot of the heavy lifting.

Jamference is the jam I wanted to enter. Everyone gets the same theme and restriction, everyone is allowed (and expected) to use AI, and everyone shows their work. I make a game for every jam too, so I'm in the trenches with you.

Games & XR

My history in the games industry

  1. Weekends & jams

    Still making games

    Jams keep me shipping. Recent ones include Hexagon Tactics, where AI creates characters, enemies, names and art in real time; Island Builder, an AI-assisted card roguelite; Severed Heads, United Hearts, where you persuade AI agents to back you over your rival; and Deep Boid Sea, a shader and flocking toy. At Jamference #1, my tower defence game Kitty Kingdom was rated the most fun entry.

  2. Meta · Meta Connect demo

    Object locking AI

    With a team of six over three months, I led prototyping for a system that recognises real objects, works out where they are in 3D, pins stable markers to them, and feeds what it sees to an LLM (for example, suggesting a recipe from the ingredients on the counter). It became part of a live demo at Meta Connect.

    3 monthsTeam of 6

  3. Meta · Reality Labs

    Senior product design prototyper, Orion AR glasses

    Two years prototyping on Orion, Meta's internal see-through AR glasses with eye, hand and touch input. I led prototyping for messaging (Messenger and WhatsApp), building every exploratory prototype in Unity, running studies, and pushing to test directly on the glasses rather than on stand-in VR headsets. The work explored AI summaries, prioritisation and notifications that know what you're doing, so messages don't swamp you while you walk around the real world.

  4. Meta · Reality Labs

    Colocation systems for Quest

    Early work on letting headsets know where each other are, so several people can share the same physical and virtual space. I designed and built the safety systems and ran the safety testing for colocated headsets.

  5. Coinflip Studios

    Lead developer & designer, Ninja Legends

    I led the team behind Ninja Legends, a fast melee VR game and one of the first six-degrees-of-freedom titles released after the original Oculus Quest launched. I spotted that most existing VR games wouldn't port to the new standalone headset, steered the team toward a game that would run on that class of hardware, and worked my contacts to get it in front of the Quest teams early.

    Being early in a near-empty store paid off. The game was built in only a few months and went on to release on Quest, Rift, Steam and PlayStation VR.

    Over $1.2M in revenueEarly Quest title

  6. Rocket Games

    Lead systems designer, Viva Slots

    Rocket Games became a leader in social casino with Viva Slots, the most popular classic slots game, and was acquired by Penn National Gaming in 2016. I defined product and design for new business segments, launched new products and product lines, and designed retention and monetisation systems tested with A/B and multi-armed bandit experiments. I also ran marketing and growth for the game portfolio on a $1M yearly budget.

    Acquired by Penn National Gaming$1M yearly marketing budget

  7. Zynga

    Product manager, Pioneer Trail & Storyville

    My start in games. I was a product manager on Pioneer Trail, then a senior product manager in the Storyville division, handling feature design, product management and analysis for one of Zynga's top-grossing games, and managing release strategies for new apps.

    Top-grossing game

AI

My work in AI

These days I'm CEO of Story Machine AI, leading a small team and building AI products with AI development tools. Some of what I've made: