AaronLemke

Game Designer, AI Developer, Creative Technologist, Musician
Austin, TX
aaronglemke@gmail.com
aaronlemke.com
Game designer and AI developer. For 14+ years, every time a new technology has emerged, I've been one of the first to turn it into play — VR before consumer headsets existed (Eden River, Oculus Rift DK1, 2013), live interactive concerts before the category had a name (Wave: 50+ shows for Justin Bieber, The Weeknd, and John Legend), and now AI-native games: trained agents as living characters, language models as mechanics, generative pipelines as worlds. I design the experience and build the system — Unity, Unreal, Three.js, Godot, WebGPU, JAX, MuJoCo — and I've spent my career making emerging technology feel understandable, accessible, and alive through play.

Experience

Independent — AI Game Design & R&D

Game Prototypes · Machine Learning · Agentic Workflows · Generative AI · Deep RL · RLHF
Jan 2026 — Present · Austin, TX
  • Architect agentic workflows for game production and rapid prototyping: agent orchestration, cross-model coordination, test-driven development, and autonomous iteration loops.
  • Apply deep reinforcement learning, policy distillation, agent training, opponent modeling, and reward design — targeting browser-based inference to explore new types of gameplay mechanics through interactions with intelligent in-game agents.
  • Run a multi-cloud, agentic ML Ops stack across GCP, VAST, RunPod, Hetzner, and Cloudflare for training and inference.
  • Build across Three.js, Unity, Unreal, Godot, WebGPU, and JAX + MuJoCo with cross-platform deployment.
  • Explore natural-phenomena simulation through high-powered WebGPU compute shaders running natively in the browser, including artificial life, fractals, Physarum slime molds, and Navier–Stokes fluids.
  • Built an RLHF system to fine-tune fluid-sim preset generation.
  • Experiment with novel UI/UX patterns for voice-first and AI-native interaction paradigms.
  • Run Gemma 4 (2B/4B) on-device — tool calling on iOS, multimodal embeddings and local transcription on Mac, personal agents including Spotify playlist automation — alongside Gemini and GCP A100 training in the cloud.
  • Built a GPU-accelerated MCCFR data generator for 6-max No-Limit Hold'em and ran it continuously for multiple days on a 32× A100 RunPod cluster, generating synthetic policy/value data now being distilled into neural-network weights for offline bot play and GTO coaching.
  • Organized a team of 10 to ship a Global Game Jam 2026 entry, Threadrunners, in Unity / C# with custom compute shaders driving procedural city generation and procedural rail placement for in-game rollerblading.
  • Co-founded Austin Demo Day, a quarterly science-fair-style demo night for Austin creators, builders, artists, and engineers; the first edition drew ~400 attendees over four hours.
JAXGCP MuJoCoPPO UnityUnreal Three.jsWebGPUMLX VASTRunPodHetzner Cloudflare

Wave — Co-Founder & Chief Creative Officer

Game Design Lead · R&D Prototyping Lead · AI R&D Lead
2016 — Mar 2026 · 10 years · Los Angeles / Austin
  • Co-founded Wave and grew it over ten years across three platforms — Steam PC VR, browser-based interactive livestreams, and a Quest 3 Unreal Engine platform; $65M+ raised across venture and strategic rounds from investors including Kleiner Perkins, Accel, Maveron, Upfront, Greycroft, Tencent Music, Warner Music Group, Scooter Braun, The Weeknd, Justin Bieber, and J Balvin.

Experience (Continued)

Wave — Continued

  • Spearheaded integration with Lyria (Google DeepMind's music generation system), building it into a user-facing generative DJ interface.
  • Received an acquisition offer from Google in 2017.
  • Shipped 50+ live interactive multiplayer concert experiences across Oculus, Steam, TikTok, YouTube, Twitch, and Facebook — including The Weeknd Experience, TikTok's first AR-powered livestream (2M+ unique viewers, a 275K concurrent-viewer record) — with shows for Justin Bieber, The Weeknd, John Legend, Lindsey Stirling, The Glitch Mob, Imogen Heap, Strangeloop, Alison Wonderland, Tinashe, Kizuna Ai, and Riot Games.
  • Owned game design direction for platform-scale systems: audience-participation loops, performer / audience interaction, massively multiplayer interaction design, audio-reactive mechanics, and player- and performer-facing feedback across VR and livestream.
  • Led the R&D prototyping team exploring next-generation interactive concert mechanics; personally architected Unity and Unreal prototypes that translated creative briefs into deployed gameplay loops.
  • Built a UGC system on top of Tilt Brush and Google Poly that turned the community into a self-sustaining engine for show creation.
  • Delivered countless company-wide presentations on company vision and design; co-led strategy presentations at quarterly board meetings.
  • Drove studio-wide adoption of Claude Code; built AI R&D team around generative content workflows and AI-powered production and engineering process upgrades.
UnityC# Unreal EngineReal-time mocap Live opsCross-platform streaming ViveQuestPico OSCPerforce JIRALive LinkMediaPipeLyria

Axon Virtual Health — Co-Founder

Clinical Interaction Design · Pain & Anxiety Research · Patient UX · Pilot Studies
2014 — 2016 · Austin / Houston, TX
  • Co-founded digital health startup developing immersive Unity / Gear VR applications for patient pain control and anxiety reduction in clinical settings.
  • Designed a patient-facing therapeutic pain control experience around distraction therapy, accessibility, and cognitive-load management.
  • Ran an early clinical pilot with a palliative care clinic in Houston and observed promising initial pain/anxiety results; Axon's in-kind donations of headsets, software, and iPhones later supported a published randomized controlled trial of VR distraction therapy at Dell Children's (American Journal of Emergency Medicine, 2021).
UnityC#Gear VR

Unello Design — Founder & Solo Developer

Commercial Game Releases · Systems Design · Player Experience · Optimization
2012 — 2016 · 4 years · Austin, TX
  • Founded and operated an independent game studio exploring guided meditation and digital nature experiences; owned design, code, art, QA, optimization, launches, analytics, marketing, and go-to-market.
  • Eden River — controllerless virtual nature experience and early Oculus Share release, later used in Polish Academy of Sciences mood research and an Australian autism classroom; expanded as Eden River HD for Steam, Oculus Store, and Google Play. youtu.be/gxY7mCdhEIk
  • Zen Zone — three-mode wellness game/app for Google Cardboard & Samsung Gear VR, designed around guided meditation, cognitive-load reduction, accessibility, and constrained mobile hardware. youtu.be/Y0xNbnvTt0c
  • Lunadroid 237 — inspired by Myst, Dear Esther, and 2001: A Space Odyssey. youtu.be/wl6lld1dA9Y
  • Waking Man, Fire Breather, Opera Nova — further expanded the studio's experimental catalog across meditation, breathwork, and interactive audio and music experiences. Waking Man: youtu.be/02y9ODDdj8Q · Fire Breather (featured in a PewDiePie video): youtu.be/rSD6kEirHaM · Opera Nova: youtu.be/OAZLJ7SaHP0
  • Composed, wrote, and recorded all original music and scores across the Unello catalog.
UnityC#Spatial / Binaural Audio VR optimizationTech artGoogle Analytics CardboardGear VRRiftViveQuest

Selected Creative Direction

  • Max Frost — "Virgin" (Music Video Director) — AI-reanimated frame-by-frame from iPhone capture using Disco Diffusion + Google Colab, in the earliest era of generative video. youtu.be/KFDSKfiw3Mg
    Disco DiffusionGoogle ColabAdobe Premiere Pro
  • AI Video Pipeline R&D — multi-year deep dive across the generative-video stack: custom ComfyUI workflows for end-to-end stylized motion. Reels: C7vRL33Ntql · C2Y1OgILDFp
    ComfyUIVeo 3Stable DiffusionKlingTopaz Video
  • Stereoscopic AI Video on Apple Vision Pro — likely the first 3D AI-generated stereoscopic videos on Vision Pro: video and depth maps rendered out of Unreal Engine, animated with ComfyUI, then converted to 4K stereo with Depth Anything (Hugging Face) combined with the original Unreal depth maps.
    Unreal EngineComfyUIDepth AnythingHugging Face
  • Hargrave Arcade Installation (Austin) — physical interactive art piece pairing an upside-down high-power hand dryer with a Leap Motion sensor and a DK1 Oculus running Unity; visitors directed a beam of particles through the air with their hands, dynamically warping the music, lighting, and color of the experience. youtu.be/SdZgPWOpNqg
    UnityDK1 OculusLeap MotionAudio-reactivePhysical installation

Skills

Leadership & Communication10 years of startup executive experience · Cross-functional creative leadership · R&D direction · AI team leadership · Game-jam and ideation facilitation · Artist / executive collaboration · Public speaking
Game Design & R&DAI-native mechanics · Systems design · Rapid prototyping · Multiplayer interaction · Player-facing feedback · Design docs / PRDs
EnginesUnity (13+ yrs) · Unreal (5 yrs) · Three.js · Godot · Roblox · MuJoCo · Cross-platform deployment
Generative AI & Agentic SystemsAgent orchestration · Structured outputs · MCP · Local model integration (Gemma, MLX) · Eval harnesses
Machine Learning & SimulationRL · PPO · RLHF · JAX · MuJoCo physics & control · Reward shaping · Curriculum design · Emergent agent behavior · ML Ops
Real-Time GraphicsWebGPU · Three.js · TSL · Compute shaders · Ray marching · Audio-reactive rendering · Procedural systems · Particle / flocking sims · Tech art & optimization
UI/UX & AccessibilityCognitive-load management · Onboarding non-gamers · Comfort-first VR design · Voice-first interaction
QA & Test AutomationPlaywright E2E · Vitest · CI pipelines · Evidence-driven verification
Music & AudioPerforming musician since age 10 · Songwriter · Producer · Bandleader · Jazz, rock, blues, country, hip-hop bands · Guitar, bass, drums, keys, vocals · Composition (ambient, electronic, scoring) · Sound design · Spatial audio
MiscellaneousEagle Scout · Performed at Carnegie Hall with high school choir

Recognition

Forbes 30 Under 30 — Media (2020) GDC Future Realities (formerly XRDC) Advisory Board Multiple SXSW Speaker Appearances Multiple Silicon Valley Virtual Reality Speaker Appearances ADE Speaker Proto Awards · 4× Best Score Nominee (2014–2016)

Education

Bachelor of Science in Psychology, Minor in Radio-Television-Film
Graduated with Honors from The University of Texas at Austin
Psychology informs the design practice: player psychology, cognitive load, accessibility, and audience behavior.