Joshua Kifer

Chief Operating Officer @ Combat Waffle Studios Inc

About

I’m the Chief Operating Officer at Combat Waffle Studios, where we build immersive VR games designed to stand out in a crowded market. We shipped Ghosts of Tabor, now one of the most popular and highest-grossing titles on Meta Quest. Building and scaling a VR studio capable of delivering games at that level takes more than vision — it takes systems, trust, and relentless execution. I’m an “all of the above” kind of leader. I oversee hiring, investment relationships, vendor partnerships, production, and the day-to-day operations of the studio. My focus is making sure ambitious creative visions are actually shippable, especially when the scope is big and the team is lean. One of the things I’m most proud of is our ability to accomplish massive-feeling games with relatively small teams. That requires discipline, clarity, and strong production pipelines. Over the years, I’ve helped expand partnerships, secure publisher funding, navigate crisis moments, reduce unnecessary spend, scale teams, and ship commercially successful titles. But none of that works without culture. I believe studios run best on transparency and communication. Creatives should be able to create. Leaders should be trusted to lead. Teams should make decisions together and own those decisions. I don’t micromanage, I stay calm in the storm and make sure the right people have the support and clarity they need to execute. My path into leadership wasn’t glamorous. I started scrappy — Junior QA Tester. Then QA Leadership. Project Management. VP of Production. Now COO. I’ve worked my way up through the trenches of development, and that perspective shapes how I operate today. At the end of the day, I care about two things: making great games, and supporting the people who make them. If you're interested in VR, partnerships, publishing, scaling teams, or building ambitious games with disciplined execution.......let’s connect.

Country

United States

City

North Port-Sarasota Area

Industry

Computer Games

Skill

ClickFunnels, Website Building, Online Marketing, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Premiere Pro, Video Editing, Community Management, Social Media, Level Design, 3D Modeling, Adobe Creative Suite, C#, Jira, Quality Assurance, Test Planning, Confluence, Unity, Bug Tracking, Marketing, Advertising

Experience

Chief Operating Officer

Combat Waffle Studios Inc

2026-2 - Present · 8 mos

Vice President of Production & Live Operations

Combat Waffle Studios Inc

2025-6 - 2026-2 · 9 mos

United States

Junior Project Manager

Combat Waffle Studios Inc

2024-7 - 2025-6 · 1 yr

United States

QA Lead

Combat Waffle Studios Inc

2024-3 - 2024-8 · 6 mos

Co-Owner

Fyrebite Studios LLC

2021-3 - Present · 5 yrs 7 mos

Fyrebite Interactive is currently a small indie development team working on the first debut game "The Secrets of Hope". Fyrebite Interactive creates games that are often emotional stories on dealing with tough topics in a narrative form using surreal environments. We aim to leave the player emotional changed after experiencing The Secrets of Hope.

Owner

JoshyposhyVR

2021-12 - Present · 4 yrs 10 mos

VR Content Creation that focuses on bringing and driving the industry of Virtual Reality Forward. In 1 year of content Creation, I was able to achieve a total audience of 27,000 followers by creating both short form and long form content focusing on VR games and products. Key Reasonability's: - writing engaging scripts and filming VR Content - Editing engaging short form and long form Videos using industry standard video editing practices via Adobe Premiere Pro. - Understanding SEO and utilizing various social media platforms to grow an audience. - Graphic Design of Video Thumbnails and promotional material - Fostering a supportive community of other VR content creators and discord communities.

QA Engineer

SideQuest

2023-1 - 2023-7 · 7 mos

Quality Assurance Tester

Statespace

2021-5 - 2022-12 · 1 yr 8 mos

At Statespace, we create products to help gamers get better at the games they play. Currently, our flagship products are Aim Lab (available on Steam!), ProGuides, and Playerbase. Key Responsibilities: - Identify, isolate and report anomalous behaviors (bugs) in a detailed manner - Create and use documents (testing plans) that are necessary for testing - Experience testing on a variety of platforms (VR, PC, Mobile and Web - independently writing testing plans, checklists, testing builds, reporting bugs into a database and verifying bugs claimed to be fixed by engineering - Deep understanding of version control and Unity game engine

CEO

Kifer Media Group

2018-12 - 2021-12 · 3 yrs 1 mo

In 2018 I set out to fill a need in my local city for creating an affordable social media marketing company that the business owners could be connected with and have marketing tailored to their industry from someone that knows the local area. Key Responsibilities: - Created marketing and social media campaigns and strategies for brands such as Toyota - Budget planning, content production and implementation schedules. - Understood emerging trends and user habits to make sure the right eyes were seeing the campaigns. - Ensured brand consistency in marketing materials, Video content and social media channels - Collected customer data and analyzes interactions and visits - Represented the brand professionally on social media platforms when engaging with customers.