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The generative AI boom brought us “vibe coding,” and then eventually “vibe directing.” Now, a new entry: vibe…game development?
It’s the idea behind Series Entertainment’s “RUN,” a new platform that lets users create
new games while shortening the typically months- or yearslong window for building them down to days. The platform, which is now in beta, aims to give its users a one-stop shop to create games and publish them for mobile and web platforms, with support for TVs and Steam coming soon, and monetize them. Series has already sourced roughly 5,500 creators during its alpha phase, many of whom have participated in the company’s “Game Jams,” where creators build games while trying to win cash prizes.
RUN is the brainchild of Series founder and CEO Pany Haritatos, a former gaming executive at companies such as Snap and Zynga, who tells Variety the goal is to make it easier for creators to “earn a living from my passion and sort of bringing my visions to life – but do that in hopefully a week or two.” As part of RUN’s launch, the company is launching a $1 million Content Support Fund to help provide creators with the financial resources, education and tools to help bring ideas to life.
“As a creator, you have to be really good at so many things,” he says. “That’s why it is so hard to break into these platforms, because you have to think much more than just ‘I want to create this great game or this great experience or this great video.’ You have to think about how’s your go-to-market, what are your partnership strategy, how you’re going to monetize, how you’re going to reactivate these audiences, and so we’ve built this suite of AI-powered tools that allows you to be an expert in all those things.”
The platform is broken up into four different “studios,” each with their own distinct purpose. A “Game Studio” allows people to build their games through either prompts or code, while the “Adventure Studio” expands that for adventure-driven games that mimic the 3D-style titles of the 20th century. A “Story Studio” allows creators to build their own characters and worlds, while a “Video Studio” expands on it by producing fully generated short-form videos. The company hopes to expand the variety of content in the future to include first-person shooters and comic books, while eventually open-sourcing the RUN platform.
The underlying technology is backed by a variety of models including Claude, Grok, Seedance, DeepSeek and more. “We’re just trying to find the best tools for creators to be able to achieve their desired quality output,” Haritatos says.
Series’ driving purpose right now is to respond to creators’ needs, whether through new features or tools to help monetize their work. For monetization, the company currently supports in-game purchases and ads, and it is currently working on improving its support for subscription-based gaming models. Creators who earn money on the platform can choose to reinvest those earnings into their work without the company taking a cut. For those who choose to withdraw their earnings, the company’s commission ranges between 20% to 30%.
Ultimately, Series wants the RUN platform to operate as a collaborative experience between the company and its audience, with the Series team trying “to understand where creators are struggling, and then build technology or skills or tools that make that easy,” Haritatos says.
“Our games teams have made literally billions of dollars in revenue, and we’re trying to take all of that and put it into a solution that allows creators to essentially shortcut all the way to bring your amazing vision to life, start earning on it immediately, so that you can focus on investing in your passion and your excitement,” Haritatos says.
