Meet the Team

Michael Rifkin, President & Creative Director

A Brooklyn native, Michael attended Saint Ann’s School, attained his B.A. in Government at Colby College, and finally an M.B.A. at the Zicklin School of Business. Michael began his career in New York politics, first as a case manager and then as a body man for a State Senator.  From there Michael moved into the textile industry, starting as a traveling salesman and finishing as the Export Sales Manager. Michael founded RifRaf Games as a passion project in his first year of business school, and since then has taken on the role of President and Creative Director as the company has grown.

Brent Boylen, Director of Product Development

Brent has been working in the interactive media, game design, and production industries for over 20 years. He’s worked as designer, producer, and studio manager for publisher-developers such as Activision and Gameloft. In 2005 Brent and some past colleagues founded an indie video game studio in lower Manhattan named OneNine Studios, and created 30-plus titles over 7 years. He’s also produced educational software, eBooks, and more games at Scholastic Media, and helped build and scale up a Sequoia-backed digital collectibles platform called Quidd. Brent met Michael in the MBA program at the Zicklin School of Business, where they agreed for him build the new studio from the ground up as Director of Product Development.

Mike O’Neil, Senior Technical Lead

Michael O'Neil has been playing video games for over 40 years and was able to turn that passion into a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from UCSC in 1997. From there he got his first job at EA Sports working on titles like NCAA Basketball and Knockout Kings. He ended up at Relic Entertainment before taking a break to do some world traveling. Once he settled down in New York he co-founded his own mobile game company, 415 Games. With that experience under his belt, he was hired by RifRaf Games' very own Brent Boylen at his first company, OneNine Studios. There he was lead on SpongeBob SquarePants amongst other mobile projects and also led a bi-coastal team on a Hello Kitty: Birthday Adventure for the Nintendo DS. After a short time with PuzzleNation he is now back with Brent where he and the rest of the team are doing what they do best.

Pat Skelton, Senior Technical Artist

Pat Skelton is a multidisciplinary artist with an MFA in Digital Art, BFA in animation, and nearly 14 years experience working with all things 3D. Prior to joining the RifRaf team, he was hired by Brent to create the 3D content for the collectibles platform Quidd. There he worked hand in hand with mobile developers to build the pipeline and team responsible for producing over 4,000 unique, licensed, collectible 3D models and animated toys for IP such as Disney, Marvel, Star Trek, Game of Thrones, Dungeons and Dragons, and more. His first taste for game development came from Global Game Jam. After that, his love for world-building, and knack for problem-solving, made the move to making games full-time a natural transition.

Jack Pickering, Writer & Editor

Jack is a writer and editor with over 10 years of experience. After graduating from The University of Virginia with a B.A. in Classics and History, Jack became the managing editor of Lower Manhattan's The Broadsheet. From there, Jack moved into publishing, taking on the role of Senior Editor at Rugged Land Media. In 2016, Jack received his first book deal, a commissioned biography to be published by Duke University Press. For this project, Jack moved to Durham, North Carolina, where he spent two years rifling through Duke's Rubenstein Special Collections Library and generally scouring the South for leads. Two ghostwritten books later, Jack linked up with his old friend from Brooklyn, Michael Rifkin at RifRaf Games. Jack can be tracked down at jackpickering.com.