Hello and welcome to my personal site! ^_^

Who are you?

I’m Matteo Mangioni, a 22 years-old student of Computer Science with the aspiration of one day becoming a fully fledged video game designer. Game design has been my passion for the last couple of years and I’ve come to the realization that I truly want to create wonderful experiences for others to enjoy: I believe games as a medium have a ton of untapped potential, and even though it sounds silly I really think they have the ability to change worldviews and make people’s lives better.

To achieve this dream of mine I’m currently studying Video Game Design & Development at the University of Milan, and so far I’ve found I really love the subject. In the last years I’ve also explored much more my love for board games and role playing games, taking time each week to play something around a table with my friends: modern board games have become so clever with their design and they really are a subject worth studying.

Me playing the fantastic 'Oath' by Cole Wehrle with my equally fantastic friends!

What is this?

As I said before, this is my personal blog! I decided to open this site as my new year’s resolution: I intended to get back into writing and I’ve always wanted a place where I could freely speak my mind on the games I play as well as post my progress on my game dev journey, so a personal blog seemed like the right choice. Also, as you may have noticed, this site has a games section: acting as a personal portfolio, it will house the small games I’ll either design or develop, usually in the context of game jams.

I’m a bit of a perfectionist though, so obviously I couldn’t just grab a blog template and run with it: nooo, I had to physically code almost everything myself, which is why we’re well into March as I’m writing this first article! It was a great exercise though, and one that is not finished yet: you can expect radical changes in the site in the upcoming months, especially in the aesthetic of it since I really have zero artistic sense and will change stuff in response to feedback from people I trust way more than myself with it. ^_^’

Of course we have a 'my' version of each single Jekyll layout, are you crazy?!

What now?

Getting back on track, for the time being my immediate plans are to write and publish an article on two of my most beloved games of all time: Outer Wilds by Mobious Digital, an incredibile and eye-opening space adventure that convinced me of my choice of becoming a game designer, and Disco Elysium by ZA/UM, an equally amazing experience with storytelling so powerful it genuinely shook me to my core. I hope these pieces don’t take too much to write but do not expect them very soon either, especially the Disco Elysium one since I intend to play a second time before writing.

I mean, come on. How can this not move you?

Regarding proper game design and development, I intend to partecipate in a game jam relatively soon, or at least once I can easily take a weekend off from university work. I’ve also just started reading Brenda Brathwaite and Ian Schreiber’s Challenges for Game Designers and I’m planning to take on said challenges to improve my game design skills: since the book offers a very hand-on approach, if I manage to make a prototype I’m really proud of I might just post it on here!

However, these are my plans and now they’re on the Internet for everyone to see! I hope I find the time to do everything that I anticipated here and I hope you’re along for the ride. Thanks for reading this far: if you have suggestions or comments of any kind please feel free to leave them here or message me directly on social media! :)