Nicholas Fortugno ’97

Nick Fortugno ’97 (philosophy and literature) is a game designer and entrepreneur of digital and real-world games and founder and chief creative officer of Playmatics, a game development company.

Based in Brooklyn, Playmatics has created a variety of digital and real-world games for organization including Red Bull, AMC (such as the CableFAX award-winning Breaking Bad: The Interrogation), Disney, American Museum of Natural History, the Corporation of Public Broadcasting, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and the Red Cross/Red Crescent.

Fortugno has been a designer, writer, and project manager on dozens of commercial and serious games, and served as lead designer on the downloadable blockbuster Diner Dash and the award-winning serious game Ayiti: The Cost of Life.

Fortugno is also a co-founder of the Come Out and Play street games festival hosted in New York City and Amsterdam since 2006, and co-creator of the Big Urban Game for Minneapolis/St. Paul in 2003.

Fortugno has taught game design and interactive narrative design at institutions such as Columbia University and the Parsons School of Design, and has participated in the construction of game design and immersive storytelling curriculum.

Some of Fortugno’s writing about games can be found in the anthology Well-Played 1.0: Video Game, Value, and Meaning, published by ETC-Press.