Nicholas Fortugno ’97

Nick Fortugno ’97 (philosophy and literature) is a game designer, professor, artist, and entrepreneur.

Nick has worked in games and interactive narrative for over 20 years, designing, producing, and writing dozens of digital, analog, and real world games as well as live and virtual immersive theater experiences, including genre-defining titles and award-winning blockbusters.

He is a co-founder of the game development studio Playmatics and the Come Out & Play street game festival.

Nick’s work has been showcased at the Sundance Film Festival, the Tribeca Film Festival, the Venice Biennale, Indiecade, and the Game Developers’ Conference, and featured in the New York Times, the Village Voice, Gamasutra, and Time Out NY.

He’s the Director of Gaming Pathways at City College of New York. 

—From nicholasfortugno.com

Playmatics

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.