Trainers

Matteo Sciutteri is Lead Designer and CEO of the Runeheads development studio.

Boasting a long career in the sector, in 2000 he founded the Rpgmaker.it comunity, the first major group of independent developers in Italy. Later, he held the role of Lead Designer at Artematica. He was Head of Design at Milestone studio for eight years and Creative Director at Dreamslair for two years.

Matteo has also collaborated as a consultant to numerous development studios such as Rortos, 3D Clouds, Digital Tales and Lunar Great Wall Studios, just to name a few. Since 2017 Matteo has taken on a career as a teacher and trainer.

Video game developer, consultant and trainer, Alberto Barbati officially entered the Game Industry in 2000. He worked at Ubisoft on six projects including Beyond Good and Evil, Tomb Raider: The Prophecy and Splinter Cell: Double Agent. He currently develops middleware software for the Unreal Engine under its Gamecentric brand. Alberto is also a regular participant at conferences and game industry events.

Alberto started programming when computers still didn’t have a mouse and programs were saved on tapes. With a strong mathematical background, he decided to interrupt his academic career to devote himself to programming.

He developed a C++/Python hybrid engine for interactive flight simulation scenarios and in doing so realised that programming tools applicable to real world situations can be just as rewarding as programming a game.

From 2012 to 2017 Alberto was the Lead Programmer at Forge Reply on Joe Dever’s Lone Wolf “book game”, which received two Golden Dragon awards and on the virtual reality adventure Theseus for PSVR and SteamVR headsets.

Lorenzo Lodovichi is a freelance Concept Artist, Illustrator and Director.

After graduating from the National School of Cinema, Lorenzo trained at Maga Animation, where he held various roles in the production of 3D animated series. As a freelance artist he collaborates with the main communication and production agencies in the film and advertising industry where he contributes to the production of animated projects and to the development of film and television series.

He also teaches at the European Institute of Design (IED) in Milan where he coordinates the Master’s program on Animation Design. Since 2016 he has collaborated with Lunar Great Wall Studios in the role of both concept artist and storyboard artist. Since 2017 he has been one of the head illustrators for Marsilio Editore.

Expert 3D Modeller, Massimo Ribattezzato has a passion for traditional and digital animated films, video games and engines. He began his career in the development of 3D driving simulators on both a professional and recreational level, working with private companies such as Predator’s SRL and Arc_Team.

As a Character / Environment modeller, Massimo has been collaborating for more than five years with emerging software houses such as Ironshade Interactive and Nightly Build Games Studio. He also collaborated as Character Artist with Kunos Simulazioni.

Michele Pirovano is in equal parts developer, researcher and video player. Specialized in serious games and the use of artificial intelligence in video games, Pirovano has a Doctorate Degree in Computer Science from Milan’s Politecnico where he developed a system for the independent rehabilitation of post-stroke patients.

He has been playing video games ever since he can remember and loves to deal with all aspects of video game production and often ends up performing several roles at a time in the realization of his projects.

Today Michele works as a freelance game designer and developer for numerous companies including Unagames, Ghostshark Games, Troglobyte Games, DestinyBit and Indiegala. He continues his research in the field of artificial intelligence and devotes his spare time as an independent developer to working on his many personal projects.

Davide Pensato has 15 years of professional experience as an in-house audio designer. After graduating in telecommunications engineering from Milan’s Politecnico, he began his career at Ubisoft’s Milan Studio as Audio Director.

Within a couple of years he became head of the audio department and was appointed to the Board of Directors at Ubisoft Studios. In 2007 he founded his own company (dpstudios) which provides consulting services for game audio. Davide currently collaborates with leading Italian development studios as well as on projects for international clients.

Since 2009 he has taught the Master’s in Computer Game Development at the University of Verona and launched a specific teaching project on audio in video games.

Since February 2019 Andrea Simone Basilio has been the Creative Director of Bad Seed, a video game development studio based in Milan and founded in 2014 by a group of industry veterans.

While playing the video game “Metal Gear Solid” at the age of 14 he decided to create video games for a living. At the age of twenty he entered a small Italian company where he worked for three years on an action title for PS2 and PC.

Following this experience Andrea moved to the UK where he obtained a Bachelor of Arts in Game Design.

He worked as a freelancer in Italy and abroad before joining Milestone, where he remained for over six years. In their Milan studio he was Lead Game Designer for several products and Game Director of MotoGP 14. Later he joined the team at Lunar Great Wall Studios, a young Milanese start-up working on games with a strong narrative imprint, in the role of Creative Director.

Marco Ponte, CEO and founder of Lunar Great Wall Studios, has more than 18 years of experience in the video game industry.

After beginning as a game designer and project manager in several Italian companies, such as WaywardXS and Artematica Entertainment, he joined Milestone in 2010 as Assistant Producer. After a short time he was appointed to the role of Executive Producer and directed the production of the company’s titles until 2014, leading a team of producers and project managers.

He is credited on more than 25 titles published on PC, PlayStation® 4, Xbox One, PlayStation® 3, Xbox 360, Xbox, NDS, Wii, PSP, PlayStation® Vita and PlayStation® 2.

Luca Fadigati, Interaction Designer and Lead UI Artist, has been working in interaction design for more than 15 years now.

He took his first steps in the world of web interfaces in 2002 and founded his own studio which still serves many national and international companies operating in web design and mobile apps.

Since 2004 he has also worked with Milestone as Lead UI Artist where he managed the creation of menus and interfaces for various titles produced by the Milanese software house, such as the SBK, WRC, MotoGP, MXGP, Ride and the Supercross series.

A former hardcore punk musician, he is passionate about skateboarding, motorcycling and the legendary Doctor who wears the number “46”.

Francesco Simonetti, after 10 years of experience in video post-production as a video editor and technical manager, decided in 2015 to shift his interest towards the world of videogames.

Thanks to the experience gained in the field of cinema and advertising, he joined the Milestone team in the role of videomaker, creating both live-action and CG trailers for the promotion of numerous titles produced by the Milanese software house.

He currently manages a team of video makers in Milestone’s marketing department who are involved in the creation of all video content, from starting idea through to final delivery.

Nicholas Tangianu is currently Project Manager at Milestone.

After graduation and various jobs he decided to attend the Game Design course at the Digital Bros Game Academy, this enabled him to turn his greatest passion into a job. On completing his course at DBGA, Nicholas began his career in the videogame entertainment sector working in Padua at the Eggon start-up as Producer, Designer and Tester.

Later he was hired by Milestone as a Junior Tester, where he then became head of customer support and later head QA Game Tester for the Monster Energy Supercross project line, a role he covered for about two years and in which he managed the Quality Control team.

Marco A. Minoli is the Marketing Director of Slitherine.

He started working in the video game industry in 1998. He is a faithful ambassador of market niches, firstly of flight simulators, then of driving simulators and finally, since 2007, of war games and strategy games.

In 2007 he began his adventure at Slitherine, where he helped bring war games and complex strategy games to portable platforms and cleared the way for the premium product to be applied to Apple’s iOS operating system. As Leader of the Slitherine group, with a period at Electronic Arts and as a consultant to Warner Bros, IE and Koch Media, Marco continues to believe that the rules of tomorrow’s market are yet to be discovered.

He manages an international marketing and sales team directly from Italy and continues to insist on bringing the tie to a sector mainly populated by geeky t-shirts!

Manuel Moavero, Game Designer and Producer, has been working in the video game industry since 2006.

Thanks to his older brother, he learned how to load Commodore 64 games before he even knew how to read and write, video games have accompanied him throughout his life ever since.

His first game design, a Live Role Play (LARP) rulebook for fantasy battles, was written in 1996. He has been a teacher trainer at the National Research Center (CNR) and Game Designer for the Lazio Region. He has worked at Geniaware, Forge Reply (where he worked on the console version of Joe Dever’s Lone Wolf), and at numerous independent studios. Since 2019 he has been working at WhatWapp s.r.l. where he holds the role of Product Manager.

Throughout his life he has designed video games and interactive experiences for PCs, consoles, mobile and tablet devices, the web, interactive totems, virtual and augmented reality headsets, and possibly even more.

Andrea Tabacco, founder of Antab Studio, a small development company in Milan, is an eclectic video game developer who has been active in the industry since 2005.

His passion for video games in their entirety has led him to cover roles ranging from programming to design, working with both established companies (Ubisoft Milan, Digital Tales, Forge Reply) as well as an independent developers.

After independently publishing several games, he and his business partner, Lara Gianotti, launched the title “Gridd: Retroenhanced” for PCs and consoles.

Fabio Mosca is co-founder and CTO of the videogame development and VR experience studio AnotheReality, the studio boasts a long list of clients such as H-Farm, Ikea, Enel, Hive Divisio and inVRsion.

Fabio was born in 1989 and has always been a hardened and passionate PC gamer. He graduated in Computer Engineering at Milan’s Politecnico after which he carried out research on Artificial Intelligence pertaining to videogames at Melbourne’s RMIT. Back in Italy, he continued developing video games both independently and for other companies, since 2013 he has specialized in the development of virtual reality.

Fabio frequently participates as technical speaker at VR events and conferences such as Codemotion, VR Days Europe, START Summit and IGDS.

Elisa Groli is a 2D Artist and freelance Animator in the video games industry but also works in animation for television.

She began her career in 2009, the same year in which she graduated in illustration and digital animation from IED in Milan. Throughout her ten-year career she has held various roles that have enabled her to expand and consolidate her skills in both video game and TV animation. Elisa was storyboard artist and character designer at Animasia Studio and Movimenti Productions.

In the video game industry she has collaborated with TuoMuseo, Stainless Games and Colto as concept artist and character animator. She has worked for several years at Forge Reply where she began as UI artist to then become 2D artist.

Pierfrancesco Andresini is a mix between 2D Artist and UI Designer in the game industry.

After his studies in Design and Visual Communication at the Politecnico in Turin, he began working freelance as an industrial and graphic designer. Always a great lover of cinema, comics and video games, he found his way through an encounter with concept art for video games and was captured by the fascination of two-dimensional retro and a love for pixels.

He entered the video game entertainment industry in the role of Lead Artist on  “File: // Maniac” for the independent team at Born Frustrated Studio, receiving critical acclaim from several of the industry’s main magazines such as Kotaku and PC Gamer. Since 2019 he has held the position of UI and 2D artist at the Turin-based company Mixedbag, working on “Secret -+Oops!”, an AR title developed for Apple Arcade.

Federico Ferrarese is currently Lead Artist in Jyamma Games, an emerging development studio based in Milan.

He has worked as a freelance concept artist for numerous game studios in Italy as well as colourist for the French comic market. Federico has worked for various Italian independent game studios such as Tiny Bull Studio and Turin’s 34BigThings studio where he collaborated on the production of Hyperdrive Massacre and Red Out.

Passionate about literature, building models, cinema, animation, comics and video games, after having worked for many years in advertising graphics he decided to take his career in an artistic direction. On completing the three-year comics course at Turin’s Scuola Internazionale di Comics, he then went on to complete a Master’s course on advanced digital art at the Imaster Academy in Turin. Working as a comic book colourist in both the French and Italian markets, Federico has numerous publications to his credit.