Meet Squanch Presents: Matty Studivan!

ALAS! The time has come for you to encounter one of the squanchiset of squanchies at Squanch Games.

You've navigated your life so immaculately that you've perfectly aligned yourself with the opportunity to meet our Executive Producer, Matty Studivan! Be proud, be very proud indeed. You've just experienced the wonders of the Butterfly Effect. You ended up here. Of all places? Yup, HERE. It's clear you've made all the right decisions in your life so far, ya know? Don't mess it up now. You're on this very special page for a reason...and that's to digest the words below. 

Read, ponder the wisdom bestowed upon you in this post, repeat.

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Matty Studivan, Executive Producer

What do you do at Squanch?

I’m the Executive Producer and this is actually my second tour at Squanch.  The first time around I was the Lead Producer for Trover Saves the Universe.  I do my best to make sure everyone has the information, tools, feedback, whatever, necessary to do their jobs and deliver an awesome, stupid, funny, game.  

How did you get into the industry and what led you to Squanch?

After farting around for most of my 20’s working on a ‘zine and playing in bands around Boston, I got a random entry-level contract job through a friend where I would go to bars & watch drunk people (not) playtest a game on a prototype arcade cabinet.  I would end up giving people quarters, watch them play, ask them a bunch of questions & report on it back to the devs at the studio I was working for.  It didn’t last long but that little bit of experience and some connections in the local Boston music scene were enough to get me through the front doors as an entry-level playtest coordinator at Harmonix (music game studio, makers of Guitar Hero, Rock Band, Dance Central, etc.).  

At Harmonix, I spent a couple of years watching people rock out on plastic instruments or sitting in the back of a room watching them dance (not creepy at all). My propensity for organization (or being a psychopath) and my deep respect/adoration for the creative process led me to my career as a Producer, which I’ve been chipping away at for ten or so years.  

I left Harmonix in 2017 to join a little start-up called SQUANCHTENDO and was employee 14? 17? (something like that).  I then spent two years at Santa Monica Studio working on God of War: Ragnarok but am happy to be back, realizing my true destiny as a squancher.  

How do we know you’re not a spy?

If I were a spy I’d be the worst one that has ever existed because I have a big ‘ol mouth.  

What’s one of the coolest projects you’ve gotten to work on in your career (other than Trover)?

Even though it was incredible to work on God of War, what pops into my mind are some of the smaller projects I worked on at Harmonix (A musical pet game, a multiplayer VR karaoke sim).  One that was especially rad was a music visualizer that was a launch title for the Playstation VR called Harmonix Music VR.  There were a bunch of bonkers experiences that all sunk up to the soundtrack that shipped with the title but you could also plug your own music in via USB and it would analyze/adjust the experience to your own tracks.  We shipped it in like 7 months; new technology on a new platform & I was shutting down another project at the start. I learned a ton in a very short period of time.  

What is the key to staying organized?

Personally, I have to write everything down; it’s the only way I can process the myriad things you deal with daily as a producer while still keeping an eye on the long game.  I’ve kept the same to-do list, that is replaced & updated every morning, for over 8 years. Also, in game development, things are changing every single day so I’m a firm believer that you have to (somewhat) regularly throw out everything you know about the game you think you’ve been working on & look at the game as it stands now.  Rebuilding my plan constantly to reflect what is true based on what is playable has never steered me wrong. 

If you could use any cheat code, from any video game, in real life - what would it be?

30 lives. 

Is a hot dog a sandwich?

No - it’s split only on one side.

If you could be sitting on a back porch that overlooked any landscape in the world, where would you like it to be?

Stick me in some teleporting randomizer with water, sand, sun, sea breeze checked off on the filter and I’m good.  

What else should everyone know about you?

I grew up with two capuchin monkeys as part of a program called Helping Hands. Those were my only siblings which, I’m guessing, explains a lot.