Ben Cornaglia is a Lead Technical Designer at Magnopus. He bridges the gap between creative vision and technical execution, following a Master’s degree in Game Design and a career defined by complex world-building. His experience ranges from prototyping gameplay mechanics to his time at Rockstar North, where he specialized as a Designer. In recent years, Ben has focused on the intricate architecture of interactive environments, balancing the constraints of game engines with the limitless possibilities of player interaction. At Magnopus, Ben is leveraging his expertise in technical design and world-building to help create the next generation of shared physical and digital experiences.

Tell us about your role at Magnopus!

I’m a Lead Technical Designer within the design team at Magnopus. I’ve been involved in projects like the Daft Punk Experience in Fortnite and the Hoppers VR experience in a technical leadership capacity and as an individual contributor. My role in these projects was to provide a technically-minded approach to design and support the teams with tools, reusable resources and more traditional world-building/level design contributions.

I’m also heavily involved in training and mentorship to help my team upscale in many different areas – from technical implementation to design specifications.

What three skills are essential for anyone in your role?

Logic, curiosity, and communication are essential for a technical designer.

You need to be able to transform a brilliant and creative idea into a strong, future-proof technical solution. That’s where logic comes into play. How do you take that idea and extract all of its fun and ingenuity out of it, while dealing with technical limitations from engines, hardware, etc?

Being curious is one of the answers. Always be looking around for new technologies, new approaches, try to retro-engineer some of them or use them as inspiration for your own technical proposals.

Finally, there’s no point in having the greatest solution to the greatest idea if you cannot communicate it. Use it to give confidence to your team that this will be done, and it will be awesome. Being able to both convince and teach, and adapt to your audience is key.

Who inspires you?

Rosa Parks was an American civil rights activist.

I have been, and am still being very inspired by people like Simon Sinek and Jay Shetty for their insatiable thirst to understand “why”, both from a humanistic perspective and business applications of learning how to grow yourself in the best way possible.

Some historical figures like Ada Lovelace, the first programmer and scientific mastermind, or Rosa Parks, for her unrelenting fight for civil rights, have also shaped who I am today.

What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learnt in your career?

Opportunities are arguably one of the most important factors of success. But I’ve learnt throughout the years that you can both position yourself to have more chances to find some, or even create your own opportunities. Part of that is being nice, genuine, and honest with the people around you. If you come from a place of love instead of over-ambition and competitiveness, people will give back to you, and you’ll have better chances of reaching whatever goals you have for yourself and the team.

How do you approach challenges and setbacks?

I welcome setbacks and challenges. They usually come from something that you haven’t planned for or not anticipated. I view this as a learning opportunity, a means to get better so that it doesn’t happen again. What’s important to me is that we assess why something has been a setback or a challenge, analyze what happened, learn from it, and document it. It’s equally important to me that everybody around me knows that there’s value in reporting a problem, whatever it is, so we can have a culture of trust and confidence that setbacks and challenges are part of what we do, and we can deal with them.

If you didn’t have to sleep, what would you do with the extra time?

It would probably make me sad not to have to sleep. If I didn't sleep, my cat would miss waking me up at 6 am for food and scratches, and I'd miss this daily ritual too!

If I really didn’t have to sleep, I would probably read more. I’m spending most of my time on the computer or phone, and I have a reading bucket list that only grows as the years go by.

What values or principles do you consider non-negotiable in both your personal and professional life?

Accepting differences is non-negotiable to me. In fact, I believe that our differences can and should be leveraged because they complement one another. I understand that people can be hesitant to engage with what feels unfamiliar, but that uncertainty can be reduced by taking the time to understand it.

Also, I think we must be able to say “sorry”. Being sorry is not a weakness; it’s an acknowledgement. It shows self-reflection, empathy, and willingness to be better. Things happen, and mistakes are made, but to me, a mistake isn’t a problem; it’s when you don’t acknowledge it that it becomes a fault.

What are you reading/listening to right now?

My playlist is a bit all over the place. At the moment, I’m listening to Twenty One Pilots, Bilmuri, Aurora, Alicia Keys, Rage Against The Machine, and Starcadian, to name a few.

My reading time is the Dungeon and Dragon 5.5e rule book and other DnD related material, as my wife is very adamant about me creating a new campaign. Before that, I was reading Mistborn from Brandon Sanderson, which I highly recommend for Fantasy enthusiasts.

What is something you think everyone should do at least once in their lives?

Travel. I haven’t been able to travel far outside Europe, but it’s already been life-changing for me to see how different geographically close countries can be. Even going from France to the UK is an experience.

What’s fascinating about it is also finding all the commonalities between places, what we share, what we aim for.

I’m very aware that travelling is expensive – for your wallet and the environment – but I think it’s worth doing at least once in your life.

If you could have a superpower, what would it be?

Ha. Probably flying, so I can do all that travelling I mentioned for free. It would probably be very cold, and I can’t fly above a certain altitude, or there’s no air. Risky superpower, but sounds really fun.

Meet the Magnopians: Ben Cornaglia