M Matthew Johnson

Ohio, United States

Matthew Johnson

Senior Roblox Gameplay Engineer

I'm an experienced game developer based in Ohio, with a focus on full-stack development, systems architecture, and gameplay engineering.

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Focus Gameplay systems, systems design, LiveOps, and UX/UI.
Recent Work Recent work includes e.l.f. UP!, The Hatch, and Meme Fruits.
Priority Modular, reliable systems designed for scalability and maintainability.

About Me

Design for scale

I design architecture that scales with the project, player demand, and development team while staying easy to understand, extend, and maintain.

Modular automation

I build modular, automated systems that can run themselves, expand through clear extension points, and reduce hands-on maintenance.

Build reliably

I favor defensive, deterministic systems that are easier to debug and less likely to fail around player data, rewards, and LiveOps.

Collaborate & adapt

I choose patterns that fit the problem, work well with collaborators, and keep learning as the project and team evolve.

LiveOps-ready

I build reliable tools and systems that help teams ship updates, events, and content safely while keeping ongoing maintenance manageable.

Skills

Experience

June 16, 2025 – August 28, 2026

e.l.f. UP!

Official e.l.f. Cosmetics brand experience on Roblox, built around tycoon progression, questing, crafting, UGC, and live activations.

Helped create and relaunch the 2.0 experience while maintaining 1.0 LiveOps in parallel. Launched numerous brand activations tailored to real life products and events, built scalable back-end systems, and supported & implemented new gameplay systems, event delivery, and UI-facing foundations for ongoing updates. The experience reached a peak of 10.8K concurrent players.

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LiveOps Full-stack Design UGC Fusion UI

June 13, 2025 – July 2, 2025

The Hatch Cutscene Pipeline

Built the cutscene front-end system for a Roblox event production.

Wired all of The Hatch cutscenes into the game so they could play in the live experience.

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Cutscenes Integration Event Delivery

August 11, 2024 – July 2025

Meme Fruits

Blox Fruits-type PvPvE action RPG that needed both gameplay feel and technical support under live player traffic.

Built gameplay features and systems while leading their design in collaboration with the lead engineer. Helped maintain LiveOps systems at scale under live player traffic, and created custom UIs for the front-end systems I owned. The experience peaked around 9.2K CCU.

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Gameplay Full-stack Design UI

August 20, 2025 – May 31, 2026

Escape Rooms

Built puzzle rooms and improved UI, back-end systems, monetization, onboarding, and LiveOps support.

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UI Full-stack Design Monetization LiveOps

August 20, 2025 – May 31, 2026

Skate Speed Race

Refreshed UI, rewrote core flows, greatly optimized, expanded gameplay features, and improved onboarding and live update support.

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UI Full-stack Design Core Flows Performance Onboarding

Foundational Personal Project · Aug 10, 2020 – Paused Jun 4, 2024

Deadzone Eternal

My first major game project and the foundation of my development career. Spearheaded the game design, full-stack programming, game development, and all UI work as the sole lead developer, while also contributing to animation, level design, sound design, and worldbuilding. UX direction was shared between me and a close collaborator.

Deadzone Eternal supercharged my experience and what I know today, from building gameplay systems and player-facing experiences to shaping a complete game from the ground up. Development began on August 10, 2020 and has been paused since June 4, 2024.

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Programming Full-stack Design UI/UX Animation

Projects

Open Source Project

ModuleForge

Open-source Wally packages focused on reusable systems and cleaner developer workflows.

Open Source Wally Reusable Systems
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Open Source Project

Sequena+

AI-assisted redesign of an MIT-licensed Roblox/Luau networking library, led from architecture through validation and package delivery.

Designed typed packet APIs with schema-driven serialization, deterministic packet identity, reliable and unreliable delivery, delta encoding, batching, and request/response communication.

Added server-authoritative runtime validation, bounds checks, configurable payload limits, malformed-data rejection, and per-player rate limiting. Built functional coverage for primitives, Roblox values, tables, composites, dynamic values, and client/server flows, plus transport benchmarks and VitePress documentation.

Networking Open Source Wally Pesde
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Technical Proof

Code Sample

UGC Claiming Back-End

Server-side reward flow built for real event and entitlement pressure.

UGC claiming back-end snippet
Code Sample

Reactive Quest Tracker UI

A compact example of player-facing UI, reactive state, and gameplay clarity working together.

Reactive quest tracker UI snippet
Code Sample

Cooldown Throttling & Cleanup

Utility-focused code for stable runtime behavior, throttling, and safe cleanup patterns.

Cooldown throttling and runtime cleanup snippet
Expanded Showcase