Michael Mattson

Michael “Wedge” Mattson first experienced video gaming when his father brought home an Arcade Pong machine. The first computer he owned was a Commodore 64 he purchased after mowing lawns and running a paper route. The first time he gathered friends together to play video games was during his tenure as the the Vice President of the Cascade High School PC Gamers club and in the same timeframe as the president of the local Commodore 64 Users Group. His first LAN Party was playing Doom with his brothers and a friend around his dining room table in the early 90s. He soon graduated to running 20-30 person monthly PC LAN Parties at the local PUD as the President of the PC Gamers Society.

Michael is a career IT Professional. After many years in Central Washington supporting clinics, law firms, accounting firms, PUDs, and the Washington State Department of Transportation, he was hired by Intel Corporation. He lead many IT engineering and DevOps teams in his time at Intel and retired in 2024.

In the 2000s in the early stages of his Intel career he collaborated with Gary Briggs and Mike Baum as an original founding member of LANFest – a charity fund raising group within Intel hosting LAN Events at Intel Campuses around the US. Michael specialized in running tournaments and large games for LANFest, such as the 1000 Frag endurance Deathmatch. In the 2010s LANFest spun out of Intel and became a separate 501(c)(3) Charity on its own. He has helped in many different capacities over the years – most recently as a scholastic and industry event coordinator. His home LAN is InfernaLAN in Western Washington State.

Michael is married and has two PC Gamer sons, 3 dogs, a cat, and several dozen tropical fish. He is eagerly awaiting the arrival of his first PC gaming grandchild.