My first proper post is about something I keep asking myself and I still can’t find a decent answer: “Why are Italians so, pardon my French, shit at making games?”
I am an Italian student, I study Games Production Management at Abertay University in Dundee, I love games, and the fact that my country seems to be unable to develop videogames really annoys me.
An ISFE (Interactive Software Federation of Europe) 2007 report states that Italy is the 5th leading market in the EU, with sales reaching 0.6 blillion euros, far away from the 2.3 billion euros reached in the UK software sales. However there are no popular companies in Italy, there are no developers who have released important titles yet there are loads of creative people that come from Italy and simply do not have the opportunities to use the creativity and the skills they have.
Italy, Spain and Greece are always battling with each other trying to avoid being the worst country in Europe at doing things, be it avoiding being worst at driving, knowing how to speak English, handling their own economy, public transport, pretty much everything you can thing of except for good food and sunshine. The games industry, and the IT industry in general is one of the various fields where Italy seems to be completely uninterested in being bad at it.
There are many causes and reasons for this, or maybe we are just too distracted making food and being sleazy in the Mediterranean sunshine, maybe that is why the UK is one of the world leaders in games development and where it is almost impossible to eat a barely decent pizza.
One of the main reasons why Italy is so bad at making games is that there are no big or popular game developers.
There is a massive, huge, enormous lack of Italian developers: the few companies that are located in Milan are small, and they mainly make licensed racing games, and the quality of such games is poor, and there are only a few big names like Ubisoft which by the way are only there because of technical support and they are not actually developing anything... there are a few ands, I know, but that is the frustrating thing!
Amongst the other reasons is the fact that any kind of media production is exploited by the politicians as a way of gathering votes for the next election, and that happens almost once a year because of the silly way Italian politics are run.
Italy simply has no videogame culture, games are considered a toy for children, rather than an entertainment device for any kind of age, it seems like Italian economy and businessmen ignore the fact that the games industry makes more money than the film industry!
Things are getting better though, in 2008 there was the first ever Italian Videogame Developers conference, it wasn’t an enormous success but at least someone is starting to understand that games are not just something for kids.
I know you will be thinking why does it annoy you so much? Mostly because I hate the fact that there are so many talented people in Italy that are forced to move away from home simply because my country is not able to provide a decent chance to shine and create their own career. And this includes any field or subject or industry, I am lucky, because I like Scotland and dislike my hometown, but at least the italians that live in scotland are not impressed by its weather or food traditions!
However , what really makes me angry and frustrated is that there is not enough effort put into the development of young talent and in new technologies (relatively new, since the games industry has been around for quite a while now) and I simply can’t understand why...
Italy is part of the EU and the UK, at one point or another, will join the European monetary system, countries like Italy, Spain, Greece etc shape the European economy, it is simply not fair to have countries dragging along especially in these times where everyone keeps talking about the way we are all going to run out of money!
I will stop complaining now, it is not my intention to denigrate Italy or the Games Industry in my country, I just want to raise the issue, and see what others think about it, maybe one day someone will do something about it...maybe one I will be in a position to do something about it!
Cheerio for now, or Ciao if you wish!
Daniele
10 things about only having one tv channel
16 years ago
It seems like the Italian games industry is quite far away form being a major competitor in the games industry but there is no reason to be disheartend. One person can't be the same as his country so to break away from the regular Italian, you can make the first jump into the games industry and show your country that games aren't for children even if you are a big one at heart.
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