“The gestation of the project was long. We started talking about a possible initiative for startup producing video games inside Cinecittà a few years ago. After various vicissitudes, in collaboration with Iidea we have drawn up a first plan of action, the initiative then materialized with the opening of the public tender at the beginning of 2021 “: this is how he told us Mauro Fanelli, coordinator of all Cinecittà Game Hub activities and CEO and creative director of the Turin studio MixedBag.
The Game Hub is a strategic challenge for Cinecittà to look to the future, a business accelerator that involves 10 young videogame startups who have embarked on a path that will close the works in the spring: “It is a very vertical accelerator and entirely dedicated to gaming, the criteria for selecting the participants were clear – Fanelli specified – We were looking for startups with commercial game projects, therefore not B2B, gamification or educational, but video games destined to be sold to the public “.
To enter the project, startups had to respond to specific needs, present a staff that already includes all the professionals necessary for the development of a video game, have a clear business idea and a sustainable project with a realistic budget. Fanelli again: “From a purely bureaucratic point of view, since it was a public tender managed by Lazio Innova – Lazio Region with Cinecittà, the procedure followed was that of public tenders, a commission made up of experts in the sector and representatives of the Region met several times to select the participants “.
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The goal is prepare development studies in the best possible way to compete in an expanding sector and very profitable, but at the same time very, very difficult. Fanelli explained to Italian Tech that “we started from my experience and the tutors who work alongside me, Elisa Farinetti from Broken Arms Games, Daniele Azara from One-o-One Games, Elisa Di Lorenzo from Untold Games and Luca Marchetti from Studio Evil , to draw up a program that will try to prepare startups especially from a business point of view “.
The program, which will last 3 months and will require teams of work in specific spaces within Cinecittà, will take place on 3 different levels: business, production and inspirational. Italian and international experts in the sector will be called to cover the various topics. At the end of the course, the development studios will present, in a dedicated event, the improved versions of their prototypes and their pitch decks to publishers and investors.
The total investment of Cinecittà Game Hub is 600 thousand euros, 50% provided by Lazio Innova and the remaining 50% by Cinecittà: “Each startup will receive 60 thousand euros to invest in the development of the company and the project. As anticipated, these are public and non-repayable funds, the investment does not involve either entry into the share capital or any type of recovery by Cinecittà and Lazio Innova. From the analysis we have done, it is one of the highest grants, if not the highest in the world, on gaming startup acceleration programs and more “.
The development of a video game is a financially demanding activity, the goal is not to develop an entire title with 60 thousand euros, but to improve the pitch and the existing prototype in order to attract further investments.
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Cinecittà Game Hub immediately aimed at solid partnerships in support of the acceleration program: “In addition to offering skills, PlayStation will provide one of the teams with an additional non-repayable monetary investment and development kit. Epic Games will provide Unreal Engine licenses with favorable conditions for teams, as well as direct intervention to explain to startups how to make the most of the engine. Acer it will equip startups with the necessary hardware to work, offering both desktop and notebook computers free of charge that will be used within the acceleration path “.
Nicola Maccanico, CEO of Cinecittà, sees the Hub as an opportunity to build relationships with the contemporary world. Having 10 videogame startups in their headquarters is a way to dialogue with the future, because audiovisual and video games will have more and more opportunities to overlap in a dialectical way, creating entire digital worlds that they are the future also for the film production model.
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