Video games, like all intellectual products, feed on the humus present in the territory. And the Ligurian one seems to be particularly rich, judging by the number of companies active in the field. Xplored is a company founded in 2008 in Rapallo, based in a villa in the Riviera, which develops products characterized by augmented interaction, video games for mobile devices in Augmented Reality, toy robots and smart-toys, gamification projects, board games interconnected with apps, using often proprietary and patented technologies, with customers ranging from Bandai Namco to Ravensburger, from 505 Games to Miniclip; have had experiences with Ferrero and NorthSails, with Mattel toys, Giochi Preziosi, Clementoni …
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Between demons, cards and parkour: a day in the Neon White video game
by Lorenzo Fantoni
The goal of every Xplored project is the experience of use, technology is only the means, the solution to achieve the goal. Their latest creation is also part of this perspective: Teburu, a state-of-the-art sensorized display controlled via app. Today the company is focused on launching the first board game that uses this technology, the fantasy The Bad Karmas. On a narrative level, for the construction of the game world Xplored has relied on the award-winning talent of Christian Cantamessa, among whose works there is also the masterpiece Red Dead Redemption by Rockstar Games.
The exhibition
Play, the history of the video game between technology and art
by Alessandra Contin
Cantamessa, born in Savona and American by adoption, took her first steps in Trecision, a historic development studio founded in the early nineties in Rapallo. That period and the opening of the new millennium were a founding moment for the Ligurian video game industry: in addition to Cantamessa, he also worked in Trecision Agostino Simonetta, he later became head of Microsoft’s ID @ Xbox program and now director of the gaming department of the Swedish holding company Thunderful Group. In Chiavari, in 1996, Riccardo Cangini founded the Artematica development studio, responsible for the production of titles such as Diabolik The Original Sin, Druuna Morbus Gravis or Julia Innocent Eyes.
Video games
Fifa 23 will be the last. And it aims to be the most beautiful and inclusive ever
by Lorenzo Fantoni
Waywardxs Entertainment, on the other hand, created football simulations, titles such as Euro Club Manager and PC Calciatori which Marco Ponte, recently head of Nacon Studio Milan, part of the international group Nacon, worked on as a producer and designer. Also in these years Another Silent was founded, a software house that became part of Miniclip under the name of Miniclip Genova, still continuing to operate on the territory. Miniclip is an important international company that develops, publishes and distributes casual and hyper-casual video games for mobile devices, social and web platforms. In 2015, the video game giant Tencent bought the majority of the company which this year announced it had reached 4 billion downloads.
Untold Games is also active under the Lantern, originally born as a flash game development team, at the time Foofa Studios, founded by a group of recent computer science graduates fromUniversity of Genoa. In the last 8 years the company has evolved and currently gathers 20 employees, a particularly technical team with experience in creating content and consulting for the creative industries with the Unreal Engine. Untold Games develops video games and immersive experiences characterized by a strong narrative component and emotional impact. The company deals both with the creation of intellectual properties and with the provision of development services for third parties in the gaming sector, from the creation of game prototypes to porting to major consoles. His are the ports to PlayStation 5 and XSX | S of the famous racing game Assetto Corsa Competizione, the port on Nintendo Switch of Journey to the Savage Planet, the Game Pass PC version of the video game Control. City20 is the proprietary title they are currently working on, a survival whose original concept was partially financed by funds from the European Cultural Program – Creative Europe. The game went into production in mid-2021 and was among the first titles approved for tax credit in our country.
Not just development studios and cutting-edge gaming companies. In 2021 the mayor of Andora Mauro Demichelis handed the keys of the city to Alessandro “Stermy” Avallone, who in his long career as a professional gamer has won practically everything. However, Avallone is not just an internationally renowned gamer: in 2012 with Niccolò Maisto and Michele Attisani he founded the startup Faceit in London, which soon became one of the leading platforms in the organization of online esports tournaments. In January of this year, the Saudi fund Savvy Games bought both Faceit and the German ESL for 1.5 billion dollars, thus creating the largest esports operator in the world.