GDC hosts Italian Pavilion for the first time

The annual Game Developers Conference always hosts pavilions and areas for international trade bodies to show off their nation’s development talent, but this time there’s a newcomer among them: Italy.

Italian trade association AESVI has teamed up with Italy’s Ministry of Economic Development and ICE – a government agency that helps with the overseas promotion and internationalisation of Italian companies – to take a collection of developers to San Francisco this week.

This is the first time Italy has had a pavilion at GDC, which can be found at Booth No.702 in the GDC Expo hall. There, attendees can meet 12 Italian studios, as well as representatives of AESVI, all promoting their Games in Italy brand.

"The gaming market today represents an emerging economic sector, saddled between innovation and creativity, where Italy can play an important role” said the Economic Development Vice Minister Carlo Calenda.

“Supporting this international promotional endeavor the Ministry of Economic Development wants to give a signal to young Italian entrepreneurs operating in this sector. They need to seize the numerous new opportunities which are surfacing in this area of business to conquer a stronger position in the international competitive arena.”

Studios that can be found at the Pavilion include Digital Tales, Foofa Studios, Forge Reply, Imagimotion, Just Funny Games, Mixed Bag, Studio Evil, Vae Victis and more.

Italy is the actually the fourth largest market in Europe in terms of video games consumption, but has yet to reach such heights with production. Most of the country’s 100+ games studios opened doors for the first time in the past three years.

Last year, Develop took a closer look at the Italian games development scene.

For more GDC news, head to www.develop-online.net/gdc