Andrea “Liga” Ligabue: Cosa Bolle in Pentola ? #17 - Alfredo Genovese

Hi Gamers

it is Friday 17 and we are at interview #17. For the fews that still don’t know what I’m talking about, I remember that “Cosa Bolle in Pentola” means, literally, “what is boiling in the pot”, so, what is happening of new in Italian market. I use this metaphor because the Italian market is really boiling in this last years: new designers, new publishers and really a lot of interest about boardgames ... of course we are still far away from the numbers of German or USA markets but we are growing ...

Also for people in Italy is not easy to orientate in this boiling pot! So, I try with this series of interviews, to let you know prominent peoples involved in this new golden era for Italian’s boardgames.

This week I’m gone to catch Alfredo Genovese.

[Liga] Hi Alfredo, nice to meet you again. Last time was at GiocaCarpi, close to Modena ... please, give us a short introduction about yourself

[Alfredo] Thank you very much Liga, I am proud to introduce myself to all the BoardGame News readers. My name is Alfredo Genovese, author of Bolide and founder member of Ghenos Games.
I grew up in Milan, studied at Liceo Classico (greek and latin) and got the degree in Nuclear Engineering. I am 36, married to Anna, I have two
children, Giulia and Tommaso, 4 and 2 years old. I have been working in electronics for IBM and then Celestica for several years and now I am Quality manager in a small Italian company in the mechanics area. I am also a volleyball player (definitely at the end of carrier) and coach and my areas of interest are History and Physics.
I have always been fond of sports and games: I find that they have the same targets, establish the same relations among the players and produce the very
same irrepressible enthusiasm, finally they have the same ability to educate. Everything began with the historical game group, playing Subbuteo and not missing any sport event for more than a decade. From 2004 something of special happened: I decided to take it seriously therefore I induced my game-mates to carry out the games we had invented so far just for our pleasure. Ghenos games started.

[Liga] That’s a good story. I’m really impressed how many roads can a man take to become a game designers. And now, at Ghenos, Cosa Bolle in Pentola ?

[Alfredo] We invented, manufactured and published entirely by our-selves the first game Bolide, the revolutionary car racing game, at the end of 2005.
Therefore, at present we are totally concentrated on making it known and as much diffused as possible to the board-games communities. Furthermore we are building the Ghenos games structure, to be more solid, efficient and well integrated in the supply chain. We plunged in the boardgame world without
being aware of what was there. Our intention now is to grow very quickly and I am particularly interested in managing this phase by facing up any aspects
with the means of the industrial environment where I come from. For instance: customer satisfaction. I like to collect all the feedbacks I can: I personally write to the people owning Bolide, I am especially interested to know what’s wrong with my products for my continuous improvement. Again:
benchmarking. I like to study the careers and the personality of the big authors (I especially admire Leo Colovini that I have never met, the unforgettable Alex Randolph and Angelo Porazzi).
From the new products point of view, we are planning to release more tracks of Bolide in the very next future. They will still be invented circuits but we are in contact with the licensing coordinators of the most important circuits in the world in order to publish reproductions of them.

[Liga] It is nice to hear someone that consider an important part of is work to study other designers and games ... probably is your scientific background that comes up! Projects for the future ?

[Alfredo] We are working on different new boardgames. They are in a development phase: Bolide had a play-testing phase of 1 year and a half since we love to polish every details of the game.
I can say that they are five boardgames, and mostly related with sports, as the early profile company suggests. Probably at least one of them could be published by the end of the year, and shown at the Essen fair or Lucca Games and Comics fair. I am looking forward to all of them.

[Liga] That’s great! Obviously I hope everything could be already ready for ModCon in the end o September. And now, the 10 games you like to play most

[Alfredo] As you probably will have understood my carrier of boardgames author has not been so common. In other words my passion literally catapulted me here and so I do not have the same underground and the same experience of my more famous colleagues. But believe me, I am going to fill the gap very soon!
Then I do not have a proper top ten, but I can mention the categories of games I like.
First of all sports games such as Subbuteo soccer and rugby (the best, it is both a game and a sport!), and then Bolide itself (it is not auto-celebration, I love it! That’s why I created it!) and generally speaking historic, politic and/or commercial strategic games (either the most famous like Settlers of Catan and Puerto Rico or the less famous ones like Ideology).
Finally my first boardgame that I will never forget also for romantic reasons, Inkognito.

[Liga] Thank you for your time Alfredo, good luck and good play!

Next week Marco Donadoni

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