Andrea “Liga” Ligabue: Cosa Bolle in Pentola ? #22 - Andrea Chiarvesio

Hi gamers

here me back from my vacation and ready for start again my series of interview. Today I’m gone to catch Andrea Chiarvesio, A very important person in the Italian game scene and now also a game designer. Andrea is also an expert gamer and member of the jury of the Lucca Comics & Games Best of Show award.

Here is the interview ...

[Liga] Hi Andrea, nice to have the opportunity to interview you. Please, tell us something about yourself

[Andrea] I am (almost) 36 years old and I live and work in Torino, Italy (you may have seen the city on your TV screen lately because of the Olympic Games…). I spent six years (’97 – ’03) working at Wizards of the Coast Italy, first as Organized Play manager, then as Brand Manager for Magic: the Gathering, the Star Wars TCG and other games. Then I was Marketing and OP Manager for Upperdeck between 2003 and 2004. During all this time, I haven’t published any games on my own, but I learned a lot about the gaming industry and processes and I was in charge of the localization of many games or expansion sets. The last two years I worked for the Torino Winter Olympic Games, and this finally allowed me to develop my own games! My first published game “QUACK CARDSâ€?, a family card game, has been published in February, included in two consecutive issues of the Disney’s Italian weekly comic-book “Topolino”, dedicated to Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck’s adventures.
I am also part of a select group of people that will vote for the members of the Magic: the Gathering Hall of Fame in 2006 (as I was in 2005).
And since 2005, I am a member of the jury for the most prestigious Italian gaming award: the Lucca Comics & Games Best of Show award.

[Liga] So, it is almost 10 years that you are working in the game scene ... and now, Cosa Bolle in Pentola ?

[Andrea] By fall, a new card game, inspired by classical Verdi’s opera “Il Trovatore�, will be released. This is a very innovative and educational project, and I am so proud of it. The game will be freely distributed to boys and kids, as a tool to make them interested in classical opera through gaming. The game itself is a fast card duel with swords for 2-7 players.
“Quack Cards� has been liked so much by the kids that it will soon have a boxed edition (with new cards and some extras) printed and distributed by the biggest Italian card maker in a “deluxe� version. A lot more players will then have the chance to live a day in Donald Duck’s life :-)

[Liga] Great! And project for the future ?

[Andrea] My first “German� game is now under intensive playtesting. Developed together with Luke “the flaming� Iennaco, its current design name is “Frontier�, and it’s… mmmm, think to the governors of Puerto Rico, Goa and Cartagena, meeting on the Catan island by order of the Earl of Wallenstein to compete for who will build the better organized and richer province, while fighting hordes of monsters coming down from the Barrier (winter is coming…) in search for the unique ring ;-)

Let’s say it’s our very ambitious project to make a “bridge� game between German building and resource management and a more American simulative approach (yes, there are dices to be rolled, a lot of dices indeed), with a military side small but not to be underestimated by players.

It’s a 2-5 players game, deep but very fast (until now all playtesting sessions with players totally new to the game ended in about 1h and a half).

The game has an Italian publisher [sorry I can’t tell you now which], but I hope it will be at least distributed in many European countries (rules will probably be in Italian, English, German and Franch and/or Spanish, since 98% of the gaming material is not language dependant). And I feel it’s the kind of game that can appeal a lot to the American gamers.

Also, “Quack Cards� may have a good potential outside Italy (after all, Donald Duck is a popular character everywhere in the world), but this is not up to me… I’ll keep fingers crossed.

I have a couple of other quick kids games ready just waiting for an interested company, and once the development of Frontier will be finished I may have some other good idea I hope. Until now, I haven’t finished to develop that many games because I am very hard with myself when judging my own games. I feel during the seven years spent working in the Italian gaming industry I earned the reputation of a professional and serious worker and gaming expert, so I don’t want to spoil this reputation just for the sake of seeing my name on a box.

[Liga] Really a lot of news! I hope you will have time to do all this things! And, finally, the 10 games you like to play most ?

[Andrea] You know Liga, this one is the tougher question… only 10, right? Ok, let’s try:

1)Wallenstein. I cannot ever refuse a game. My “close to perfection� mix of resource management, territory control and combat, deception and diplomacy. Ok, until “Frontier� will came out ;-)
2)Ra. The best bidding game out there. Medici is not bad, but Ra is better.
3)Shadows over Camelot. I don’t have time to role-play anymore, so any game that gives me back part of that special feeling is welcomed. And I like cooperation games.
4)Traders of Genoa. I love trading, and I love the fact that “no dice roll is a bad dice roll� in this game.
5)Bang! and The Great Dalmuti. Sorry if I am putting two games together here. But I love games with more than 6 players and those are simply my two preferred ones so it’s too hard to make a choice.
6)War of the Ring. Do I really have to explain why? The book and the movies, and the map and the armies. It replaced Axis & Allies in my unfortunately very rare playing Sunday afternoons.
7)A Game of Thrones. Diplomacy (a previous favourite) on steroids. Maybe not the most well balanced game of all times, but I just love the books so much.
8)Battle Line. As a two players game, wins over Lost Cities. And I love ancient historical battles. Which probably will cause Command and Colours (which I haven’t played yet) to soon be part of this list, since I also always liked Memoir ’44 game mechanics.
9)Goa. I like it over Puerto Rico or Caylus. Maybe it’s the bidding system, maybe it’s the fact that I support underdogs.
10)Magic the Gathering. Simply the game everyone would have liked to be the author (and not just for the money)

Ok, I know I kind of cheated because in my list I mentioned 19 games (and I felt really sorry about not including titles like Das Amulet, Web of Power, Fairy Tales or Lowenherz… ops looks like I did it again). The truth is that I don’t design so many games, because I love to play more than I love to design!
Trying to become serious, I feel that before even starting to think about being a game designer, you should first of all have a deep knowledge of what has been published already, just like before becoming a writer you should have read a ton of books. This is the reason why I play so many different games, sometimes even games I don’t usually like that much (miniature games or abstract games for instance).
Designing games looks so easy, and production costs aren’t as high as in other fields, so in my humble opinion you can see too many “amateurs� overcrowding the market with average quality or outdated games. And nothing kills more a new potential gaming enthusiast than being disappointed by purchasing a game that doesn’t give him/her a satisfying and fun gaming experience.

[Liga] Thank you very much for your time and for this nice interview ... good luck and good play!

© 2006 Andrea Liga Ligabue

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