Andrea “Liga” Ligabue: Cosa Bolle in Pentola ? #5 - Emiliano Sciarra

HI gamers!

Here I’m for my 5th interview. I’m quite sure you would prefer longer and deeper interview but this is what I’m able to do at the moment. I prefer to let the job of making real interviews to people more expert in this than me (like the fantastic Tom Vasel series) and also I would like to make you know as much as possible the Italian games world!

Today I’m publishing an interview with Emiliano Sciarra, a very kind man I have had the luck to meet and know in 2003 at ModCon and I think mosto of you know for his Bang!

[Liga] Hi Emiliano. I’m very happy to have the opportunity to interview you. So, please, give us a short introduction about yourself

[Emiliano] I am 34 years old and I am in the game industry since 2002 with the publication of BANG!, which is my first published game. Before this, I worked with game fanzines and magazines likeGiocAreA, and joined several gaming groups (some of them founded by myself) organizing game conventions and events. I also published a videogame (Ciuffy) back in 1988. Theoretically, I am a programmer, a serious computer analyst and a Privacy advisor , but I always liked games and the like, creating games even in my childhood. After the worldwide success of BANG! I published several expansions for it (High Noon, Dodge City, A Fistful of Cards) and now I work withdaVinci on several projects while refining other games which, crossing fingers, will see the light in the next two years.

[Liga] That’s sound good! I didn’t know about your work in programming. Anyway, now Cosa bolle in pentola ?

[Emiliano] As I said before, I have a lot of projects running. Currently my (quite large) notebook stores more the 30 games, some of them near completion, some of them being just an idea sketched on paper. Between 2006 and 2007 there will be more of BANG! and a new game with some of the same basic ideas, plus other games completely different. I cannot say more because I still don’t know yet…

[Liga] So Bang! but not only ... and other projects for the future ?

[Emiliano] I really hope to be a full-time game designer. However, this is a hard job: as a matter of fact, not withstanding the enormous success of BANG! it is still not enough to give me what it needs to stop searching for other ways of working.
So, I plan to write other games while working with my other jobs, at least until the selling figures will rise above a certain level.

[Liga] Finally, tell us the 10 games you like to play most

[Emiliano] Generally, I dislike serious, heavy games because I don’t enjoy games where the only laugh you can do is when accidentally someone falls off from his chair or the table collapses… that is why I don’t like very much the so-called German games, since I am not a very competitive player by choice, preferring light games where you can talk, laugh, and have a good time. However, this does not mean I like games which are too light, and that’s why I don’t like games like Munchkin which in my opinion do not have strong rules, basing all of its appeal on the text on the cards and the background.
So, my boardgames/cardgames top ten is something like (excluding my games, of course):
1. Chess

2. Boggle

3. Lupus in Tabula

4. Power Play

5. Ra

6. Bohnanza

7. Lord of the Rings TCG

8. Arriba! / Jungle Speed

9. X-Bugs

10. Scrabble

[Liga] Thank you very much for this interview Emiliano ... I hope to have soon some other news from you! Good luck and good play!

Next week I’ll go to interview Marco Maggi and Francesco Nepitello

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