Andrea “Liga” Ligabue: Italian Style - daVinci

Hi gamers,

We are close to Christmas and I want to give you a special gift, so I’m starting a new series of interviews. The idea is to take an inside view of the past, the present and the future of Italian publishers. Of course during these interviews I’ll try to draw out as much news and previews as possible about upcoming games, both in the near future and far.

I decided to start with daVinci, a small but renowned Italian publisher. Spending time with me for the interview were Domenico Di Giorgio (editor-in-chief), Silvano Sorrentino (webmaster and press), Salvatore Perna (sales manager) and Roberto Corbelli (CEO). daVinci is well-known for its great success with Bang!, but there is a lot more under the cowboy hat!

[Liga] Hi everyone from daVinci, and welcome to BGN. Would someone like to summarize daVinci’s history from the beginning to the current day?

As you probably already know, daVinci was founded in 2001 in Perugia, Italy by nine partners (gamers) – represented by the dots in the domino tile, which is our logo – with a common goal: Playing with Italian style! (Italian style, in our logo, is shown by the Mona Lisa eye in the red circle :-) )

We’ve tried since the beginning to publish games at the highest possible standard, in terms of quality of the mechanisms, materials, layout and illustrations, so we started with BANG!

The game was a big hit, and in a few years, with the help of some famous publishing and distribution partners in different countries (Abacus in Germany, Mayfair in America, Tilsit in France), daVinci started to become a synonym of “Gioco Italiano” for gamers all around the world. Our website, hosting free games, a forum and a magazine called GiocAreA, was part of our success when the Net was just starting to become a precious resource for game geeks everywhere. Some great reviews and comments from players, together with prizes that we won (two Origins Awards for BANG!, the Wiener Spiele Selektion for Leonardo da Vinci and Oriente, the SdJ Recommendation for Beetlez and Viva il Re!) helped us to better define our editorial line.

[Liga] But there are voices about a new era for daVinci ...

Yes, Liga. After seven years, we’ve decided to remodel our company, starting a new phase (let’s call it “daVinci 2.0"), with a long plan of actions, and new, ambitious objectives.

daVinci is now a well established and growing company in the Italian and world market of board and card games. Thanks to great worldwide success like BANG! and its expansions, Lupus in Tabula, Viva il Re!, and Leonardo da Vinci, we have now a catalogue populated by potential ever-green games which represent a good basis for future growth. At the same time we know that growing will not happen without some strategic changes, both in organization and product lines. Besides, we are redefining our market view and partnerships.

[Liga] Great. So please give us more details on the product lines, and what gamers can expect from daVinci in the near future.

As regard to the (possibly) most interesting aspect for your readers, the new games :-), we will focus on four game lines:

• The BANG! game system: Everyone is familiar with it! The new edition of BANG! is already in the shops, Dodge City will arrive in February 2009 (and it will include the legendary High Noon extension). The next titles in this line are a boardgame extension of BANG!, then a new extension in the Dodge City style and a completely new game of Emiliano Sciarra, something using the BANG! game system in a different and unique way.

• The Wolf Party Collection, which is a line of games derived from Lupus in Tabula, our second top-selling game. In February 2009, we will release the improved and luxurious new version of Lupus in Tabula - the definitive one, in our view, after almost ten years from the first print run of the game, with tarot-sized cards and more.

  This new Lupus in Tabula will be launched together with Lupusburg, the long awaited version of Lupus in Tabula for 4-8 players, a game which uses new mechanisms in order to give small groups of players the opportunity of experiencing the same feelings of a Lupus in Tabula game! We have already planned the next steps for the Wolf Party Collection – we have three original games from Italian designers, and a German game on exclusive licence, and obviously an extension to Lupus in Tabula – but since you haven’t played any of the new 2009 titles, we don’t want to anticipate too much!

  [Liga] (Damn! We have to wait ... we have to wait ... this is what anxious gamers have to do most ...)

• The Allegro line, a light games line (with such titles as Viva il Re!, Figaro and Beetlez) is a typical expression of our Italian genius and a way to present quality board games. The next title in this line is a game by Eligio Cazzato about tourists throwing coins in the Trevi’s Fountain… pure fun, as usual!

• The Maestro line, a gamers’ line with Leonardo da Vinci, Fatal and the new Borneo. As you already know, the most important release in this line is our 2009 Essen game, Gonzaga, by Guglielmo Duccoli, possibly the biggest project in our history. It’s a completely new game concept, with strategic depth and the “gateway game” feeling of masterpieces like Ticket to Ride. But I think we could come back to Gonzaga later in 2009 with an exclusive preview…

  [Liga] (Of course, I’ll try to be on the news as soon as possible!)

Partnership is a key to success, so we are defining new strategic partnerships in every geographical market, with distributors and publishers who can take care of one or more product lines, in order to have mostly localized versions of our lines.

[Liga] Will daVinci continue to publish the card game that wins the Lucca Comics & Games Inedito Award every year? In which product line does will it fit?

Yes, daVinci will continue to support Lucca Comics & Games by publishing the winner of the Inedito Award. This has been a great cooperation, and we have “discovered” great games as well as great authors. Games will have this double deck format, and they won’t be in a particular line, but if some of them show a great potential and will fit in our lines, we could re-publish them in a different format, as happened in 2008 with Borneo, which is now a game in our Maestro Line.

[Liga] Will daVinci preserve its “talent scout” activity of publishing games from new Italian authors, or will it look mostly at established ones?

Silvano says, “We’ll continue to have a careful look at Italian authors, both new and established, but most importantly we’ll continue to search for excellent games that really fit our lines and that own that particular, recognizable “daVinci” mood for which we are today famous in the gaming world.” Domenico adds, “The games in our pipeline are mostly from Italian authors, both new ones (as with the author of Gonzaga, Guglielmo Duccoli) and old (okay - they are not that old!) daVinci authors, as with Eligio Cazzato. We keep on scouting in Italy mainly, but we are open to proposals: daVinci 2.0 is not that different, with respect to this aspect, and maybe we’ll also once again publish games from established authors like Reiner Knizia (Figaro) and Klaus Teuber (Barbarossa).”

[Liga] Will daVinci publish or distribute Italian versions of games from non-Italian publishers in the future? If so, will this be something structured ?

Yes, absolutely. We’ll publish international successes, and they will find a place in our lines. In particular for the Italian market we are preparing a big surprise, a specific line of games about… oh yeah, I can’t tell yet ‘cause it’s a surprise.

[Liga] Thank you, daVinci, for this nice inside view of the company and I hope daVinci 2.0 will continue to feed gamers with nice games.

Good play and happy Christmas,
Liga

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