Every year in the city of Essen, the local Fair site hosts the most beloved event by players from any country: the Essen Spiele.
Hundreds of publishers and game stores (well surrounded by booths full of comics, toys and gadget of all sorts...) show in Essen all their new and old games.
You may find anything you can think of: unpublished games prototypes, games nearly impossible to find, used box still in excellent condition for just a few bucks, and above all... authors from all over the world passing by or sitting at a table explaining their games!
This year (2004) the Italian game designers group was more equipped and passionate, and many Italian games received an enthusiastic welcome. To celebrate this success, we asked five famous Italian game designers to tell us “their” Essen (as well as to show us some pictures or photos never seen before...).
Let them speak.

EMILIANO SCIARRA daVinci Games www.davincigames.com Emiliano is the author of BANG!, one of the most successful daVinci Games products. This year he attended the Essen Fair with his BANG! – DODGE CITY.

Any gaming enthusiast feels at Essen like Pinocchio in Toyland: there are games of all kinds, by any sort of producer, both new as well as used, for all flavours. There are also toys, trinkets, special materials for game designers, gadgets... anything that is a game or it is related to it.
This was my third experience in Essen and as usual it has been a chance to work hard instead of having good time and hanging around aimlessly trying (and buying) games for almost a week.
Being responsible of the daVinci booth, we found ourselves often compelled to bypass the lunch, explaining games and attending job meetings one after another, from dawn to dusk. Tiring, but rewarding.
The human contact with the public is unique, notwithstanding the different tongues (happily, almost everyone speaks English, too). The Germans are not so cordial and talkative as Italians are, but their gaming culture is light years ahead of us: it is perfectly normal for them looking at a game, sitting at a table, reading carefully all the rules, and then playing it to the end. I am not talking about Peter Pan syndrome-affected monomaniacs: I personally witnessed 7 years old children happily playing TUCHULCHA, groups of elderly ladies facing themselves at DICE RUN, whole families giving themselves a good thrashing in BANG!, noisy teenager bands challenging themselves in DANCING DICE, just to name a few. Also, there are TV troupes churning out reports, severe and professional reporters judging the new games, specialized magazines interviewing game designers... There are visitors coming from any corner of the world, even from Korea and Japan.
Personally, I am very satisfied and surprised by the success of DODGE CITY, which is doing well even if BANG! is not a game precisely suited for German hard-core gamers. Furthermore, the rest of daVinci games went well, and this year the Italian crew was numerous and seasoned as never before: the game market starts talking about an “Italian School” of emerging Italian game designers, something nearly unimaginable just few years ago.
The Fair exhaustion leaves you with a boost to do more and better, as well as an enrichment thanks to the talking with other authors, both famous and not-so-famous... and an incentive to attend the Fair the next year, too.
Auf wieder sehen, Essen.

PIERO CIONI Red Omega Studio www.redomegastudio.com Piero Cioni is the brilliant author of all games by Red Omega Studio, the young publisher house of TORTUGA and CRAZY RALLY: it will publish new games soon. In this issue of GiocAreA you will find a game “half” designed by him!

It was the third edition of the Essen Fair we was privileged to attend to.
As usual, it has been an impressive experience!
You may read (to exhaustion) on these pages and on forums and messages over the Internet how special Essen is, but believe me: there is nothing similar to a day in Essen for a game lover!
This year we were positioned at hall 9, first floor. A lot of friends, both Italian and not, came to visit us and we met many publishers for a “foreign” version of our games.
Unfortunately, wdhgndy jdjjd... (wait a moment, I am cleaning the keyboard from my tears... done) we didn’t manage to have all games printed in time, so we brought mostly mock-ups. Even with this heavy handicap, all went well and our new DAIMYO and SHARKPARK were well received by anyone who tried them.
Apart from our outcomes, it has been the most “Italian” Fair of all times. The number of Italian visitors has grown exponentially, and most of all Italian publishers, game designers and illustrators filled the Fair with their proposals.
My (strictly personal) impression has been even better: it seemed to me that Italians were looked no longer with an obliging smile of the “last arrived”. We have been received as an integral part of the big professional world market, sometimes with respect and sometimes even with high regard for our products and ideas. We hear a lot about “Italian style”: well, this year in Essen people talked about us not only due to “Pizzeria Pinocchio” or “Rucola Restaurant”: people talked about “Italy playing”. Often I was asked about how Italian players are, how Italian fairs and conventions are, how specialized magazines and gaming groups are.
The Italian presence has been not only a growing factor visible to all: I noticed also with a smile that all the Italian game facets were there: single players, gaming groups, game designers, illustrators, art directors, publishers, distributors. Briefly: Italy was there! All of it!
See you at next happening!

ANGELO PORAZZI Angelo Porazzi Games www.warangel.it Angelo Porazzi is the “doyen” of self-production in Italy. The several editions of his fantasy wargame WARANGEL are to be considered a classic in its genre.

By four years (let’s say by 2000, when LuccaGames awarded WARANGEL with the Best of Show), I enjoy to be invited to Italian fairs and conventions, both small and large, to which I attend with great fervour notwithstanding my “veteran” age and three children awaiting my homecoming each gaming weekend.
It seems to me that starting roughly from 2000 an enormous, very tangible growth of Italian games took place, and Essen 2004 saw many of us attending with great results.
Basing on my experience, which was limited to countless conventions and fairs I livened up in Italy, Essen gave me the beautiful emotion of meeting lots of friends (I just don’t manage to call them “customers”) who came to visit us equipped with the fair map, thanks to the games which I take pleasure in publishing and illustrating in the last years. They are friends coming from the world who contacted me before, strictly by e-mail: finally I have been able to see them with my eyes. Few things in life are so wonderful.
Designing games merely as a hobby, and seeing them appreciated and sought after by people like me coming from USA, Germany (well, this was easy...), the Netherlands, Switzerland, England, Turkey, Japan, Korea... is a fantastic emotion. You must know that WARANGEL and PEACEBOWL were still unheard of by German game magazines: anyone who knew them outside Italy belonged to a cluster of players interested in new games, well-done things, who searched this self-productions on the Internet after seeing them on the website. Players who don’t follow other people who buy a game only because it is widely advertised: sensible and attentive players, who are aware of maps illustrated one by one, depicting a sector of our Earth; who stop to “taste” new characters and races seen on the website; who surely can understand and appreciate the work behind any game, even if it is done just for hobby.
At Essen I saw all wooden tokens I managed to bring with me disappear: players really like them, they allow to custom our own races with excellent results; after Essen, the ninth production re-order of them was sold out. WARANGEL achieved to sell everything I managed to bring with me in Essen: expansions, maps and tokens. PEACEBOWL sold out the first edition in one year and the second edition is being distributed by our admirable KDS.
In Essen I met, had lunch, travelled, slept and talked with a real host of friends from any part of Italy, and it has been a real pleasure to come upon them and share this experience with them.
There is no space here to list them all, on www.warangel.it you can read about them and see many photo reportages which I collect as in an album of great memories of this weird and never tedious life of designer which the game world offered to me. A life which I immediately accepted with great joy.

FRANCESCO NEPITELLO Nexus Editrice www.nexusgames.com Together with Roberto Di Meglio and Marco Maggi, Francesco is one of the designers of the colossal Tolkien success WAR OF THE RING (LuccaGames Best of Show 2004).

After returning from the splendours of Essen, games fanatics can try finding solace in only one way: intensively thinking how cold and grey the weather in Germany is. Otherwise there is no escape: the mind will keep calculating how much you could spend in the crowded corridors, and how many hot news you could grab to show them to your friends on your return.
The experience of an author busy in promoting his own creatures in a booth is similar: the multitude invading the fair halls keeps passing in front of your eyes for days after the event end, and nothing could cancel the satisfaction in capturing the almost “professional” interest of people approaching your game. As a matter of fact, players in Essen don’t wander about with curious look: instead, they investigate using attention and technique, and they are prepared to look at each new game with a critical eye. Coming from gaming communities of all Europe, attendants analyze game systems, background consistency, rules complexity. Someone sits at the table just searching for an intelligent pastime, others are connoisseurs having a delicate palate: all of them, however, seem perfectly capable of tell apart good quality products.
If the feeling were less friendly, we could consider the Fair as a real School Leaving Examination.
From the various accounts on the Internet about this year’s Fair, it would seem that a lot of Italians passed the Essen 2004 exam with full marks. There are more and more Made in Italy products which make a lot of fuss.
Until this will become an everyday news, we keep thinking about how grey and cold the weather in Germany is...

EMANUELE ORNELLA Mind the Move www.mindthemove.com His game OLTREMARE has been one of the great surprises of the Fair. A self production of amazing quality which immediately received excellent reviews.

When GiocAreA contacted me, they asked me to write a short article on “my Essen” using the “tone” most suitable to my likings. Immediately, I decided to describe Essen as a game.

Game components
Before starting play, each player must assemble all boxes at his disposal. Then he takes a card which tells the booth number (either by chance or buying it).

Game preparation
Put the time marker on “Wednesday”. Set up the booth with tables, chairs, posters and various booth dressings. Arrange also the boxes, either all of them or only a part of them.

Game objective
The goal is to maximize the income. Players start with a negative score equal to the “production cost” which depends on the quantity and the kind of the produced boxes.

Game turn
The game is divided in four phases called “days”. The time marker proceeds from “Thursday” through “Sunday”.
In each phase, players throw a die and reveal a number of “buyer” cards equal to the number shown.
For each “buyer” card, the player must try to persuade the buyer to buy one or more boxes.
If he manages to do so, he gains the money of the sold boxes, otherwise the card is passed to the player on his left.

Winner
All players win in this game, provided they enjoyed the Fair.

Essen is truly the Wonderland for any real gamer.
What mostly struck my attention last year was not only the sheer number of people, but also their variety: from the Viking camouflaged as a fantasy warrior, to the grandmother seated with her nephews on the Hans Im Gluck moquette playing AMUN-RE! From children on the Zoch stand tiny stools to the indomitable ones testing the next Alea game prototype.
This was my second year for me and Mind the Move. What surprised me, as well as giving me great satisfaction, has been meeting again with people which I knew for the first time last year thanks to FANTASY PUB, who this year were willing to try my new game.
What to say more? If you never attended, you must.

Finally, we at GiocAreA wish to kindly thank these five game designers who gave us some of their precious time writing these pages, instead of writing a new game...
Of course, it is mandatory to notice that the “Italian task force” at the Fair was not limited to the publishers we contacted. However, a monographic issue of GiocAreA exclusively devoted to designers’ articles with countless pages would have been a poor editorial’s choice! This is why we chose to select five of the most representative realities; however, we want to cite, at least, other Italian publishers in Essen: Tilsit Italia (which brought SETTLERS OF CATAN in our country, but is publishing many other games also with his brand), Kidult Game (with several new games: FAB FIB, DRUIDS...), Zugames with its FEUDO, Venice Connection...
To all of them, we present the most Italian greeting: ciao!