Video games, the Italian startups that create them for companies

The game is there digital experience metaphor: Alessandro Baricco also used it to title the bestseller The Game which tells of the advent of third industrial revolution. And the corporate world experience his playful language to make the experience of approaching, using, promoting, explaining a product or service simple – and above all fun. In a word, advergame: video games customized to disseminate promotional campaigns, train personnel, integrate educational programs, used by giants such as Red Bull, Lego, Coca-Cola, Google, Lavazza And Budweiser. The latter seems to have been the first company in the world to produce an advergame in the United States in the 1990s. “It was the spread of new ones smartphones used today by 61% of Italian gamers to decree the success of online gameswithin everyone’s reach and at all times”, explains Biagio Iannuzzi, CEO of Code This Lab.

More and more known abroad, they are today instruments expanding also in Italy given the passion of gen z for these tools, the development of the interaction between homo videns and the digital world and le growth prospects that these two aspects will have with the metaverse. In short, don’t call them hobbies. “Every time someone says ‘Ah, you play games!‘ a game developer from the other side of the world he loses one of his three lives”, ironically Iannuzzi. Seriously, this type of corporate game is instead a new “1-up” conquered by the world of online gaming.

What are advergames

“The word advergame comes from the union of two words: advertising more gamei.e. advertising and gaming”, follows Iannuzzi. The brand that chooses to tell its story through play experiences a new communication approach: “It’s no longer about reaching the public in every way, but about doing it in a healthy way. the message it is no longer one-way, intrusive and unsolicited. But it’s aconscious experience: thus the game experience becomes brand experience”. There are three types of advergames:

Games for children (6/12 years) are increasingly in demand as a function of edutainment. “But the ones that are the most popular are the old arcades then Pac-man, Tetris, Super Mario and Out Run”. Today in Italy to create a basic advergame you can spend from 2 to 10 thousand euros, with different development times. Here are the main Italian players interviewed by Wired during the Milanese edition of smauthe reference event in Italy on innovation and startups.

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Code This Lab, the pioneers of the sector

In Italy advergames appear in the early 2000s with the advent of Macromedia Flash, a game creation software. “Before setting up Code This Lab with my partner Mauro Banchieri, I’ve worked for other video game companies. But I needed more autonomy to achieve what I saw in the future: Casual games at the center of the communication strategies of the most authoritative brands – explains Iannuzzi -. So in the 2009 we started to develop video games, especially for the foreign market. A time when the video game was a meeting point between two generations key, that analogue from the 90s And the one that speaks digital. Video games belong to both”.

Today the Naples-based company has a rich portfolio of clients such as Tod’s or WWF. “We weren’t the first but today we are the best equipped with a catalog that counts more than 300 games available”. In addition to experience, the company’s strong point is development: “We program entirely in house and the games are made in JavaScript: this means that we write ‘the code by hand’”. Inside, even a department that deals exclusively with 3D modeling and of Pixel Art: “Among sports games we cover almost all existing disciplines: perhaps the Gaelic football!”.

Blaster Foundry, the newest advancing

Company spread over the national territory, with headquarters in Cataniaa space in the incubator White dwarf in Florence and the technical director who works from Frosinone, Blaster Foundry was born during the Covid period and looks like potential market disruptor. The company is made up of very young boys, attentive to graphics and above all to the very high customization of the game to the visual identity of the client brand. “We are a startup that creates advergames for educational or advertising purposes. Our feature is one product development based on usability by the brand. Just to give a few examples, let’s think of a education: through quizzes and interactive challenges, employees of a company can be trained on internal policies. Or educate anyone to a correct one recycling“, explains Salvadoran blacks, sales manager at Blaster Foundry. The startup’s clients already include big names such as Aeroporti di Roma and Winelivery.