Italian game development

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

9th April 2010

Raylight CEO Massi di Monda feels that the time is right for international publishers to take a second look at the games development offered by Italy. As Vice President of the Association of Italian Videogames Developers (Produttori Italiani di Videogiochi) di Monda is part of the team spearheading change within the Italian development community and government. He says, “Games development talent in Italy is strong and is competing on an international level. Creativity and passion are part of the Italian DNA and the games being produced are testament to that. The time is right for publishers of games for every platform – current gen, online, mobile or casual – to see exactly what it is that makes our development unique.”

Like many videogames industries across Europe, Italy’s is a profitable and prolific modern economic reality, outshining the numbers made by the country’s music and film industries with a turnover of software sales 2009 in excess of €1 billion.

Now, in Bel Paese (the Beautiful Country), there is a groundswell of support for the industry. In March 2009, a group of 15 leading Italian developers founded the Association of Italian Videogames Developers as an industry specific body working with both Assoknowledge (the trade association for Education and Knowledge of Italian employers in Innovative and Technological Services) and AIOMI (the Italian Association of Interactive Multimedia Works). The new association is comprised of nearly every Italian company producing videogames, demonstrating enthusiasm and passion in advancing the industry both in Italy and internationally.

Di Monda says, “Italy leads the world in so many creative areas – we make the best food, cars, fashion and wine. Italian creativity is renowned worldwide and we’ve successfully exported our culture and our creative flair. We are now bringing this to the fast growing industry of videogames development. For example, at Raylight we’re currently completing Sniper Elite, the world’s premier sniping game, on Wii; we’ve been nominated for ‘best game’ with Free Running at the ‘Cartoons on the Bay’ 2010 awards in Genoa, and are working with Samsung to produce the launch title My Little Baby for their groundbreaking new handset, Wave. Raylight is competing on the global stage and we believe there’s room for our creative and talented Italian studio colleagues to join us”.

www.raylightgames.com

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Raylight S.r.l.

Raylight is the leading independent Italian videogames developer based in Napoli. Established in 2000 by Francesco Paduano, Massimiliano Di Monda and Fausto Cardone, the goal of the founders was to create a new reality for the creation and development of high quality videogames: a new reference point in the game industry.

Raylight became an official Nintendo GameBoy Color developer, and in 2001, an official developer for GameBoy Advance. In recent years, Raylight’s reputation has soared thanks to the development of their Blueroses engine and tools, and the development of the highly acclaimed Wing Commander Prophecy on the Nintendo Gameboy Advance.

At present, Raylight is the leading independent Italian videogames development studio with dozens of games released all over the world, on a wide range of platforms for international publishers. Visit www.raylightgames.com for more information.

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