The sixth edition of First Playable, the business event for the video game industry organized by IIDEA and Toscana Film Commission – Fondazione Sistema Toscana, ended with great success. The event, supported by the ICE Agency, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation and sponsored by the Ministry of Culture, has consolidated its position in the international panorama of events dedicated to professionals in the sector. This year’s edition, held from 3 to 5 July in Florence at the Cinema La Compagnia, the Casa del Cinema of the Tuscany Region, and the Innovation Hub of Nana Bianca, offered a program of panels, business meetings, workshops, awards and networking opportunities.
The event was attended by over 500 professionals, including 50 companies including publishers, investors and international agencies from 12 countries (Australia, Canada, Cyprus, South Korea, France, Germany, Great Britain, Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden and USA) and over 180 Italian developer teams. More than 1,000 business meetings were organized through the Meet To Match platform. During the kick-off conference, 11 international speakers shared their experiences and, thanks to the support of sponsors, 9 workshops on business and technical topics were held. The Italian Video Game Awards ceremony, broadcast exclusively on Twitch, attracted over 15,000 viewers in live streaming and in person.
Thalita Malagò, General Manager of IIDEA, expressed satisfaction with the success of the 2024 edition, underlining the event’s fundamental role as a meeting point for the Italian community of video game developers and as an international showcase for the Italian video game industry. “The sector is in a very interesting phase of development, and is expanding in different directions,” Malagò told AdnKronos Tech&Games. “We no longer have just a few large studios on one side and younger teams in the start-up phase on the other, but finally in Italy there is also a group of medium-sized companies that have been operating in this market for many years, and that are becoming consolidated businesses. The presence of this medium-sized group of companies is an element to be considered with great attention and possibility, trying to find ways to help them grow, sustain themselves and progress. So far our attention has been mainly focused on those who were just starting out in this sector, but it is important to also pay close attention to those who have shown they can hold their own in this market.”
This year, for the first time, First Playable has established a country partnership with France, thanks to the collaboration of the Institut Français Italia, the Syndicat National du Jeu Vidéo (SNJV) and the Centre National du Cinéma et de l’Image Animée (CNC). Malagò commented: “Having a field of partners for the event represents for us a way to cultivate a fundamental value of our industry: sharing information and exchanging experiences. This is an international and global sector, in which we all operate in the same market and face similar problems and opportunities. It is therefore very important to exchange ideas”. France has brought us representatives of institutions and developers, confirming what we already knew: it is a country with a level of development much more advanced than ours. In France there are around 600 development studios, while in Italy we have between 150 and 200. The level of development of the industry and the support of public institutions in France are much more advanced because they started earlier”.
Stefania Ippoliti, Director of the Toscana Film Commission, enthusiastically commented on the ongoing partnership with IIDEA and the constant attention to the world of Italian video games, highlighting the exponential growth and quality of the projects as positive signs for the future. Matteo Masini, Director of the Consumer Goods Office of the ICE Agency, confirmed the agency’s commitment to supporting the growth and internationalization of Italian companies in the video game sector. He also highlighted how the collaboration with First Playable allowed the participation of a delegation of high-profile international operators, selected through the Agency’s foreign network. This year’s edition was made possible thanks to the support of numerous partners: Meet to Match as Matchmaking partner, Epic Games/Unreal Engine as Diamond Partner, Memorable Games and Vigamus Group as Gold Partner, and various Silver Partners including Audio Network, Broken Arms Games, GPEM, LCA Studio Legale, Milestone, Nacon Studio Milan, Red Bull with the Red Bull Indie Forge project, Slitherine and Xsolla.