When an Italian video game embarrassed the industry
Could a single video game have embarrassed the entire games industry globally? The answer is yes. Or at least, that's what happened today, when from the pages of Kotaku Damiano Gerli reconstructs the story of Gioventù Ribelle, a project that served as a trailblazer to demonstrate that high-level video games could also be made in Italy (and launched on the occasion of the 150 years of the unification of Italy) and which in the end, however, capitulated on its own legs.
In the long article, which you can retrieve at this address , the names and surnames of the defendants in the affair are mentioned, among which stands out Giorgia Meloni. In 2011, when Gioventù Ribelle saw the light of day, the current Prime Minister was part of the Berlusconi government with the role of Minister for Youth and spent himself on the front line to praise the work of the students of the IED in Rome. “The project is also the demonstration that past and future can coexist and we are in the making. We are as a people, given that we celebrate the 150th anniversary of the unification of Italy ", Meloni's words declared in an interview with Corriere Universitario.
The project was actually incomplete and its development is reconstructed in the Kotaku article. According to some testimonies, collected by Gerli, the various students in charge of the project did not find out about it for a few weeks after the presentation and were forced to work day and night, preparing exams in the meantime. If it is true that Gioventù Ribelle was a failed video game, it is also true however that according to other personalities of the Italian games industry there were also public funds (almost half a million euros) and important partners behind the video game, such as RTrenitalia and AI. Bankruptcy, in itself, is obviously not a problem, if it weren't precisely for the direct participation of the State, both at the level of companies and public funding. To make the situation worse there were the foreign reviews that spoke of "worst video game in history together with Big Rigs" and how to blame him, on balance Rebel Youth was a completely broken MOD of Unreal Tournament III with historical inaccuracy, bugs and even the possibility to remove the Pope.
Gioventù Ribelle obviously remains a more unique than rare case in the panorama of the world of Italian videogames and made in Italy. 12 years later the situation is obviously very different, with a growing sense of responsibility and professionalism. For everyone, except for the institutions, which continue to fail to guarantee livelihoods and public funds to cultivate this sector. And the feeling, unfortunately, is that it's too late to do it.
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