The Milan weekend dedicated to the advent of digital and followed by our eSportsActivity.com team, celebrated the success of the “Parents Gaming Lab – the in-depth event aimed at parents and teachers on the potential and risks linked to the playful video medium, organized by Vodafone Italia and Esl Italia in order to create a bridge between the various generations.
A success of analysis and debates studied and organized in detail by Alessio Cifani, “heart and soul” of an event lived as a protagonist in “second base”
Born to play with anything, words and ideas included, the Abruzzo Project Manager is laying hands on a Commodore 64 for the first time at 4 years and since then he has never stopped caring about everything that is technology, gaming and entertainment, making his passions a real job made of commitments and responsibilities.
1 – Alessio Cifani, from teacher to ESL manager of the ESL Italia Championship (ESL Vodafone Championship) and from the Winter Season 2017! A dream come true, what does your work consist of?
Being Project Manager for ESL Italy, means taking care of planning, organizing and supervising all the activities and competitions both online and offline that lie ahead. It is a delicate and responsible job, sometimes even stressful, but at the same time it is very satisfying: the satisfaction that comes when, after months of work, we reach the final date of an event and finally everything is indescribable the one designed comes to life! The project manager is a job that requires large doses of creativity and technical skills. I can say with certainty that you never get bored!
2 – The collaboration between Vodafone and ESL started last autumn, it is possible to take stock of this experience and how important is it for the Italian export category that Italian companies start investing in this sector?
The collaboration between ESL and Vodafone began long before last autumn, but internationally. In Italy the partnership came later and much more strongly, reason, the latter that led us to create an educational event to bring the game culture to the general public. Having such a strong partner allows you to reach a wider audience that is not only made up of exports enthusiasts, a fundamental detail that gives you an edge and greater prospects for growth.
We are witnessing a real revolution in the concept of entertainment; the interest in competitive games is growing exponentially, and the export consolidates more and more presences and participations. Great merits of such evolutions, are to be attributed to non endemic brands like Vodafone that decide to look ahead and live this revolution as protagonists alongside ESL
3 – The “Parents Gaming Lab – The fascination of videogames” you lived it from its first beats behind the scenes, weaving and designing every little detail. When and how is the idea born?
Even if not in the foreground, the educational aspect is always present in what we do. We know that we are addressing a young public that must always be polite, so we often stop to ask ourselves what the reactions to everything we communicate about our work may be.
When we were offered to participate in the Milan Digital Week activities, we knew we would have to deal with adults instead. Hence the idea of wanting to identify them for a day, in the shoes of their boys.
For them it was like going back to school to learn notions, but this time about video games. Choosing the topics to be addressed, in such a wide gaming world, was not at all easy, we had to necessarily sacrifice so many arguments in favor of more linear, less complex ladders with effective and direct messages. Not by chance, to help us in the teaching processes, we decided to opt for and insert practical tests of the most popular games mixed with theoretical notions. This is how the Parents Gaming Lab was born.
4 – “A small step for the video game culture in Italy. It fills me with pride having played a role in all this. With these words you described the Sunday of Milan Digital Week, what do you expect and what are the future objectives of the event?
It is a theme that is very close to my heart: with a teaching background, I am aware of the fact that the first step to give strength to the videogame medium is to do culture! We have made great strides within a decade but we continue to suffer a sort of psychological subjection to cinema and TV as if the video game were a B-series medium. We have great Italian researchers who deal with game studios and I would like to be able to bring them all together for a round table and a new edition of Parents Gaming Lab. The video game can give a lot (in my case a career!), I am convinced that fear and mistrust towards it are only the result of ignorance . I would like to see the taboos and negative perceptions of many people overcome, even more, I hope, that in the future video games are recognized, the same status of relevance dispensed to other forms of entertainment.
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