Posted in: Conventions, Events, Games, Interview, Lucca Comics & Games, Tabletop, Video Games | Tagged: Emanuele Vietina, Lucca Comics & Games 2024

Interview: Emanuele Vietina Talks Lucca Comics & Games 2024

We chat with the Event Director of Lucca Comics & Games 2024, Emanuele Vietina, to discuss the gaming content happening this year

Lucca Comics & Games 2024 is set to kick off this week as organizers take over the city of Lucca, Italy, and turn the entire town into its own convention. Having gone two years in a row and attending this year as the event runs from October 30 until November 3, we can tell you there's really no other convention like it on the planet as they have created their own unique setting for people to check out, making it the second biggest convention in Europe behind Gamescom. As we have done in the past, we got a chance to chat with Event Director Emanuele Vietina as we discussed what's happening on the gaming side of things.

⁠BC: Hey Emanuele, how have things been over the last year?

EV: Last year, we worked really, really hard to create something new. So this year, the challenge was to mix opera and Giacomo Puccini's 100th anniversary (of his death) together with pop culture. So at the beginning of the year, we flew to Japan, and we spent an amazing week together with Yoshitaka Amano in order to create probably one of the largest art exhibitions he has ever done in the Western world, and for sure the largest and the most complete in Europe.

We decided to create for the very first time a big art exhibition outside of our city walls, in Milan. And so with Yoshitaka Amano, we created a completely different concept of the storytelling of Lucca Comics and Games. Amano's comes from the tradition of Square Enix, from Final Fantasy, but also from the anime of the '70s any American comics. the sensei decided to create a trilogy of promotional posters dedicated to three of the most famous operas, Tosca, Madame Butterfly, and Turandot, and to create a storytelling where the visual artists of Final Fantasy met Giacomo Puccini, and Lucca Comics and Games is conceived like an opera in three acts. Overture, Crescendo, and Fantastico, the finale, to be unveiled on the stage of Lucca. We discovered that basically 100 years ago, Giacomo Puccini was so modern, so contemporary, and basically inspired the pop culture from the movies to the video games, and we are sure that Giacomo Puccini would have been a composer for video games or for TV shows if he was live nowadays. So basically, yes, we spent working hard to create something new, a big exhibition in Milan, a great show in Lucca and probably in two years, in order to celebrate our 60th anniversary, something great, something big that could possibly be the National Museum of Comics.

⁠This year you're dedicating a couple of dungeons to the creators if D&D. What inspired that move and why those two specific dungeons?

This year, Lucca is so into Dungeons & Dragons. We think of ourselves as Dungeon Masters, because directing is a thing. Servant leadership and following the people, bringing them to accomplish their own kind of quest and to reach something that could be a treasure of knowledge, of a new knowledge. It's, for us, the meaning of Lucca Comics & Games. So Dungeons & Dragons, for us, is more than a game. It's a complete revolution of the way of thinking. And that probably also affects our concept of the event. So we want to create a sort of map in which every big company, every exhibition, every place, every venue of the show, it's a quest for the people that come. Fifteen years ago, when Gary Gygax passed away, we told The City of Lucca that Dungeons & Dragons is more than a game. It's a complete revolution of cultural production, and Lucca is a city of games.

Lucca had to celebrate Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, because they did something that's probably one of the most relevant things in the cultural world in the 20th century. And of course, we thought, not a street, of course, a dungeon in our city walls. And by the way, it's the first dungeon ever entitled to an artist, to an author, to someone. But this is also more than a dungeon, because it's probably one of the few dungeons that it's also a public passageway that brings people from outside of the game pavilion to the historical center. So yes, it's unbelievable. I think we are the only town in the world who dedicated a public space to the founders of Dungeons & Dragons. So this is something very important for Italy. We are such a culture with such a deep root in the past, but we want to keep our tradition and to look for innovation. And this is something important also for all the Dungeons & Dragons fans. And the 30th of October, we are going to unveil the installation that brings the name of Gary and Dave. Two installations, by the way, one at the beginning of the passageway and one at the end of the passageway.

You've also got a curated museum on display for D&D. What will be in that collection?

We had the unique chance to get in touch with Matthew Koder, the owner of the Koder Collection, the largest collection of Dungeons & Dragons art. We wanted to exhibit, for the very first time in the world, the collection. We assure museum standards, and we are going to do this in a beautiful church. And he said yes. Matthew put us in touch with the curators of his collection, Jessica Patterson and John Peterson, that it's also one of the most important institutions of Dungeons & Dragons. So, for the very first time, we have two American curators for one of our exhibitions that, by the way, is also the biggest and largest and the biggest investment for us in terms of doing an exhibition during Lucca Comics & Games. So, we are going to open the exhibition some days before the convention, on Saturday, the 26th of October, and of what is now the largest and the most complete art exhibition on Dungeons & Dragons ever done.

Thanks to the Matthew Koder collection, the curator John Peterson and Jessica Patterson. And by the way, there is also a special gift in the foyer of this exhibition, three originals coming from the Uffizi collection. The Uffizi museum, the most influential museum in the world, decided, as part of the partnership with Lucca Comics & Games, to send us the Uffizi dragons, three pieces from their collection, with dragons from the 17th and 18th centuries, to put in connection, again, the Italian tradition together with the American gaming innovation. I think it's something unique.

⁠You'll be celebrating the anniversary of Tetris with a few activities as well. What have you got planned for that celebration?

Yes, for us, it's been a really big privilege to be able to host these two giants of the video game industry, and of course, there is a big panel on the 1st of November dedicated to Henk Rogers and Alexey Pajitnov, in which we discuss what Tetris meant for the video game industry and also the possible future application. On the 2nd of November, there will be the movie dedicated to Tetris such a successful movie and will be commented on by both and then, but this is almost a spoiler, at the beginning of the show as we did for all the giants like Bushnell the founder of Atari, we are going to put them in the Lucca Comics and Games Walk of Fame and so it's very very important to have them with us and so Tetris will be celebrated like one of the foundation of the video game culture.

Let me add that another very interesting thing is that a game that is in the arts of millions of gamers is Broken Sword published in 1996. So as far as we are celebrating Tetris, that it's probably one of the most iconic video game ever, we like in this retrospective of big game designers from the past that created the foundations of games. I would also like to highlight here Charles Cecil, a game designer of Broken Sword and co-founder of Revolution Software, who will be in Lucca to talk about the most important steps that brought a new idea of graphic adventures in games. So yes, Tetris is probably the biggest anniversary in terms of the fundamental games, but also Charles Cecil and Broken Sword, it's an ally that deserves to be to be considered.

⁠I saw your holding a parade for Fallout 76. What made you decide to do a parade, and what can people expect to see in it?

Lucca Comics & Games aims to be the most community-driven show, and so we are constantly in touch with our communities, and we try to understand which are for them the most interesting and most beloved new IP, old IP, and there are hundreds of fans and cosplayers for Fallout. So our community management decided to create a parade and gathering for them and we have created the new space since last year, it's called the community village. It's free, you don't need tickets to go in the garden, and there is a stage where the cosplayer is called, and they can gather and they can start to create a parade. it's not a carnival; cosplay is interpreting, for us, it is another version of a role-playing game; you can become the character that you love, and you can add something to the creation of the original so you can dress as your favorite character of Fallout and become and create something new. We want to let the people be the real heroes for five days. Fallout is so loved in Italy, so we created a parade so the people can come out, jump out of from the video, and be one of the characters.

You have several booths from Bandai Namco, Nintendo, Riot Games, and more. How has it been branching out with more studios commanding space?

Yes, we are working hard and it's another thing that we did in the last few months during this year. And yes, there are much, much more video games than ever this year. Nintendo is doubling its booth, and I think Nintendo is going to do, for the very first time in Europe, a Nintendo pop-up store. This is very big news. And Bandai has a beautiful booth. Riot Games with League of Legends is going to create the Riot Stadium with League of Legends and the big gaming program. But we also have Monster Hunter in the vault in the San Regolo dungeon. We also have three big guests for Baldur's Gate 3 from Larian Studios, and this is very, very important to us. We are also creating an experience dedicated to Baldur's Gate because these three artists, Jochen Flemings, Jason Latino, and Borislav Slavov, are going to meet our audience but also dive deep into their disciplines. Borislav is the composer, and he's going to speak about music and video games, and of course, he's going to meet the legacy of Puccini. Jason Latino is the director of the cinematic of the Larian Studios, and Jochen Flemings is the art director.

So it's about cinematic, and it's about music, and it's about art. And so out has been branching out with more studios commanding space, but you know Lucca is a very tailor- made it's a very tailor-made exhibition; there will also be Monster Hunter in another palace, the historical space of Lucca. So for us, it's pretty easy, you know it's different from creating a booth in Lucca than in any other convention because we are not selling simple booths, but we want to propose to the big studios, to the major companies, a different look to land with a challenging audience.

So the audience is constantly changing, and Lucca wants to provide a different perspective, a unique perspective, a peculiar way. So it has not been easy, of course, but it has also been very, very rewarding, and so Riot, Nintendo, Bandai, and Monster Hunter, they are going to be very, very crucial. Monster Hunter in Capcom, distributed in Italy by PlayOn, and so it has been challenging, but now Nintendo is usually will be in the very center of the town, Riot Games will be in the palace part with the stadium, and Bandai in a Napoleonic building, and Monster Hunter with Capcom, Capcom with Monster Hunter will be in a dungeon, and then we also will have a vault for independent game developer, Italian independent game developer, in the community village. So there will be a lot of space to try new games, and to create new experience, and dealing with these people, it's creating something new that has never been done in the world, I suppose.

What is the one thing you're most excited about on the gaming side of things?

Basically, we spoke about video games, and so everyone is expecting Monster Hunter or probably the Nintendo Shop and the new Nintendo Experience and, of course the Riot Tournament. Most of the people are excited to celebrate Baldur's Gate 3 and Yoshitaka Amano's exhibition. But personally, as a Dungeon Master, and as a gamer, of course, I expect all the big D&D celebrations. Jeremy Crawford is going to be with us, the head designer of Dungeons & Dragons, so playing the new game with Jeremy in the newly named Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon, I think it's big, but personally, for me, what I am expecting is probably surprising to you, it's the new board game From the Other Side from Blind Guardian. I was obsessed with Blind Guardian, and I am so happy; I chased it for ten years Hansi Kürsch and Frederic Hemke, two from the band, are going to be in Lucca for the launch of the new Scribabs game, the series dedicated to the heavy metal band and the name of the game is From the Other Side, it's been developed by the drummer Frederic Hemke together with an Italian designer Marco Valtriani.

We are developing a board game inspired by the tales of the big metal band; you know, metal is so close to the roleplay gamers, to the gamers overall, video games, because in metal there are so many tales and Blind Guardian, are probably one of the best storytellers in metal music and if some years ago there was Tales From the Other Side, one of their most successful albums, this year in Lucca, after Essen, they are going to present to the audience From the Other Side, the Blind Guardian board game with the drummer Frederic Hemke, the author, and Hansi Kürsch, the leader of the Blind Guardian. I started chasing Hansi in 2014 and after 10 years finally I'm able to bring him to the show. This is a dungeon crawler game, so it's a very nice game, inspired by the music of Blind Guardian, and Hansi Kürsch will be here also to be celebrated as one of the foremost European authors giving a new voice to fantasy in music.

He did an amazing album called At the Edge of Time, in which there are songs inspired by Wheel of Time, Game of Thrones, Lord of the Rings of course, Silmarillion, and the concept album Nightfall in Middle Earth, the concept album dedicated to Silmarillion, so Hansi Kürsch is probably one of the greatest in fantasy all over the world. And finally, they are in Lucca presenting their board game. So, on the game side, both board games and video games, there are so many big guys. But personally, as a nerd, I mean as a boy passionate about storytelling, as our community is built, and the bond is around story and storytelling. This small happening on Saturday and on Sunday with Blind Guardian, with Hansi Kürsch and Frederic Hemmecke, is for me like a special gift, a special achievement for Lucca 24. You know, we run a big show with all the major companies, but for us, you know, remembering who we were when we were playing a game, listening to Blind Guardian, this connection for me, it's very, very unique. So I hope this game is going to be successful all over Europe and possibly all over the United States.

And final thoughts going into Lucca 2024?

Just waiting for you guys, and we hope that more and more Americans are going to follow Lucca. We are trying to do special things, unique things, like celebrating Tetris, celebrating Dungeons & Dragons, and giving a new perspective on video games with Monster Hunter and League of Legends, and with many titles from Bandai Namco. But, also remaining ourselves and dedicating space to the board games like Blind Guardian's. So Lucca is a crossroad between art, history, and pop culture. Lucca is a quest. Ciao again.

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