On the occasion of the Children’s Book Fair, the iconic Esprit Nouveau Pavilion located in the green area in front of the Fiera District will host Bologna Game Farm Playground from March 31st to April 2nd: a three-day afternoon (from 3:00 pm to 7:30 pm) dedicated to the cultural and creative gaming industry with showcases, public meetings, free gaming stations, and international networking activities.
An initiative that opens Esprit Nouveau Bologna 2025-2027, the program of activities conceived by the Municipality of Bologna to celebrate the centenary of the Parisian original created by Le Corbusier for the 1925 Paris Exhibition of Decorative Arts.
As part of Bologna Game Farm, the project promoted by the Municipality of Bologna and co-financed by the Emilia Romagna Region for the development of the video game industry in Italy, in synergy with the video game section of the Children’s Book Fair, Bologna Game Farm Playground will be host 14 teams of video game developers from Emilia Romagna, who will offer the public the opportunity to play various video games, many of which have been created, designed and developed thanks to the acceleration path carried out over the last four years at Le Serre dei Giardini Margherita incubator by the Municipality of Bologna. (These are the developer teams that will be present: Silent Chicken, Overkillas Studio, Power Up Team, Dreambits Studio, Operaludica, BYTWICE, IV Productions, PANTA REI, Studio Kodama, Studio Pizza, Melazeta, AC Software, Studio Evil, Trinity Team.)
Among the initiatives scheduled for Bologna Game Farm Playground:
on March 31st at 5:30 pm, the fifth edition of the Bologna Game Farm national call for proposals will be presented, this year focusing on video games that enhance Italy’s tangible and intangible cultural heritage. The call is the result of collaboration between the Municipality of Bologna, the Metropolitan City, and CTE COBO and also involves the CTEs of Pesaro and Matera.
on April 2nd at 5.30 pm there will be a presentation of the video game No Signal – Marconi the game, a journey through time to tell in a playful form and within the reach of a smartphone the great discoveries and inventions of Guglielmo Marconi, a Bolognese genius who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1909, father of wireless and radio, whose 150th anniversary has passed since his birth in 2024.
Produced by the Municipality of Bologna with the contribution of the Emilia Romagna Region and developed by Melazeta, with the scientific collaboration of the Guglielmo Marconi Foundation, the University of Bologna and the Museum of Industrial Heritage of the Civic Museums Sector Bologna
Also at Bologna Game Farm Playground, during the three afternoons of the Fair, thanks to the collaboration with the Italian Publishers Association, it will be possible to meet a delegation of publishers and facilitate the exchange of experiences with ten video game development teams from the German accelerator SpielFabrique.
Access to Bologna Game Farm Playground is free (even without a Fair pass), and the activities are open to everyone, including non-specialists and are aimed specifically at schools, training, video game developers, and visual art design.