"I dream of an Italian game developer opening a studio in the UK"

gamesindustry.biz:

During our time at the First Playable event in Florence, we spoke with a nine Italian game developers of all different shapes and sizes.

We met with a bunch of small, independent teams creating artistic, personal passionate projects. And we sat down with larger developers who are part of bigger groups, such as Ubisoft and Embracer.

Stormind doesn't fit into either of those categories. This is a AA game developer with 110 employees that isn't owned by any group or outside publisher. And that's something it's fiercely proud of.

"We released our last game in October with Team17, which was called Batora: Lost Haven," begins Antonio Cannata, the CEO of Stormind. "That will be our last pure indie game. We are now working on some cool cooperations with [major] IP holders. These should be announced soon. As well as our own games. We've completed a transition from a pure indie studio with like 20 guys in Sicily, to a studio of more than 110 working on multiple projects at the same time. And in terms of original IP, our next one will be our first AA game."

He continues: "And this has happened without losing our independence because the current shareholders of the company are the founders. We have received some proposals in the past to be acquired but we said no, because we think there is a lot of potential that needs to be expressed."

Cannata says the goal for Stormind is to build a successful and sustainable games company. It's not about wanting to make one game, but to create a business that produces multiple titles simultaneously.

"If you know the entire Italian industry, there are a lot of structured companies that are just focusing on racing games [and so on]," he says. "But most of them have already been acquired. We