Emiliano Sciarra

Emiliano Sciarra (born December 6, 1971 in Civitavecchia, Rome, Italy) is a game designer of board games, card games and videogames.

He is the author of "Bang!", a Wild West themed card game published in the USA by Mayfair Games.

Biography

He has been fascinated by games from when he was 12 years old, and he wrote simple board games and word games for his schoolmates and relatives. In the same time he also showed interest in computers (years later he earned a degree in Computer Science at Sapienza University of Rome).

In 1988 he published his first game: a shoot'em up videogame for the Commodore 64 called "Ciuffy" (Systems Editoriale), programmed using the software "SEUCK" by Sensible Software.

Starting from 1999 he wrote several reviews, games and articles for the magazine "PowerKaos" and the fanzine "Un'Altra Cosa", along with a brief "Little Informal Dictionary of Computer Science" ("Piccolo Dizionario Informale di Informatica"). His topics included logic puzzles, original games and theoretic discussions about the meaning of the game and its role in the human society ["Un'Altra Cosa" no. 1-13, June 1999-April 2003, Novecentonovanta] .

Before becoming a professional game designer, he acquired experience as freelance computer programmer and Privacy advisor for several companies in Italy [ [http://www.gimagioke.it/forum/showthread.php?p=5608 Curriculum ludico Emiliano Sciarra - Community Ludica Italiana ] ] .

In 2000 he published "Invader", a board game inspired by early 80s videogames like "Space Invaders", on issues 69 and 70 of the magazine "PowerKaos" by Nexus Editrice.

In 2002 he published with daVinci Editrice, which was born shortly before, the card game "Bang!", created two years earlier. Sciarra decided to submit the game after the members of the local Chess Club (founded by Sciarra himself in 1998) were so addicted to the game that they preferred to play "Bang!" instead of Chess. The game was illustrated by Alessandro Pierangelini with Stefano De Fazi as Art Director: they were all born in Civitavecchia, too, as well as the daVinci Executive Director, Domenico Di Giorgio.

"Bang!" hit the shelves in July 2002: without any marketing by daVinci, the game entirely sold the first run (2400 copies) in less than three months, instead of the three years estimated by the company. According to figures confirmed by Sciarra himself, the game in 2007 sold more the 250,000 copies and was distributed in 14 countries over the world [According to discussion on the newsgroup "it.hobby.giochi", which hosts many posts from Emiliano Sciarra.] .

In 2003 he won an Origins Award for "Best Traditional Card Game"; another Origins Award was assigned to Alessandro Pierangelini for "Best Graphic Design of a Card Game or Expansion". The game won also in 2002 the "Best of Show" Award at the Lucca Comics and Games fair.

He published several expansions for "Bang!", including "High Noon", "Dodge City", "Bang! - Face Off", and "A Fistful of Cards".

Apart from games, Emiliano Sciarra is also a skilled musician (he wrote the stage music for the local Live Pieces of Chess ["Il Tempo", July 14, 1999] ) and he also organizes and is invited to public speeches regarding traditional arts and sciences, videogames and ludology.

Publications

Videogames

* "Ciuffy", Systems Editoriale (published on issue no. 19 of the magazine "Software Club"), 1988, for the Commodore 64.

Games (in English)

* "Bang", daVinci Editrice, 2002. The game is titled "Wanted!" in France (published by Tilsit). Illustrations by Alessandro Pierangelini.
* "High Noon", daVinci Editrice, 2003 (expansion for "Bang!"). Illustrations by Toni Cittadini.
* "Dodge City", daVinci Editrice, 2004 (expansion for "Bang!"). Illustrations by Alessandro Pierangelini.
* "Bang! - Face Off", Arima/daVinci Editrice, 2005 (PDF game, board game expansion for "Bang!"). Illustrations by Paolo Aldighieri aka eriadan.
* "A Fistful of Cards", daVinci Editrice, 2005 (expansion for "Bang!"). Illustrations by eriadan.
* "Bang! - The Bullet", daVinci Editrice, 2007 (deluxe set of "Bang!").

Notes

External links

* [http://www.davincigames.com Official daVinci website]
* [http://www.gimagioke.it/forum/showthread.php?p=5608 Short biography (in Italian)]