Living a place with video games, this is the game tourism that encourages tourism in Italy
Game Tourism, or videogame tourism, means visiting the places where video games are set. The phenomenon is not very different from film tourism or literary tourism, all three cases derive from the pleasure of going personally to a place experienced through a work. Film, novel or video game. So yes: it is possible to discover Italy through video games. Florence, Venice, San Gimignano and Monteriggioni are some of the destinations that fans of Assassin's Creed II go to. The Amalfi coast is instead represented in Uncharted 4, and these are just the most striking examples. It is not strange, just think of the rediscovery of Volterra following the Twilight series. My aunt, who is a tour guide in Pisa, had to read Meyer's books, watch movies and organize New Moon themed guided tours in the Volturi lands. I imagine he would have preferred to play Ezio Auditore, as perhaps his Florentine colleagues did ...
Riding the Wave: Game Over Carrara and the Death Stranding Connectors initiative
Let's stay in Tuscany. On the logic of Game Tourism, Carrara tried to make himself known thanks to a game developed by one of its citizens: Game Over Carrara. It is a zombie-themed point and click, metaphor of the end that the city risks if it were forgotten. Re-launch tourism in the area is the goal of the first two video games in the series, which can boast more than 20 downloads, most of which come from the United States. The third is in development, waiting for the fundraiser on Kickstarter to reach the required budget.
To learn more:
Death Stranding: anti - marketing told by connections
Based on the re-connection between cities and people, it couldn't be missing Death Stranding among the titles that have favored the rediscovery of the territory. Sony, in fact, has organized a contest to reconnect the most remote villages of our country. The Connectors, this is the name of the initiative, aimed to make known the most isolated countries and give them back the life they have lost. Once again: to discover Italy through video games. The video above was shot at the end of the initiative to try to reconnect Carrega Ligure, a Piedmontese town of 87 inhabitants surveyed in 2017. Sony did the same with three other places forgotten by time: the Vajont Valley, between Veneto and Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Pentedattilo, in Calabria, e Calcata, in Lazio. I had never heard of these places, and the fact that I wanted to visit them is the clearest example that Game Tourism exists and works.
Tourism and video games have never been so connected.
