Videogames as Cultural and Economic Drivers: Italy's Lagging Recognition

In Italy, the cultural and economic potential of videogames remains niche, despite a global market of 3.2 billion players and $475 billion in revenue. The Power of Play festival in Pesaro, organized by IIDEA in collaboration with Games for Change, featured a talk by Lucrezia Ercoli of the pop-philosophy association Popsophia, titled 'Un gioco serio. La popsophia dei videogame.' The article argues that Italy's high median age and limited industry expansion have ghettoized videogames as mere entertainment. Globally, the top five gaming companies had a market capitalization of about $270 billion as of June 2025. In contrast, Italy's entire gaming market generated only €2.4 billion in 2024. The author, Stefano Monti, calls for a structured dialogue between producers and institutions to unlock the sector's creative and economic potential, warning that treating it solely as an industrial sector will delay growth.