Edition 2025

Born in Venice in 1964, Leo Colovini begins his ludic adventure at about 12 when he meets Alex Randolph, playing chess in a club of Venice. Passionate about games  since ever, he is really struck by the “Master”, and becomes a goer of Randolph’s office. He takes part to the game tests with enthusiasm and never misses a single occasion to show Alex his naive and odd ideas. As time goes by, his ideas start to refine themselves and Leo finally presents to the severe judgement of his “Master” an interesting mechanism for a game, but, even if Randolph tries more than once to put his hands on it, the game doesn’t make it to be published. After one year they realize together Drachenfels, which is Leo’s first published game (Schmidt Spiele).  Two years later (1988), again in collaboration with Randolph, it is the time of Inkognito, published by MB, a great success (part of the list of Spiel des Jahres, and winner of the Sonderpreis – the special prize of the critics).  After several years Piatnik publishes Die Magische Sieben the first game signed by Colovini as a unique author. In 1993 he signs, together with Dario De Toffoli, Marco Maggi and Francesco Nepitello, the Role Playing Game Lex Arcana (Dal Negro). In 1993 he definitely leaves his job in the bank and begins to work full time for games. In 1994 Die Oster Insel is published by Blatz Spiele: this game also enters in the list of Spiel des Jahres. In the following years, the works with Dario De Toffoli increase until together with Alex Randolph they found Venice Connection. After several years he gets a history degree with a game-thesis about Charlemagne, and many of his games are published: Carolus Magnus in 2000 and Clans in 2003 (Winning Moves) that almost win the Spiel del Jahres by getting one of the three nominations. With his game Leo muss zum Friseur he wins the Deutscher Kinderspiele Preis 2016, gets very close to the victory of the Kinderspiel des Jahres 2016 (being among the three nominated games) and wins the Spiele Hit für Kinder 2016.

One of the best Shogi italian players, he is really passionate about all games created by Alex Randolph. Giuseppe Baggio loves abstract boardgames, but he always enjoys playing any other kind of game.
Well, he loves to play and for this reason he became member of the Premio Archimede Jury.
With studiogiochi he contributed to the realization of the chapters about Shogi (japanese chess), the ones about heterodox chess for the book Il grande libro degli scacchi and he helped out in the proof-reading of many headwords of the Enciclopedia dei giochi by Giampaolo Dossena.

Figlio di Leo Colovini, play-tester, sviluppatore, redattore, traduttore e ora anche autore: non c’è che l’imbarazzo della scelta! Chissà se gli rimarrà tempo per coltivare le sue altre grandi passioni… fare il Mastro Birraio, l’Egittologo o magari rifugiarsi in un bel LARP di quelli tosti?

Born in 1991, he is passionate about every type of games (from boardgames to videogames) but, particularly, of trading card games (before Yu-Gi-Oh!, now Gwent online has become his favourite game).
He graduated in philosophy in Venice, and after the positive experience with Premio Archimede 2016 he entered as a member of the preselection jury of the contest, with the responsability to connect the games (and their authors) with italian and international jurors.
He is at the forefront of testing new games and helping in various projects of the studio.

Born in Dolo (near Venice) in 1968, he has a playful childhood.
In the beginning of the 80’s he gets in touch with the association MultigiocoClub from Mestre, and immediately becomes their “mascot”, being the youngest of the group. He is called from everybody Darietto [little Dario], in order not to get mixed up with the other Dario, “Darione” [big Dario] De Toffoli. Since he has a daughter, many friends call him Zack, but some nostalic ones still call him with the first nickname.
Beeing in touch with De Toffoli becomes a lasting status, and gradually he starts to collaborate with studiogiochi: he runs tournaments, develops boardgames and produces puzzles and other games for the press.
The big jump happens during the editions of the Italian Game Festival: he is responsible for some entire sections. Starting from that moment “Darietto” really understands what he wants to do once he grows up and soon he gets the chance to cross the great sea that separates “saying” from “doing”.
All the rest is topicality: he writes books and collaborates in the creation of games, and especially has a great pleasure presenting new puzzles to people, especially logic and numeric ones.
Suddenly one day he surprises everybody that sees him as a cold  calculator by winning an international poetry competition (www.centrostudivignola.it), with his first and last verses ever written.

Gauthier Althaus worked for 12 years for Philibert, a French shop specialising in board games, as purchasing and public relations manager. There he discovered the world of professional board games after many years as a regular gamer. He is now editorial manager of the French publishing house Iello, and it is with the same enthusiasm as always that he loves to play and is looking forward to discovering the games of tomorrow!

Gonzalo Aguirre Bisi is a passionate gamer and game designer that joined the gaming industry in 2007 working as a video game publisher. Gonzalo grow up back and forth from Italy to Peru and he moved back definitely to Rome in his adulthood to attend to La Sapienza university. Now he is living between Rome and Sevilla, a city he fell in love with.
Since 2014 he has been developing the business side of ThunderGryph with the aim to develop and publish board games.
With five years from launch, ThunderGryph’s counts eighteen published games.

Pierpaolo Paoletti decided to pursue his passion by working in the board game industry after many years of experience in graphic design.
With strong opinions yet always expressed with kindness, Pier is the most experienced tabletop gamer within the ThunderGryph team, which he joined in 2018.
His main responsibilities focus on game development, but he actively contributes to structural changes to improve the ergonomics of the games.
In addition, Pier is dedicated to the design and art direction of some of ThunderGryph’s titles.

Hadi is the CEO & Founder of Helvetiq, an international publisher of games and books based in Switzerland. Game designer. Book author. Tennis geek. Roger Federer, Haruki Murakami and Boston Celtics Fan.

Anneli Ganser studied literature, history, and political science, originally aiming to become a journalist. But sometimes life writes its own stories: a fortunate coincidence led her into the games industry, and since then she has been convinced that being a game editor is the best job in the world. She has worked in the industry for over 15 years, contributing to German publishers such as HUCH!, HABA, and moses. Since 2024, she has been bringing her great enthusiasm to the Swiss publisher Helvetiq.

Born in 1962. Civil engineer, author of board games and spokesperson for Saz Italia, the association of game authors, the passion matured at an early age for the games world has turned into his professional life which led him to design dozens of board games and publish them with Italian and international publishing houses together with his friend/partner Luca Bellini. He has held game design courses and workshops at the Milan Polytechnic, the Turin Polytechnic, the Brera Academy and several high schools. He promote the use of games for educators, teachers and companies. With the pedagogist Sara Evangelista, he created the format “Come and play with me!?” aimed at parents/educators, organizing more than 50 thematic evenings in nursery schools, municipalities, associations. He is one of the founders of “Blob Factory” Game Studio, a group of game designers (Bellini – Lanzavecchia – Obert – Borsa) who deal with gamification and promotional games for companies. He collaborated in the drafting of the “Piano Giochi” for a municipality in Brianza, a tool that defines the objectives of the city from a playful point of view towards its citizens of all ages. He was a speaker at TEDx Busto Arsizio with the talk “A life at stake, inside and outside the box” where he shown the world of gaming and his experiences in the gaming field.

Bernd Brunnhofer was born in 1946 near Graz in Austria. He came to Germany in the 60s, studied Sociology and was later a university lecturer. He founded Hans im Glück in 1983 together with Karl-Heinz Schmiel, when they published the small handcrafted game Dodge City. The first games were no big success until in 1991 the breakthrough came with Drunter und Drüber by Klaus Teuber. It was the first german game of the year from a small company and 1994 followed Manhattan by Andreas Seyfarth and 1996 El Grande by Wolfgang Kramer and Richard Ulrich. At least since that time Hans im Glück was a well known in german households.  2001 another milestone came with the worldwide success of Carcassonne by Klaus-Jürgen Wrede. Especially the finetuning of the game by Bernd Brunnhofer was part of that success and every player in world knows today the cute meeple, which was designed by Bernd Brunnhofer. With Thurn und Taxis by Andreas Seyfarth in 2006 and Dominion by Donald Vaccarino in 2009 Hans im Glück won two more games of the year in Germany. Bernd Brunnhofer also is a great game designer himself. His games Sankt Petersburg and Stone Age are well known and popular in the gamers scene. And perhaps he’s just working on the next big thing…

Stefano literally grew up in games, being his father one of the greatest game collectors in the world. He was destined for a career in games, and is now strategic planner for the international game publisher Giochi Uniti(Carcassone, Settlers of Catan). Playing together with Stefano you may experience his dialectics, he also studied international relations actually, a specialization that tourned out to be very useful in his job for Giochi Uniti. So if you ever happen to persuade him to publish one of your games remember this may not be so easy…

Erik de Jong was born in 1984 and very passionate about all types of competitive board games. He grews up with boardgames, his father worked in the game industry (Jumbo) all his life. After Erik graduated his study in Leisure Management, he joined 999 Games in 2007 where he worked close with Michael Bruinsma in various roles. Currently he is co-owner and responsible for the operational management of 999 Games.

Bert Calis was into board games in his teenage years. Magic the Gathering and Warhammer were his main drivers. During this time he met Michael Bruinsma (999 Games). In 1998 he started his own board game shop. He became a certified DCI judge, tournament organizer and completed the in-house training at Games Workshop. This knowledge he applied to board games to let the hobby expand. He was also a member of the jury for the Dutch Game of the Year association. The shop was sold in 2015 and Michael Bruinsma was eager to welcome him in his team. At 999 Games he had several roles within marketing, sales and product development. The more memorable feats were hosting the European Championship Catan in Utrecht and establishing the World Record for having the most people playing Catan at the same table.

Luigi De Luca Cuccia approaches the world of gaming in the early nineties by participating in numerous game realities, he publishes his first multi-genre role-playing game in 1999 and begins to play folk music, in the meantime he studies physics and moves to the capital. After an interlude in the Tuscan hills to which he remains particularly attached, he returns to Rome and opens a software development studio.
From 2016 he re-entered the world of entertainment following the birth of the Italian EscapeRooms and finally with some friends he opened Creative Jam, a publishing house of board games, role-playing games and intelligent games in 2022.
Currently Creative Jam has started producing its first games trying to use the past experiences of the members by exploiting a combination of Logic Games, Escape Rooms and Digital Media.

It was with AD&D, Call of Cthulhu and Zargo’s Lords that François first learned about modern board games in the early 80s.
While studying political sciences, he started working in a Jeux Descartes store in Paris in 1987 (as a student job), and he has not left the gaming world since.
He started as a Salesman, then became a game store manager (he still has a store in Bordeaux). He also worked as an author for Casus Belli, and, for a few years, as a member of the Cannes As d’Or jury.
He then worked at Tric Trac from 2018 to 2022, where he notably participated in thematic videos, and more importantly in the Tric Trac Show, a big weekly Talk Show devoted to board games and the people who make them.
Earlier this year, he joined Asmodée group as a sourcing manager for Lab4games (Days of Wonder, Libellud, Repos Production and Space Cowboys).

Miriam rediscovered her passion for board games while studying ecology (biology). Therefore, she additionally worked in sales and consulted on board games of all kinds. But for her it wasn’t enough to sell great games, she wanted to take a deeper look into the development of games. To do so, she took a peek behind the scenes at Moses and Ravensburger.
Since 2019, she has now been allowed to do her mischief in the editorial department of Amigo.

Alessandro Montingelli, born in Milan in 1997, has been passionate about games since he was a child. He graduated in Milan and Berlin in Product Design and Innovation Design Management, again with a specialization in Game Design and Game Development. He presented his first game at the Maker Faire in Rome in 2018 and gained his first Game Development experiences at Ravensburger. Today he is part of the editorial team at Amigo.

Peter Eggert was born in Hamburg in 1959, where he still lives. He developed his first game idea at the age of ten, creating a board game with horses and cowboys. In the 1970s he studied brewing; later, in the 1980s, he worked in environmental protection for a rubber company.
But already in 1975, when he started playing more board games, he discovered a passion that led him to develop his first board game in 1993, ‘Duhner Wattrennen’, which he self-published in 1996, the year he founded the publishing house Eggertspiele. In 2003, he published ‘Global Powers’ as co-designer and from 2005, with ‘Die Dolmengötter’, he started publishing games by other authors.
Eggertspiele’s first big hits were ‘Antike’ in 2005 and ‘Cuba’ in 2007. In 2012 he obtained his first Kennerspiel with the game ‘Village’, followed in 2014 by ‘Camel Up’, which was the publisher’s biggest success.
After selling Eggertspiele in 2017, Peter worked for Plan B Games and finally, in 2020, founded Deep Print Games together with four old friends. Today their best-selling game is ‘Beer&Bread’… so Peter is back at the brewery, again!

Thorsten Gimmler studied electrical engineering after school. During his studies, his passion for games, which he had already had in childhood, flared up again. He published game reviews in daily newspapers and then began to develop games himself, 13 were published by various publishers. After graduating, he developed lights before turning his hobby into a profession and working as a Product Manager at Schmidt Spiele for 15 years. Since 2020, he has been working as Inventor Relation Manager at Ravensburger, where he is responsible for contact with authors and the search for new games and further development of new game ideas.

Ruud Hermsen founded Gamigoo in 2018, after working 10 years for a large Belgian card and board game company, where he built up an extensive sales network worldwide. He now represents another board games manufacturer, the Asian QP, mainly targeting Europe. Besides this, Ruud provides distribution and localisation services, so if you are looking for a good manufacturer, or are looking for advice on marketing, distribution, publishing and stocking your games, Ruud can guide you all the way.

Hermann Hutter has founded the distribution company Hutter Trade in 2004. Since then, the company has become established as an integral part of the game world. With its own brand HUCH! and innovative educational and leisure games, communication games with lifestyle character, and strategy games from foreign partner publishers, Hutter Trade has created its own distinctive profile.
Publishing games is a big passion for Hermann. Numerous awards – such as the “Toy Award 2008,” the “Children’s Game of the Year 2007,” and the “German Game Prize 2006” – provide evidence of the company’s success. Led by the joy of playing, creativity and design and an interest in new trends, HUCH! creates game innovations that provide long-lasting fun! Hermann Hutter is a very experienced retailer and is successfully managing numerous shops.

Kevin Kichan Kim was born 1976 in Seoul. During he was studying Robot eyes in graduated school, he was fascinating to playing boardgames. In 2002, he opened a Boardgame cafe in Seoul and the cafe expanded 16 places in Korea. Then he started to develop games by himself, he founded Korean Association of Boardgame Industry and Korea Boardgame Con. In 2010, he joined in Korea Boardgames as a head of product development. At KBG, he had led the localization of around 150 games, game publishing such as Coconuts, Abraca…What? and more. He quit KBG in 2015 and joined in Happy Baobab as a VP and helped Asian small publishers to develop their product and to find western distributors. From 2017 Fall, he has led publishing company Mandoo Games as a CEO to introduce nice game with beautiful artworks to the world.

Paul has been in the games industry since 1989, starting at Spears Games before moving to Mattel, London R&D, and Cheatwell Games. Now, as Head of Product Development for the Outset Media group, he brings decades of experience to creating and developing games, driven by a lifelong passion for play.

Born in 1977, Simone Luciani begins as player and amateur game designer.
He has taken part many times in the Archimede contest, which he won two times, with Portobello Road (best card game in 2008 and his first creation to be published – by Piatnik as Frutti di mare – ) and Marco Polo, Premio Archimede 2012, then published by Hans in Glück and winner of the Deutscher Spiele Preis.
In 2013 Simone began to work with the Italian publisher Cranio Creations where he has now the main role in selecting and developing games. In 2015 Simone left his teaching career (that lasted over 15 years) to be a full-time game designer.

Wolfgang became passionate about games as a reviewer and collector. But when Peter Neugebauer introduced him to the game designer Klaus Teuber and his wife Claudia (almost 30 years ago), the encounter turned into a special friendship, and from then on Wolfgang has been actively involved in the development of new games at an early stage.
Wolfgang’s career as an editor began when he joined the new company TM-Spiele GmbH, which soon enough began to focus on consultancy for other game publishers.
He has edited games published under the Goldsieber label and by KOSMOS until 2013.
Wolfgang regards his ability to recognize whether a prototype has the potential of becoming a good game as one of his strenghts. As an editor at KOSMOS, he continues to take care of part of the family and adult games, and he also continues to be actively involved in the development of games at an early stage.

President and co-founder of La Tana dei Goblin Venezia – the most important local gaming association – Umberto organizes gaming events, conventions and tournments attending the most important international kermesse in the field. With his Ph.D. he organized and took part to conferences with board games as a topic, in Lucca, Ferrara and Venice. He knows very well Euro-style board games but has a great expertise also in traditional and collectible card games, war games, role playing games, party games and the classics.

Leon was born in 1988 and started in the board game industry in 2014 at Nice Game Publishing. In 2019 he joined Korea’s largest board game distributor and publisher Korea Boardgames. Leon is scouting and developing games for Korea Boardgames from the office in Cologne, Germany.

Michal has been involved in the gaming industry since 2007 and currently holds the position of lead developer at the Czech company Albi.
Albi Publishing has gained recognition through the game Karak and now releases several games annually, focusing more on family and gaming-oriented titles. As a developer his most recent work was on the game “The Two Heirs,” which garnered significant praise from Dice Tower reviewers.
Michal appreciates simple and straightforward game designs that still offer extensive gameplay possibilities.

As the great-great-grandson of the founder of Piatnik, Dieter is working at the company since 1984. He is Chief Executive Officer since April 1995. His favorite game is the traditional cardgame Tarock. He is a fan of Oldtimer Cars, Boxing, Books and History.
Severin, Dieter’s son, started working at Piatnik’ game development in 2023 after having spent 5 years in the Automotive Industry.
He loves all kinds of games, card games being his favorite. He plays tennis and padel and likes to read when his kids are in bed.

Matthias (re)discovered his love for board games during his time at university. After graduating as a psychologist, he got the chance to work at AbacusSpiele as an editor and product manager and stayed there for almost 10 years. After a short time at Heidelbär Games, he joined the Pegasus Spiele team in summer 2021. He likes elegant games with accessible rules that create a deeper gaming experience than one would expect at first glance.

Tobias has been playing board games all his life. Nevertheless, visiting his first board game fair was the starting point to his fascination with the board game industry. What he truly loves about it are those games that really have an impact on the playing group. Whether it is a special twist in communicating and cooperating with each other or planning a secret conspiracy. Working as a game editor means working on exactly these exciting group experiences.

Frank Weiss is a passionate board gamer. He studied business administration with a focus on marketing. During and after his studies, he worked in a toy store before moving to England for a year in 1998.
In 1999, he started working at Ravensburger Spieleverlag, where he held several positions over almost 20 years. During this time, he also got to know and appreciate the studiogiochi team. He was drawn to beautiful Venice several times. In 2019, he moved to Switzerland to join Game Factory, the game publisher of the Carletto Group. He has been managing the publishing house since 2021.