Alberto Belli on difficult year for Gamera and setting good launch for studio’s RPG Alaloth in 2022

Gamera Interactive CEO Alberto Belli has joined us to discuss what the Italian studio managed to achieve in 2021 and what to expect from it this year, including the launch of RPG Alaloth: Champions of The Four Kingdoms.

Alberto Belli, Founder & CEO of Gamera Interactive

How did 2021 treat Gamera?

2021 was a very difficult year for a number of reasons. We thought we would be done with the pandemic [and we were, development-wise] but the long tail of 2020 hit again affecting our corporate partners as well. We decided to continue pushing forward, trying to work on other side projects that have potential, which are not directly related to game development but are strongly connected with the studio.

So we basically organized the very first edition of DStars Connects, following the success of the DStars Awards, and it was a blast. Italian devs finally have an international event running locally. We were able to put companies and institutions in touch by running an Italian track “for dummies.” Lots of business opportunities have been generated locally and we are happy about this.

The same is true about our internal label, Gamera Gameslab: we set up the very first course for Game Producer here 3 years ago and we are happy to see a lot of our alumni finally working in the industry. Of course, we are not happy about the delay in releasing Alaloth: Champions of The Four Kingdoms but we decided to take some extra time to work properly on it, focusing not just on the development side of things, but on setting a good launch.

What do you expect from 2022?

2022 will be the year of big guns, Unreal Engine 5, and so on. Our niche for Alaloth is safe, old-school RPGs will definitely be around and not just thanks to advancements in photorealism and other technical improvements. We are, though, aiming to push on the tech side with Alaloth, but the most important thing is that we found our own identity. 

The main focus for 2022 will be of course the release of Alaloth – Champions of The Four Kingdoms. It is strategically important because all our IP-related plans depend on it. We have a comic book already signed, Alaloth – The Tempest, we have two books in the works to be unveiled and we are in talks with a few people to understand more about the business opportunities generated by a successful launch.

The other thing we are going to pursue is publishing third-party indie games. We’ve generated good numbers with the ReLaunch program, moreover, we’ve signed a few unreleased products that will be out Q1 and Q2.

Which third-party titles were you personally excited about as a gamer?

I love RPGs, of course, but I’m really looking forward to the next Star Wars game from Massive. Massive is probably one of my fav studios in the world and I spent hours and hours on The Division so, even if I’m not a big fan of the IP, I’m really curious about what they are cooking now. Hope to know more about Dragon Age 4 and of course I’m super curious about Avowed and the new unannounced IP from Obsidian.