Larp takes center stage in the first Master’s Degree in Game Design at the University of Salento

On Wednesday, February 25, the first edition of the Level I University Master’s program in STEAM area “Game Design” at the University of Salento concluded in Lecce (Italy) with the presentation and discussion of the students’ project work. The program was promoted and directed by Professor Andrea Scardicchio. In an Italian academic landscape often cautious toward games, the Salento university chose to invest in high-level professional training, building a concrete bridge between humanistic theory and the entertainment industry.

The distinctive feature of this program was the central role given to live action role-play. Not merely a supplementary module, but a structural pillar: as much as one third of the entire course was dedicated to larp.

This choice reflects a contemporary vision of Game Design, in which immersion and the management of physical experience become key skills even for designers working on digital or analog worlds. Among the lecturers in the larp module were Umberto Francia, director of International Larp Database and Larp Forum, president of Eryados, and author of Larp, giochi di ruolo dal vivo (Dino Audino Editore), and Annalisa Corbo, psychologist, psychotherapist, and larp expert, co-author of the volume Edu-larp published by FrancoAngeli.

The structure of the master’s program made it possible to explore the dynamics of live-action play as an essential component of contemporary game design, but also as a tool applicable to education (schools, universities, and companies), cultural, social, and territorial promotion, as well as to more specific fields such as psychology and emergency crisis management.

Among the final projects were the chamber larp Monte Elevato: For the Good of All, by Annalisa Leo, which stages a witchcraft trial in sixteenth-century Italy, and The Trial of Identities by Alberto Nutricati, an edu-larp set in a near, hyper-bureaucratized future in which citizens are assigned their profession at birth by an algorithmic system.

(In the photo: Prof. Andrea Scardicchio)