Tommy Tallarico Interview Segments: What does Amico Mean?
13In this episode, we take a snippet out of our recent interview with Tommy Tallarico of Intellivision Entertainment to discuss the significance of the name of the new Intellivision system, Amico, and what it means in terms of philosophy as well.
To view the full 4-Hour interview, please visit https://youtu.be/swXdl4IYl48
To view individual segments of the interview, please check out our playlist at https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoLKUBYLFqP1s8lNSWp8T6X_jmnmgklXK
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The crew at Intellivision Entertainment are working on new hardware, a system called the Amico. Unsure if there was any significance behind the name or not it was something as it turns out, Amico not only has a very significant meaning in Italian, but it also helps explain the philosophy behind the new hardware.
Translating Amico into English quite literally means "Friend". And that is a philosophy Intellivision is building into the hardware. They want everything, from the controller to the system itself to be friendly, welcoming, inviting. It wants you to touch it, it wants you to hold it. And the games are being designed in such a way, according to tommy, to be challenging yet fun they are not looking to have controller throwing levels of difficulty and frustration built into their games.
There is additional significance in the mindset with how Amico will be positioned according to Tommy. The desire is not to have single-player games where you are shut off from the rest of your family. Quite the contrary, it seems that in many ways Tommy and his team are trying to bring back something akin to family game night. They are doing that through hardware that is not intimidating and games that you can pick up and play easily.
Another focus of Amico is the games for younger kids. When I was creating content in the world of RC, I used the term "edutainment" regarding my content strategy. I wanted to create videos that were both educational so people would learn about the hobby and have fun doing it. Tommy is taking that same sort of concept edutainment, and applying it towards games for younger kids. They have licenses for Sesame Street, Care Bears, and other franchises to help younger kids not only have fun, but learn. I have personally seen how successful this could be with games such as Reader Rabbit from the Wii, and it actually does work.
Will this be a successful approach? Time will tell. But knowing that there are no microtransactions, all games are rated E10+ or less, and there won't be games with blood, guts, and gore should help make it appealing to families with younger kids. Will older kids think it is fun and cool well, Tommy admits they're not exactly going after that demographic so we will have to see how successful that strategy will be.
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