A board game based on the mafia wars in Sicily in the 1980s has caused controversy in Italy, with the sister of murdered anti-mafia judge Giovanni Falcone calling it a crime against all those who have killed Italy. had struggled to free them from organized crime. .
La Famiglia: The Great Mafia War, produced by the German firm Boardgame Atelierwon last year. As D oror Golden Ace, a prestigious prize awarded at an annual sports festival in France.
Described by its producer as “a conflict game set against the backdrop of a mafia feud in Sicily”, it was recently translated into Italian and distributed on various online retail sites.
The basic premise of the game is for players, representing different mob families, to compete against each other to take control of Sicily using devices such as car bombs to “dominate as much territory as possible.” For”.
In the 1980s, brutal mafia battles devastated much of the southern Italian island. More than 1,000 people were killed in the first two years of the decade, including many civilians who were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The notorious Cosa Nostra boss, Totò Riina, also rose to prominence in the 1980s, and in 1992 ordered the car bomb assassination of Falcone and fellow anti-Mafia judge Paolo Borsellino.
“I don’t understand how it’s possible that someone thought of this game, which plays on the emotions of those who lost their lives in the service of the state,” Maria Falcone told the Corriere della Sera newspaper. ” “Mafia has only created death in Sicily and Italy. Such a game undermines the memory of all those who contributed to the liberation of this land. [of organised crime]”
Alessandro De Leo, a politician from the Forza Italia party founded by former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, has sent a letter to the president of Sicily, Renato Schiffani. “This product not only undermines the dignity of Sicilians, but undermines the daily commitment of millions of citizens fighting for legality and justice in our region,” he wrote.
The game’s designer, Maximilian Maria Thiel, said: “First of all, I’m very sorry if anyone felt hurt or offended by this game. That was not our intention. This game is just mobs killing each other. So I don’t see the problem – aside from the theme, which might seem like a trigger for some, the game is deliberately kept very abstract. [blocks instead of figures] So that these killings don’t come to mind in the game.”
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Thiel, who said he was living in Italy at the time of Falcone and Borsellino’s murders, added: “Many people associate the Mafia war with the deaths of Giovanni Falcone, Paolo Borsellino, which marked the end of the Mafia feud. 10 years later, or others, the mafia is still active and killing people, but all of these people’s murders had nothing to do with the internal mafia war shown in the game.
