It is time for another meeting of our Hand Eye Society, the meeting known as The Social. The location will be as usual and as follows:

Date: Thursday, May 19th, 2011
Location: The Unit Bar (map)
Time: 7:30pm

It will cover ARGs (alternate reality games) or, as they are more appropriately named, Pervasive Games, and will entail a short presentation, discussion, and demonstration of state of the art field technology. Presenters will be David Fono of Atmosphere Industries, Tony Walsh of Phantom Compass, and myself. Beer will be available as always.

Additionally, a new assignment is available for our Ministry of the Night division – it is an open call across our entire organization. For consideration and further details, click here.

Mark Rabo
Event Operations Squad
Hand Eye Society

While not much compares to console-for-Christmas euphoria, we’re still really pumped about showcasing local Toronto games at Gamercamp. If you’re a local dev and are interested in showing your project, we’ve got two ways you can do that.

1) Theatre Demos: demo your game on a theatre screen to the entire Gamercamp audience prior to one of the keynotes. Talk about how you came up with it, the development process, where you see it going, and whatever else.

Requirements:

• Game must currently be in development
• Game must be locally made

*Only 5 slots total, date is Saturday, November 13th, 2010*

2) Indie Arcade: show your game at the Indie Arcade along with other Toronto-made games including the Torontron and TOjam creations. It’s an arcade so it’s hands-on and a great way to playtest ongoing or show completed projects.

Requirements:

• Game must be work on a clean install of Mac or Windows
• Game must be playable

*~15 slots total, date is Sunday, November 14th, 2010*

If you’re interested in submitting a game, send along these bits:
- Your name
- What you want to be considered for (Theatre Demo, Indie Arcade, or both)
- A description of the game, dev blog links, etc.
- A playable link or screenshots

… to mark@gamercamp.ca and jaime@gamercamp.ca and one of us will get back to you.

And if you have questions, post them up in the comments.

The Arcadian Renaissance exhibit at Nuit Blanche was an amazing success. Hundreds of people came and played, many more watched as games were projected on the wall. The energy was phenomenal. If you missed it, get into your time machine and set the date to October 2nd, 2010 @ 7pm, or if your time machine is in the shop, check out this video.

The Arcadian Renaissance was made possible by our sponsors, the gamemakers, and the volunteer membership of the Hand Eye Society.

Cabinet Retrofitting: Jph Wacheski
Curator and Producer: Jim Munroe
TIFF Bell Lightbox Liason: Nick Pagee
Volunteer Coordination: Jori Baldwin
Media Outreach: Mike Drach
Deployment Officer: Callum Hay
Cabinet Graphic Design: Nadine Lessio
Flyer Graphic Design: Ben Rivers
Proposal Writer: Peter Marshall

Thanks to the folks who donated hardware and space to the project:

Tony Wong and Xtreme Labs
Rick Weiss
Jonathan M. Guberman
Alex Snukal and Interaccess
Marc Reeve-Newson
Adam Blake
Susan Bustos
Tyler Moore
Carol Mark

Thanks to

Joanna Rankin
Shawn McGrath
Miguel Sternberg
Emma Scratch
Paul Laroquod
Mark Rabo
Jaimie Woo
Sara Malabar and Scotiabank Nuit Blanche
Jim McGinley
Em McGinley
Shane Smith
James King
Andrei Gravelle
Dallas and Bill and the Pinball Exchange

Thanks to Jonah Hundert for ringside announcing and the volunteers at
the event itself:

Leif Conti-Groome
Tyler Moore
Jamie Tucker
Mike Drach
Emma Scratch
Will Perkins
Rene Shible
Chris Yurkovich
Ian-Patrick McAllister
Emily Afran
Rene Shible
Michelangelo Pereira Huezo
Carlos Yusim
Callan Burgess
Jason Spitkoski
Adam Blake
Stephen Kriedemann

Brandonnns, Messhofs, beer, popsicles, games, and goodtimes. Photos of last Thursday’s Hand Eye Social are up here.

Had it not been for all the great conversations, I’d have snapped more. But here are the few pics I did get.
Nathan, Craig… I hope it was ok to post your private moment, if you want it taken down just let me know.

Flickr link to all

I like reading (photos w/ descriptions)
Entertain me, i’m tired (slideshow)

Since a bunch of us are going to PAX East in Boston this year, why not all go together and make it an epic roadtrip? Fast food, car farts and interminable boredom await… not to mention car-to-car WiFi gaming battles!

The plan is to stop in Rochester and check out NCHEG, the National Center for the History of Electronic Games (ncheg.org), nerd out, grab dinner and possibly drink too much. The next morning we’ll finish the drive and be at PAX for the weekend before returning Sunday.

If that sounds interesting, fill out the survey below. It’s just to see if people are down, no commitment at this point… if there’s enough people we’ll plan it out. And if you have ideas or questions, post up a comment.

Survey: http://www.surveygizmo.com/s/237061/pax-east-roadtrip-2010

There’s a gaming event coming up called Gamercamp that I’m helping organize and I think you might really dig it. Alot of the community is already involved and it would be great to have you there too.

It’s a one day event that happens right here in Toronto on November 21, 2009 and celebrates the creativity, art, and history of video games with top-notch speakers, demos, and an arcade filled with rare and retro games, not to mention Toronto’s own indie game cabinet, the Torontron.

We’re excited to announce the keynotes will be Hand Eye’s own Mare Sheppard and Raigan Burns talking about approaching video game development with the rock band model (instead of the movie production one). Not to mention Michael Todd (also a Hand Eye member) who’ll be talking about Broken Brothers Deluxe and the lessons learned from his game-a-week experiment. As well, Gamercamp will be the first place to hear from Gerald Darcy of the Replay Arcade Museum, Canada’s very first gaming museum located here in Toronto and set to open soon.

Between sessions we’ll be showcasing work from the Toronto indie dev community: game demos, works-in-progress and pixel art (there are still a couple spots open). We’ve also teamed up with Replay for a one-of-a-kind closing party, 1UP, which features 25 rare and classic arcade cabinets for an on-site arcade with unlimited freeplay into the night. There will even be dinner provided to power up for all that gaming madness.

The whole thing goes from 1:00pm to 9:30pm at the Lower Ossington Theatre (100A Ossington Ave). Tickets are only $15 and include admission, dinner, and the unlimited freeplay at the 1UP closing party. They’re available right now at Gamercamp.ca.

If you would like to show one of your games or have any questions at all, feel free to send me an email (mark@gamercamp.ca) or check out the site (www.gamercamp.ca).

Hope to see you there!