Wednesday November 23rd (doors at 7pm, start-time 7:30)
CSI Annex (720 Bathurst St., south of Bloor)
Free
The second round of the Difference Engine Initiative, a six week gamemaking incubator for women, is nearly over and we will be presenting the games that they made at the Centre for Social Innovation. The gamemakers will be presenting lightning talks about their games and their experiences making them. Una Lee, who co-facilitated the incubator with Sagan Yee, will be introducing them.
Check out some photos to see what the first round game presentation was like, and the first round games themselves here. It’ll be a great way to gear up for Gamercamp on the weekend!
The first and second rounds of the Difference Engine Initiative are part of the OMDC-funded TIFF Nexus.
The Toronto Animation Arts Festival International (TAAFI) is hosting an animation industry night this Thursday in support of the launch of their fest next summer. Tickets and more info available here.
Our newest indie arcade cabinet, the Torontron Twinstick, will be released at the event. Curated by Jim McGinley, this cab features dual joystick games made in our fair city: that’s twice the stick of the original Torontron, folks. Warning: early field tests at the Toronto Underground Cinema and Mississauga’s Celebration Square indicate that exposure to the Twinstick can cause intense excitement and spontaneous geekgasms. Luckily, usage will be monitored by cross-media HES member Matt Hammill.
The TAAFI folks have told us that their fest is about the animation arts, not just the linear cartoon form, and that they want to showcase videogame work as well. It’s happening June 22-23 2012 at the TIFF Bell Lighbox and they’re starting to take submissions in January. More details here.
This Friday has a ton of awesome stuff happening.
The TIFF Nexus Locative Media Innovation Day at Digifest features the unveiling of the Peripherals initiative, the results of what happens when you mate hardware hackers w/gamemakers. That’s a ticketed event, but the TOJam Arcade at 7pm is a free event for the public to play the games made during the last 3-day jam. (The arcade will be running on Saturday as well.)
Site 3 is throwing a Mad Engineer’s Ball Hallowe’en Party from 9pm-2am, $5, prizes for costumes. Knowing these creative makers the competition will be pretty fierce!
HES member Randy Orenstein writes:
Toronto Skillswap is the product of large quantities of beer and gumption, both found at a Hand Eye Social earlier this summer. Michael Todd, Fernando Restituto, and I got to chatting about the huge pool of skills in the Toronto game community, and how cool it would be if we could all get together occasionally and teach each other things. I went home and created the group on Facebook, Fernando and Michael have provided a ton of support, and now here we are. A few months later, the group had over 100 local developers and artists and has weekly events booked into December.
Monday’s event featuring the games by the women of the first Difference Engine Initiative incubator went really well. People got to play from a eclectic variety of perspectives: a Victorian eloper, a white girl rapper, a Yeti, a noir girl geek, an anatomy skeleton, a salsa gardener, an Icarus with dad issues, and a unicorn pooping colour trails. But if you missed it, don’t worry: you can play the games when they’re released online October 31st, and you can check out some of the pics below.
DEI co-coordinator Mare MC'ed the evening...
...where the participants presented their games...
...and people enjoyed them.
Special guest Erin Robinson did a talk that ended with a demo of her new secrit game project...
...and bountiful applause.
Delightful Socializing ensued.
Want more? Check out Arun’s full photoset of the event!
Curious to see what what went down in the actual incubator sessions? Check out participant recaps of sessions one, two and three!
Event, Project | Jim Munroe | 
November 14, 2011 9:23 am | 
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