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!
The 2011 edition of Toronto’s Nuit Blanche will see Cinema 1 of TIFF Bell Lightbox filled to the brim with bits, bytes, and beats as a mix of live music and giant-screen video games come together on stage. MARK YOUR CALENDARS! OCTOBER 1!
This night is being curated by members of the TIFF’s Gaming and New Media Think Tank, in partnership with Site 3 coLaboratory, who are building the orchestra’s chiptune instruments and other special electronic surprises from scratch, by hand.
We’ve got a huge group of talented artists performing at the event, and you’ll be able to drop by any time to see them do their thing, and of course, get involved by trying out some noisemaking gizmos and playing some classic games up on the big screen. Be on the lookout for a massive back-to-back debut set from Spell ‘n Math, which will be something you can tell your grandkids you witnessed, since by that time he will be super famous. Fans of Spooky Squid Games will be happy to know they can get a live and almost needlessly loud preview of songs from They Bleed Pixels at this event as well.
I could go on to name the rest of these artists, but I know you’d rather check the schedule or just watch this video to GET PUMPED about the night.
Monday October 3rd, 7pm
Ballroom of the Gladstone Hotel (1214 Queen Street W.)
Free
The first 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 this Hand Eye Society Social for the community to play!
Most of the creators will be in attendance and Mare Sheppard, co-coordinator of the DEI, will be hosting the evening. In addition to the usual drinking and chatting, this Social also features a special guest from Chicago, Erin Robinson, who will be doing a presentation touching on her experiences as a game developer (including Puzzle Bots and the freeware Nanobots) as well as her role helping highschool girls make games.
The first and second rounds of the Difference Engine Initiative are part of the OMDC-funded TIFF Nexus.
Event | Jim Munroe | 
October 22, 2011 3:11 pm | 
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