Just in time for June, the omens of summer are making themselves apparent. Rainbows mark prideful storefronts. The words “I have air conditioning” reveal who our best friends are. Locals get religious at their places of worship, chief among them “Sweet Jesus”. Those of us rearing children — a small biped species that subsists on juice boxes — will be faced with their two month parole from Elementary Penitentiary.

Whether you’ll bring kids with you or attend alone, here are this month’s videogame events and socials. Heads-up, June is #VREverything. And as always, be sure to share your sunscreen with your next door neighbour Google Calendar. His skin burns like bacon on hot afternoons, but in return for an SPF slather he swears he’ll update you on events when they are announced.

WHERE TO JAUNT – TORONTO GAME EVENTS

Saturday, June 4

For one day, VIDEO ARMAGEDDON is hitting Carlton Cinema with a videogame-themed fundraiser to send kids to summer camp. A pop-up arcade held by Iceman Games will be serving up the interactive fun, along with a vendor village and quadruple feature of game-themed movies (for which your mileage will vary, you know how game movies are). Test your patience and ability to groan endlessly with back-to-back viewings of The Wizard, Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, and Scott Pilgrim VS the World. All for a good cause, folks! And don’t forget, as a Hand Eye Society member, you get 10% off used games at Iceman Games.

Saturday, June 4 and Saturday, June 11

You gotta get ’em while they’re young, especially when it comes to building robots to herald catastrophic events. Little Robot Friends and STEAMlabs will be holding free robot-building workshops for kids ages eight and up. Using artsy crafts and new Little Robot Friends kits, kids with no coding experience can make their own robots. Limited space.

Tuesday, June 7

The 2-Bit Game Club is holding their monthly themed chitchat again, this time to discuss Deus Ex (2000), the OG in the Deus Ex series. Anyone who’s played the game (which event host Liam has kindly shared), watched 2-Bit’s stream of the game, or who’s just plain curious can come. You can RVSP for this PWYC event on Facebook and or find out more about the venue, Electric Perfume, on their site.

Wednesday, June 8

We were graciously given MON£¥ by the Ontario Media Development Corporation (OMDC) to make a database of Toronto videogames! This is where you come in. So far we’ve got a working prototype, but not enough community feedback. If you are a developer, student, game maker, journalist, academic, curator, or anyone interested in this project, we’ll be holding an open information session about the Toronto Videogame Database on June 8, 6:30 pm at the Ryerson Launch Zone. Check out the Facebook event page for details!

Saturdays: June 11, Sunday, June 12, and Friday, June 17

Dearest reader,

As part of porting Jazzpunk for the PS4, Necrophone Games would like to formally invite you to their wedding. This unholy union will bring together “Wedding Qake,” an easter egg in their gagtastic adventure Jazzpunk, with multiplayer mode, for the game’s port to PS4. No bridesmaids needed, only beta testers who are itching to ice their opponents with icing.

Wedding Qake multiplayer will be at Electric Perfume for three sessions, and anyone who registers to play will be eligible to win some rare Jazzpunk merch. (If you’ve been a Hand Eye member since July, you can refresh your memory with your free Spotlight copy!)

 

Wednesday June 15

NXNE’s known for its tunes, but this year the festival will be featuring Futureland, a one-day interactive arts conference. Some pretty stellar people will be speaking, including keynote Nolan Bushnell, who started Atari NO BIG DEAL. The teams behind local indie games LOUD on Planet X and Severed will be co-hosting a panel. Dames Making Games members Kait Tremblay, Maggie McLean, DMG founder Jennie Faber and Bento Miso (now dubbed Gamma Space) co-founder Henry Faber will also be speaking.

Just for reading this digest, you’re eligible to winning a free pass to Futureland! We’re giving away tickets to the first 10 HES members who e-mail al@handeyesociety.com with the subject line “NXNE HES Freebie“. Not a member? You can either become one here, or go here to buy tickets the regular way. If the latter, Henry Faber’s got a discount code for ya!

Thursday, June 16 to Saturday, June 18

NXNE’s game programming goes beyond Futureland, including a live e-sports tourney at Yonge-Dundas square and tons of indie games to play. LOUD at Planet X will be popping up too, which makes one hopes its real-life inspirations grace the stage.

Sunday, June 19

InterAccess has a slew of useful games programming coming up, including a beginner Unity workshop for artists. Friendly neighbourhood cyborg Lindy Wilkins, who taught InterAccess’ alternative controller workshop last month, will be showing artsy participants how the program can be used creatively.

 

Friday, June 24 to Sunday, June 26

Virtual reality continues taking over the city, thanks in part to POP by TIFF (its logo is giving us serious Gamecube vibes). This three-day celebration of all things virtual reality IRL will include Light Spirit, a piece made by VR company New Tropics and artist collective FriendsWithYou. Specific game info is scant, but we’ve been told you get to chill with a funky ghost.

Saturday, June 25 and Sunday, June 26

If you wish the adrenaline rush of jamming happened more often, monthly game jams are now a reality in Toronto. Thanks to Randy Orenstein and George Brown College, GBCJam will provide low-intensity jamming opportunities for first-time, novice, and veteran makers. About 10 jams are planned this year, with the first running at George Brown’s Casa Loma Campus. Jammers can expect to go from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. on Saturday. Games finished/haphazardly slapped together will be shown in an arcade social on Sunday.

Sunday, June 26 to Monday, June 27

Thought I was kidding about virtual reality? VR is getting its very own two-day conference, VRTO. Run by the meetup group of the same name (not to be confused with TorontoVR), the con will feature training sessions, speakers, with the likes of Lawnmower Man director Brett Leonard, Secret Location’s user experience designer Ruth Birman, and Toronto’s Alientrap Games founder Lee Vermeulen.

 

WHERE TO HAUNT – TORONTO GAME SOCIALS

Mondays: June 6, 13, 20, 26

Ryerson’s Gamemakers’ Union will be holding weekly meetups on Mondays this summer, to keep budding student developers productive over break. If you aren’t a Ryerson student, you’re still welcome to drop by. At 245 Church St. in Room 202, starts at 6 p.m.

Tuesday, June 7

The TorontoVR meetup group is running their monthly social, with a presentation on getting live action post-production done in VR with Dirk van Ginkel. At Globacore headquarters, starts at 7 p.m.

Wednesday, June 8

The monthly Unity meetup group is back at Uken Games, this time with global director and actual American evangelist Carl Callewaert from Unity. Give ‘em a good Canadian welcome! At Uken Games, starts at 6:30 p.m.

Monday, June 13

Play Games With Friends is pretty much what it sounds like. This free event will have games ready, but makers are also welcome to play-test their games (so long as they also play some too!). At Gamma Space (862 Richmond St W), starts at 6:30 p.m.

Saturday, June 11 (UPDATE: THIS HAS BEEN MOVED TO WEDNESDAY, JUNE 22)

Dames Making Games is continuing their virtual reality meetup with VR Dames V0.1.1. Open to anyone making anything with VR, the Dames will have the HTC Vive on-hand. At Gamma Space, starts at 6:30 p.m.

UPDATE: DMG has rescheduled their meetup to Wednesday, June 22 and will now include a practical workshop by Adam Robezzoli of New Tropics!

Tuesday, June 28

The Hand Eye Society’s monthly game design meetup is back for a fifth round! Keep an eye on our Facebook page for updates as to speakers and topics. Last time, we presented games made as part of TOJam and jammers talked about their process for creating a game in 3 days. Much discussion of Escape Rooms and ARGs was had. At any rate, it will definitely be at Lab T.O. Co-working (231 Wallace Ave) at around 7 PM as usual, and of course there will be snacks!

#ICYMI

#ComicsvsGames: Another year down! A round of heart emojis go to all the fantastic panelists, tablers, and attendees. Thanks again to the OMDC for sponsoring us and of course to TCAF for hosting, and you can expect a blog post recap soon with games, photos, and testimonials!

#GammaSpace – Perhaps you’ve already noticed, but the co-working space formerly known as Bento Miso is now going by Gamma Space! The name switch won’t affect programming, and events like Play With Friends/Make With Friends (which are unannounced but tend to be towards the end of the month) can be kept up with on Gamma’s Twitter.

#Unityunite – Designer extraordinaire Douglas Gregory held a Hand Eye Society Unity workshop for beginners at Lab T.O., and it was packed! Big thanks to all who came, and we hope everyone’s Furious Fauna games turned out nicely.

#GameFurious – We ran our first anti-oppression arcade and workshop Game Furious in May. The event was a lot of fun, and we were able to provide ASL interpretation for deaf participants (if you are a paid member, you are part of what makes these services possible)! If you’re interested in seeing more events like Game Furious and Doug’s Unity workshop, let us know.

 

PAPER TRAILS – GAMING IN THE MEDIA

Toronto Gaymers has started doing Let’s Plays and I want more of these in my life like now. In their latest video, they give an in-depth review of Kitty Powers’ Matchmaker, where the reviewer explores mechanics and pros of becoming a master dater.

Dork Shelf did an interview with Toronto studio Axon Interactive, who made the recently-Kickstarted animal-herding puzzler Quench (also featured in Game Dialogues #3 where they demoed their creative process in Unity and Hexels). In it, the crew describes why Miyazaki and Avatar: The Last Airbender inspired them and how people’s personality types power their game.

Gabby DaRienzo’s Play Dead podcast, which explores death in games, came out with two episodes this month. Episode 7 was a chat with Ikonclast developer Alex Zandra Van Chestein (their initials sound like the best ACDC cover band) on death anxiety. Meanwhile, episode 8 was about how games help children dealing with death, in conversation with Sago Sago artist Aaron Leighton and Toronto-based social worker Linda Hochstetler. Heavy stuff, but in a meaningful way.

Developer Jordan Sparks made An/Other, a game for social change which exhibited at this year’s Comics vs Games and made an appearance at Game Furious. Full disclosure: I wrote about the game for the Torontoist, followed by coverage from the Toronto Star, Metro, and City News.

Look ma, she made it! Many of us had a “Ohhh snap look” moment when we caught a glimpse of Hand Eye executive director Sagan Yee on the CBC. She was interviewed at Comics vs Games at TCAF on… video game movies? Cool.

Douglas Gregory’s Last One Standing, a game of domino domination, got a quick neat review in Future Beta Gamer.

Update: This one slipped my radar my first time cobbling together the digest; the Atlantic wrote about telling Indigenous histories through videogames. They featured The Raven and The Light, a game about Canada’s residential school system.

COMING AND GOING ATTRACTIONS

If you happen to be out on the mean streets of New York, be kind to yourself at The Mystical Digital, which exhibits works by empathymancer and Toronto game maker Kara Stone. From now until June 17, you can play Stone’s games at Baby Castles. Her work includes a bad feminist confessional and a bot-controlled tarot reading. Come through technoccult!

Game industry conference Game ON: Ventures is in October, but prep time never hurt nobody. In fact, besides “having a lot of money,” it’s probably Batman’s superpower. You too could have a lot of money if you join Game ON’s pitch competition, which comes with a grand prize of $10,000. The deadline to apply is August 10, so if you’ve got a brilliant idea for a game on your mind, get honing.

For everyone else, there’s an interactive expo at the conference, with everything from games to eLearning. As an exclusive offer for digest readers, you can get 20 per cent off with the promocode gov2016hes20.

 

MVP

This month’s MVP is Kim Gibson, an OMDC program consultant and real friend to indie game arts in Toronto. She’s had her hand in making the OMDC instrumental in supporting artists and game makers, going far and beyond her job to help indie games thrive. Do you, Kim! 

 

A BREADWINNER IS YOU – JOBS, GIGS, AND OPPORTUNITIES

Techsdale is a Rexdale-based tech charity that teaches kids how to code and develop, focusing on underserved and diverse communities. If they sound right up your alley, they’re looking for a coordinator to help them run a weekly summer camp for kids at the Toronto Public Library’s Albion branch, starting in July. This is a PAID POSITION, woop-woop!

Core responsibilities would include:

-Teaching Techsdale’s beginner game design program, once a week, for two hours at the Albion branch of the TPL (2 hrs./week for 9 weeks)

-Preparing curriculum prior to the program, and ongoing revision based on how classes are progressing. (Number of hours negotiable based on candidate input.) We have access to some sample curricula, though it will be up to the successful candidate’s discretion whether to use these, adapt them, or start from scratch.

-Helping to vet and working with approx. 3–5 volunteer mentors, who will provide floating support in the classroom setting.

Requirements:

-Knowledge of 3D game development software, such as Unity (preferred) or Unreal, and any related software and/or resources that is typically used during the game dev process. (Blender; music libraries, e.g.)

-Good with youth—good communicator, warm/supportive, clear instructions, keeps the material interesting.

-Able to get to the program location on their own.

Apply if this all sounds good by you!

Our comrades in Lab TO, a west-end co-working space across from Ubisoft, is throwing open its doors weekly for Open Studio. Every Wednesday from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m., the public is welcome to work on their creative, tech, and writing projects in the space. Presentations and networking will be available. On non-Wednesdays, Hand Eye members can use their trusty card to access Lab TO at a steeply reduced rate for their first three months!

Not super Toronto-centric, but I just discovered indiecouch, a site that hooks people up with places to crash near conferences, and it makes the temptation for cross-country game con trekking that much stronger.

U.S.-based Girls Make Games has a $1,500 scholarship to any of their  game camps up for grabs. The organization runs summer camps for girls aged 11 to 14 years old, which teach coding and tech skills that will be used to game development. To enter the contest, you can send your idea for a game you will make at camp to scholarship@girlsmakegames.com by June 19.