Free, Open to the Public
1 Week: Monday Sept. 13 – Friday Sept. 17
8am – 10pm Daily / closes Friday at 4:00pm
Gala: Thursday evening
www.thestartshow.com
facebook page

The goal is to promote “art games” created in Toronto and beyond. The plan is to let visitors play a variety of unique games, and let them decide for themselves which are art. This is the first START, and hopefully it becomes a yearly event with a strong “games as art” focus. START will be held at the Ontario College of Art & Design.

Everything takes place in one very large room, traditionally used to display paintings. 5 PC’s will project games as large as possible – one projector is HUGE. It will be impressive. Visitors can drop by anytime (open daily until 10:00pm) including Thursday (the Gala). Playing games at OCAD on Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday evening will be a memorable experience – especially on that giant projector. During the day, we’re expecting hundreds of students and hope to have people building games in the space. Due to time and budget constraints, we will mostly be showing PC indie games.

We’re currently finalizing the games list. If you have game suggestions (including your own), e-mail jimmcginley-AT-rogers-DOT-com. The more obscure and less traditional the better.

– – –
Upcoming Dates

Sept. 9 Thu 7:30 – 9:00
IGDA Presentation: Longbow Digital Arts team talks about Hegemony
IGDA Social at Elephant & Castle afterwards.

Sept. 13 Mon 8:00am
START… starts!

Sept. 16 Thu 6:00 – 10:00
START Gala Night – details currently being ironed out.
Probably a presentation or panel – perhaps a cheese plate.

Sept. 17 Fri 4:00pm
START… finishes!

Sept. 18 Sat 7:00 – 11:00
The Indie Showcase – separate from START but just as awesome
The showcase will be more of a party and indie focused.

Sept. 9 – 19 – Toronto International Film Festival
Can’t recommend the Midnight Madness audience and movies enough.

Oct. 2 – Nuite Blanche
The Arcadian Renaissance – 6 Indie Arcade cabinets will be free-to-play at the Bell Lightbox.

Now what’s it going to take to get McGrath to sign-up?

it's perfectly readable, you just need glasses

Friday May 22nd
7:30pm – Midnight
Open to the Public
FREE!

29 games were created and they want… nay… NEED to be shown!
Not only will you be playing, you’ll be voting.
oooo… now that’s what I call interactive.

6 games will be projected at a time, changing every half hour.
Drinks are available at the bar, to help your hand eye skills.
Official Kickoff at 7:45pm. BE PROMPT!

Note
Due to size limitations we cannot hold the TOJam Arcade at the excellent Unit bar. We will be found instead at The Blue Moon Pub, located near downtown Toronto on Queen Street near Broadview. Hope to be back at cozy & sleek Unit for the next social.

Full details including map here.

Which brings us to the TOJam Arcade celebration
Friday May 22nd, 7 – Midnight. Blue Moon bar on Queen near Broadview.
We’ll project 6 games at a time onto the walls, and rotate through all 29.
We did this last year and a fine time was had by all.
Note: May 22nd is NOT the long weeknd.

We totally need your help.
We need 6 machines/laptops, and we must get 29 games working on those 6 machines. For Flash games this is easy. For XNA games, it’s very hard. We’re looking for 6 good people who:

• Own a decent machine / laptop with a decent graphics card. i.e. Less than 2 – 3 years old. Preferably Windows XP or Vista – MAC Bootcamp running Windows might work. Benchmark: If your machine can play http://blurst.com games (you need to download an ActiveX control to test), that’s all we need.
• Are willing to install and test/play games on that machine / laptop – including supporting libraries like .Net 3.5 and XNA. This won’t damange/comprimise your machine, but if this a machine you use for game DEVELOPMENT, you probably don’t want to introduce newer DLLs.
• Will bring that machine / laptop to the TOJam Arcade. We’ll be hooking it up to a projector, and can attach an external mouse/keyboard so the laptops are not exposed to filthy humans.
• (Bonus) Will come to my house near Church/Dundas for ~6 hour install/test game bonanza. The Arcade before the Arcade. It would make it way easier to troubleshoot and fix things (rather than using e-mail/the phone). Date for this powwow to be determined.

This would count towards the 10 hours of “Hand Eye Society” volunteer time.
Please e-mail asap if you’re able to help: jimmcginley@rogers.com
Subject: What luck! I have 6 machines and 6 projectors. They’re YOURS!

p.s. The cat is an attempt to balance that disturbing Eye within Eye image.

The Hand Eye Society is pleased to announce “5 in 25” (our second social), for videogame makers and enthusiasts Thursday, April 23, 7 – 10pm. It’s once again at the bar Unit (1198 Queen Street W.) in Parkdale and it’s free. Meet some great people, have a few drinks, and catch what local indie game makers are up to.

“5 in 25”

At 8:00pm, there will be 5 quick presentations from 5 Toronto indie game developers. Featuring cute monsters, funky claymation, stylized mayhem, interactive fiction, and the world’s ultimate multiplayer game. The audience will be required to interact, and the only goal is excitement. Hosted by Jim McGinley, who dreams of playing Barney Fife on the big screen. At 8:30pm the shenanigans will end, and the socializing will continue.

We can't use these

Mighty Jim Munroe needed a projection screen for the HandY inaugral meeting. Having solved a similar problem at the TOJam Arcade (queen bedsheets proved to be a great substitute), and being a veteran of bedsheet shopping at Winners, I volunteered to procure one.

At 4:30pm I left my downtown workplace and walked to Winners near Yonge & Adelaide. Unlike their Yonge & College counterpart, they don’t carry bedsheets. Unshaken, I sauntered over to HomeSense, where they had bedsheets galore – provided you wanted a complete set. Starting at $70, you got 2 king sheets (1 fitted and 1 unfitted), and 2 king pillow cases. My budget was $10, but that thread count! “no…” i whispered, as I stroked the plastic bag containing the fabric.

Sears had the same issue and I wasn’t about to backtrack to the Bay. I was going all the way… to the Yonge & College Winners and the fulfillment of my childhood dreams. PACKAGED?! The thread count had soared to 600, but I still only needed 1 king sheet. What about my bed at home? Was my skin not singed nightly by a sandpapery 450? I was fine with child labour, so why not indulge a little? My brain said yes, but my clenched buttocks won the day.

Tablecloths! If there was salvation, it lay with picnic table coverings. I bounded to the miscellaneous isle and found several ultra colourful tablecloths awaiting their Easter mission. Does no-one make plain white (jesus christ!)? It was 6:20pm. I was supposed to be at the Unit by 6:45pm, and I needed to meet Nelson at home to share a cab. I had forgotten to bring Lips Munroe’s cel phone #, which was going to sound extra lame when I arrived late.

The Dollar Store! If anyone was going to carry a plain white tablecloth, it was them. I live near Church and Dundas, which conveniently has “Everything for a Dollar” beside the 2-4-1 pizza. Perhaps they will get together. This particular store is my New Year’s Eve noise maker salvation. While they were out of plain white, they did have a white “tablecover” with Godzilla “King of all Monsters” emblazoned on the front – I figured we could use the back. Cost: 1 dollar. Those guys aren’t joking around.

Fearing Popeye Munroe’s wrath, I crossed the street to the Hasty Market for a fallback. I found a single, WHITE tablecloth in stock. It was 10 dollars, and most of that went toward the horrendous oldschool “blue flower and gold” trim. Part of me knew it would have been a dollar at Everything – I ignored that part. I grabbed some duct tape, scissors and Nelson, and we split a cab to the Unit. It was 7:00pm.

At 7:20pm I ran screaming into the bar – trampling Jonathan Mak in the process (he may have been attempting to say Hi). I punched Raigan in the face, and announced that I had the screens with me. MacGyver Munroe had already jury rigged a quaint medium size screen (complete with stand). While my “screens” were bigger, they needed to be hung which presented several logistic challenges. We stuck with the midget screen, and no-one was the wiser.

Except my broken heart.