December 21st & 22nd
Interactive Time Slots: 11am-1pm, 2pm-5pm

Evergreen Brick Works, Koerner Gardens
550 Bayview Avenue
Drop-in, children and families/all-ages

It’s winter… and December, which means it’s the end of the year, and the final entry in Hand Eye Society’s  4-season Game Curious programming at Evergreen Brick Works! Artists Kara Stone, Rekha Ramachandran, and Julia Gingrich will be presenting an interactive installation during Evergreen Brick Works’ annual Winter Village entitled Blocked Future Future Blocks. Join us in reflecting on the changing seasons, as well as the changing climate as we pass into another year on planet Earth.

Blocked Future Future Blocks consists of quilt panels made from used plastic, water/ice, and hand-written notes addressed to our future selves. It asks us to question our relationship to waste, remainders, and quickening environmental change imposed by humans.

We are living in the anthropocene–an era where humans have made an everlasting impact on the earth’s environment and weather patterns. This new era is tethered to our high levels of consumption and waste, and will carry us into the future. Plastic is an everyday object that is an excess manifestation of the wild levels of consumption being encouraged across our planet. Plastic is a remainder, its life span stretches far beyond its use span. It sits at the landfill; it floats through the ocean. It’s a trace of having been there.

This interactive work consists of a quilt panels made from used plastic (cellophane, bubblewrap, packaging, etc.), and filled with water/ice. It asks each of us to question our relationship to waste, remainders, and quickening environmental change imposed by humans. Participants are invited to write a note to their future self on scraps of paper that are then tucked inside a quilt block and surrounded by water. As the weather changes the water surrounding the note will freeze and melt with the ice obscuring and revealing the text. What kind of future do you envision for yourself?

ARTISTS: Kara Stone, Rekha Ramachandran, Julia Gingrich

*Takes in a breath of fresh air* Is spring really here??…The mud’s replacing the ice, it’s raining a lot, like A LOT, and the garbage is unearthing itself from the various snow banks. This wonderfully confusing time of year is just in time for our Spring Jam as part of the Game Curious at Evergreen Brick Works programming. We are super excited to announce our line up of game jam participants who will spend 3 days to create a game inspired by the various systems living at the Evergreen Brick Works.

Interested to see what they end up making? Us too! You can come and play test their games on Sunday, April 7 from 1-3pm in the Young Welcome Centre at Evergreen Brick Works. In part 2 of the Spring Jam program, 6 local illustrators will be paired up with each of the game jam participants and create a ‘zine booklet that we will be distributing on Sunday, June 16 also at the Evergreen Brick Works (stay tuned for more details!).

Say hello to our Spring Jam participants below!

Jord Farrell
Twitter

In the past 5 years, Jord Farrell has made hundreds of games.

Ananda Gabo
Twitter / Instagram

Ananda is a designer/ veg cook/ microbe collaborator/ maker. They are accumulating a lot of weird skill sets in anticipation of running a weird farm.

Ben Moull
Twitter

Ben Moull is a sometimes writer, wanderer, economist, and hobbyist game designer. They live, work and play in Toronto.

Jacob Niedzwiecki
Twitter / Instagram

Jacob Niedzwiecki is a software developer, filmmaker, and choreographer whose work fuses code, media, and movement into inventive new forms. His immersive app-based performance Jacqueries won the Vanguard Prize for Risk and Innovation at the 2014 SummerWorks festival, and toured internationally. He has created app-based experiences in collaboration with TIFF, bluemouth inc, Peggy Baker Dance Projects, It’s Not a Box Theatre, and others.

Sebastian Pines
Twitter

Sebastian Pines is an artist, academic, and neutral good gnome druid with a keen interest in roleplaying games and queerness. The themes of their body of work revolve around queer identity and queer modes of play. They also have a penchant for the macabre and love all manner of spooky media.

Phoenix Simms
Twitter / Medium

Phoenix is the former managing editor of Third Person, Toronto’s premier site for diverse and story-driven games coverage. She’s also a biracial game writer and illustrator who’s fascinated by the intersection of art and science, urban and green spaces, as well as exterior versus interior realities. She migrated from a visual arts diploma to a masters in English literature, with a self-directed focus on game studies.

In Partnership with

Have you ever heard of people talking about games and wanted to know more? Already in the industry, but want to learn about different perspectives and experience games from another angle? Interested in how game design can go beyond digital screen-based work to intersect with nature, urban renewal, and food? We got you.

Game Curious at Evergreen Brick Works is a free, public event series that uses game design and playful media as a lens to explore interconnected systems of urban sustainability, food security, arts/culture, history, and technology. Based on our popular Game Curious initiative, programming will take place on-site at Evergreen Brick Works in the Don Valley over the course of one year, activating different areas and audiences throughout the changing of the seasons.

For updates and more information on the individual programs planned throughout the year, check out our Game Curious at Evergreen Brick Works page, subscribe to our newsletter, hit us up on Twitter, or contact us at info@handeyesociety.com with questions. Don’t be shy, come play for yourself!

Spring

A game jam—no, you can’t eat it, as much as some games do look delicious—typically means getting a group of people to work collectively or solo to make an interactive project within a limited period of time. But this is no ordinary game jam. Six selected participants will tour Evergreen Brick Works to learn about its history and various initiatives. They will then spend a weekend in April designing playful, bite-sized interactive works based on their observations. The final game concepts will be documented in the form of a digital and printed zine, designed by Chris White and illustrated by local artists.

Say hello to our jammers!

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Dates: April 5 to 7 (Jammers Only) / June 16 (Public Zine Launch)

Location: TBD

Audience: 6 jammers and 6 illustrators selected via submission process. The zine launch is open to the public.

Summer

An all-ages event where participants interact with technology that reacts to touch, heat, water and more! A more hands-on approach to learning how tech can be used to facilitate curiosity, exploration, and wonder. A collaboration with Little Dada.

Dates: [Update: POSTPONED DUE TO WEATHER]

Location: Children’s Garden

Audience: Drop-in, children and families/all-ages.

Fall

Have you ever seen a game so delicious that you wanted to eat it? Well, now’s your chance. Inspired by projects like Jenn Sandercock’s Edible Games Cookbook, this workshop gives participants the opportunity to utilize different kinds of food and use it to create a game that you can eat.  This is a fun event where you can learn elements of game design as well think about how we interact with food beyond mere consumption. Bring an empty stomach just in case!

Dates: Oct 9 and 23, after work hours

Location: FIDO Kitchen

Audience: Pre-registration required, ages 13+.

Winter

An interactive experience created by artists Julia Gingrich, Rehka Ramachandran and Kara Stone reflecting on time and climate change. Rocks Die? investigates the Anthropocene, the material and the virtual. It consists of a quilt made of used plastic, dipped in water and then frozen, with materials such as flowers and notes written by participants in advance surrounding it. The pieces are hung, letting the ice drip off them and revealing what is inside.

Dates: Dec 28-31

Location: TBD

Audience: Drop-in, all-ages.

Partners

Through research, design and collaboration, Evergreen moves sustainable city building ideas into action. We believe that flourishing cities are created through the alchemy of placemaking—holistically improving the intersections and interdependencies between people + natural + built worlds. This is evident in our work designing school grounds; building community programs; collaborating on transportation, housing, and water issues; and imagining and developing the Evergreen Brick Works social enterprise.

Since 1991, Evergreen, a Canadian charity and international thought leader, has provoked bold action in transforming public landscapes into thriving community spaces with environmental, social and economic benefits. At the core of our work is the belief that involving people directly in the process of restoring the health of local ecologies and their communities positively affects the attitudes and behaviours that lie at the core of the sustainable city.

Toronto Arts Council (TAC) is the City of Toronto’s funding body for artists and arts organizations. Since 1974, TAC has played a major role in the city’s cultural industries by supporting a very broad range of artistic activity. From the emerging artist to the most established, from celebrated institutions to arts that challenge convention, TAC is typically the first funder to offer support. Today, TAC grants lead to exhibitions, performances, readings and workshops seen annually by over 9.5 million people. Through our ongoing funding, TAC cultivates a rich engagement between artists and audiences.  We are proud to reflect Toronto’s vibrancy through the diversity of artists, arts communities and audiences that we serve.

Video by Brian Bernard.

This is what I remember after playing and making videogames with kids for 12 weeks:

Smushing pizza slices with our fingers. Kids shooting their hands up, ready to say how to save Drake, held hostage atop the CN Tower by Rob Ford and his Rob Bots. Watching a kid figure out how to code diagonal movement. The look on his face when he did. A brother and sister squabbling over how to beat the next level. Throwing shoes through playground monkey bars like basketballs. A boy screaming about how cool the Incredible Hulk is. Guitar strumming as a kid belts out a ballad to Mario and Luigi. A girl’s vow to make a game with Princess Peach beating up enemies. Regular hollers of “where’s the iPad” over the din of sugar-high kids screeching at the top of their lungs.

Oh yeah, and the videogames.

This spring, Game Curious teamed up with Art Starts at Glendower Circuit, a community in Scarborough. Every week we’d pile into two cars, lug several computers and an Ikea bag stuffed with tangled cords across the parking lot, and then hook everything up in a small apartment on the first floor. Kids occasionally popped their heads in early and asked us if we were ready yet. If we weren’t, they’d stay anyway and drink iced tea; their ratio of drink mix to tap water always seemed like several handfuls of powder to five drops of water. (And I’m pretty sure at least one kid just started straight up eating the powder.)

RIP spinach pizza ;_;

Much like the last workshop series that ran at the Toronto Reference Library, each workshop lasted two hours. The rooms would have several computer stations scattered around, with a different game related to the week’s theme running on each. A few iPads were there for kids who were waiting to play, as well as take photos and record sounds for their own games they would develop in the MAKE session.

The program was divided into two sessions, PLAY and MAKE. The first six weeks of PLAY had kids playing games relevant to each week’s theme, freely moving between stations. After about an hour and a half, we’d all huddle together and talk about how the theme related to our experiences playing the games, then do an activity based on the theme. The facilitators, Sagan Yee and Ken Cho, would usually lead the discussion. Volunteers led activities that involved the kids helping out, through yelling out answers, taking part in show-and-tell, or presenting their ideas to the group.

PLAY SESSIONS

image credit: Sagan Yee

WEEK 1
Theme: Toronto
Games: Scott Pilgrim VS The World, Lovers In A Dangerous Spacetime, Snow
What went down: Explored local games this week, Scott Pilgrim’s beat-em-up style drawing a big crowd. Fez captivated one kid for the entire session; he fiddled with how to manipulate the unique world mechanics for about an hour uninterrupted.
Best moment: One kid was obsessed with the Incredible Hulk. He’d draw him constantly, starting with an ample green bosom. If he wasn’t busy playing a game, he’d pull a helpless volunteer outside and subject them to an extended playfight where the volunteer would mostly howl “I’m dead” while lying on the ground.

WEEK 2
Theme: Family and Relationships
Games: Papa & Yo, Gone Home, Persona 4, Friendship in Four Colours, and Animal Crossing.
What went down: The theme was getting along, but every single kid had beef with each other. Squabbles were settled once kids got more into the activity (helping the Persona 4 protagonist get along with the school’s scariest person).
Best moment: Hulk kid brought his Hulk toy. We had spinach pizza for lunch this day. Hulk wasn’t too happy.

WEEK 3
Theme: Time, Inner and Outer Worlds
Games: Passage, Braid, others
What went down: This was a pretty heavy theme to tackle, but the participants were up to the challenge! The kids were especially fascinated with Passage, and once they figured out the basic mechanics, set about trying to beat each other’s high score. (If you’ve ever played Passage you know that this involves rejecting human relationships in search of sparkly treasures and probably isn’t the best takeaway, but this is why the group discussion part of the program exists!)
Best moment: During group time, some of the coordinators- inspired by Passage- talked about how their personal experiences and choices they’ve made have impacted the course of their lives. It was a good opportunity to have a discussion with the kids about how their actions can shape the future.

WEEK 4
Theme: Ability
Games: Fez, X-Men Arcade, VVVVV, Super Mario 2, Mario Kart, Octodad, QWOP
What went down: Mario Kart, regardless of age, is always brutal. VVVVV had a sibling duo struggling for a while and razzing each other for falling into traps, but they managed to get pretty far!
Best moment: The group activity had kids coming up with ways the Avengers could save Drake from Rob Ford and his Ford Bots. The best answers had every Avenger using a different ability to help out. One group of girls had the Black Widow save the day pretty much by herself, and of course Hulk kid had his favourite green guy taking all the glory.

WEEK 5
Theme: Race/Backstory
Games: Michael Jackson: Moonwalker, Ico, Jet Set Radio
What went down: The group of kids at Glensdower were almost all racialized, many black youth from ages 4 to 12. Race wasn’t a new concept to them at all, but the hard part was explaining how racial representation in videogames and the industry is very skewed. To put it bluntly: it took volunteers and facilitators hours just trying to find kid-friendly games with black protagonists who weren’t stereotypes. So we tried to focus instead on how they could be the future developers creating characters that reflected themselves, with an activity where they came up with backstories for their friends.
Best moment: The creation of Volley Girl, the best play-on-words character of the year. May she spike into all our hearts.

WEEK 6
Theme: Party!
Games: Super Smash Bros. tournament, every multiplayer game we had installed up to that point
What went down: Partyyyy x 2
Best moment: The kids chilling out! A nice pre-break from the game-making we would be faced with afterwards.

MAKE SESSIONS

Screenshot from Glendower Game (see the video at the top of this post for actual footage)

The six weeks of Game Curious MAKE went by in a flash as we set about teaching the kids how to make their own videogame. This program started out with basic concepts, such as identifying the different types of game assets in a simple platformer (backgrounds, player characters, NPCs, projectiles) and moved into more hands-on demonstrations. We started off with an exercise where we taught a robot (played by coordinator Al Donato) how to bake a cake by “inputting” verbal commands in the proper order. By using a process the kids were all familiar with, we were able to show how computer logic is similar to baking a cake, in that it is a set of instructions that produces a desired outcome if done in the proper sequence. For example, when prompted for commands, some of the younger kids excitedly told the robot to put the icing in the mixing bowl before any other ingredient. Eventually they figured out that this wasn’t the right command to start with, and the cake-baking was successful!

Some of the other exercises included “modding” an Angry Bird clone in Stencyl so that the kids could slingshot photos of their own heads into a pile of bricks; learning how to build “magic portals” in Twine and writing interactive stories about each other and the coordinators, with hilarious and sometimes uncomfortable results; breaking down the frames of a Sonic the Hedgehog running animation to see how sprites move in videogames; and using Makey Makeys (generously lent to us by Dames Making Games Toronto) to transform pencil markings, water, Play-Doh, pizza and even their own bodies into alternative controllers. A few participants even managed to create their own mini-games using programs like Scratch, such as a game where a kid trashes his sister’s room while everyone else has left the house (the father of the game creator insists that this was not based on true events, and that the participant in question doesn’t even have a sister). The Makey Makey session was particularly active, with one kid screaming “It’s magic!!” over and over when shown how to turn a glass of water into a makeshift piano, and we all learned that pepperoni pizza = the greasiest Dance Dance Revolution controller ever invented.

The big project of course was collectively creating a game about Glendower and the Game Curious participants. The engine we used for this was Construct 2, as it was a relatively simple program with which co-coordinator Ken Cho was familiar. Each of the kids had their own learning style and field of interest when it came to game-making. Some participants enjoyed creating pixel art on the computer, while others preferred to draw their art by hand using paper and markers. The two iPads we had borrowed for the program transformed from gaming devices into artistic tools, as the participants used the Camera function to take photos of their own neighbourhood to use as backgrounds. We even had the kids take turns photographing each other in various Mario-like poses so they could be inserted as characters within the game world!

One aspect of game creation which the kids especially enjoyed was Music and Sound. All of the audio in Glendower Game, including sound effects, was recorded at Glendower using the kids’ natural talents at rap and noise-making. Art Starts coordinator Frost was even able to provide guitar accompaniment for the Game Over song.

As is usual for Hand Eye Society game-making programs, we held a final showcase in which we burned the game files to CDs which we had gotten the kids to decorate and handed them out during an Art Starts back-to-school BBQ. I think we learned almost as much as the participants did, and we definitely hope to return to Glendower some day with another gaming event!

This is the end of our long-awaited recap post about Game Curious Glendower. As of November 2015, Game Curious is in the beginning of its 6-week MAKE phase at Art Starts Villaways, in North York. The current coordinators are Al Donato, Kadeem Dunn, and Krystle Mackenzie, and the lead coordinator is Ken Cho. For general info and volunteer opportunities, please read on!

Game Curious is one of many initiatives run by the Hand Eye Society that aim to promote videogames as an art form to a wide and diverse audience, including WordPlay (an annual celebration of interactive fiction and wordy games) and game-making workshops like the Artsy Games Incubators. If you’re interested in supporting programs like these, there are several options:

• BECOME A MEMBER: Hand Eye Society membership is $7/month and helps pay for programs and initiatives like Game Curious. It also helps us rely less on government grants, which are not guaranteed sources of revenue from year to year.
• VOLUNTEER: Many of the current coordinators of Game Curious were volunteers before they took on more advanced roles. It’s a great way to get involved with one of the Society’s most unique and rewarding programs, and once you log 10 hours, you get a year’s worth of free membership (see the Membership page above for details)!
• DONATE EQUIPMENT/GAMES: We are always on the lookout for much-appreciated equipment donations, especially monitors and gaming consoles. Many of the games we’ve found have been particularly effective in introducing young people to indie games can be found on Steam, Wii U, and PS3. Other things we are in need of include: Makey Makeys, speakers, and extra controllers (Wii, PS3, Xbox).

For more information about Game Curious or the Hand Eye Society in general, please contact: info@handeyesociety.com.

Game Curious is our game literacy program devoted to the exploration and discussion of video games as an artform, for people of all ages and backgrounds. Program coordinator Sagan Yee gives a summary of the program that ran from September 13 – Dec 6, for a total of 12 weeks, and at one point involved forcing Russians to be vegetarians. We are currently running the program at Glendower neighbourhood in Scarborough.

Last fall, the Hand Eye Society partnered with the Digital Innovation Hub at the Toronto Reference Library to bring the second run of Game Curious to the world! We were very excited to introduce a six week game-making workshop in addition to the original programming, for a grand total of twelve weeks of gaming and discussion. For a write-up of the MAKE session workshops, please refer to Ab Velasco’s post here.

The first six sessions, which we are now calling the PLAY sessions, consisted of 2-hour weekly gatherings in the Browsery area on the library’s first floor. We set up six computer stations (we really like the number 6, apparently) installed with a number of games based on a certain theme, and a large TV hooked up to whatever console suited our needs at the time. The first hour was “free play” time, where participants could walk around, try the games, and ask questions. The second hour was devoted to presentations and group discussion, where we would examine each game showcased on that day and talk about the observations and experiences people had while playing them.

During these sessions, anyone who wanted to present a game was welcome to do so, and we got a wide variety of volunteers bringing their favourite games to showcase for the other participants. As no registration was necessary and we were situated in a very public area of the library, there were many people who were simply browsing or wandering through who were eventually drawn in by the spirited gameplay and discussion. Everyone from parents and their children to couples to youth to curious folk of all backgrounds- anyone who happened to be in the library that day was welcome to join in, and quite frequently they did! (We also got a few noise complaints, but that’s inevitable when you introduce Nidhogg to a library…) There was a lot of opportunity to engage with people in discussion about their interest in games and field any questions they had about the medium.

Here’s a breakdown of each PLAY session with game titles and discussion highlights. NOTE: If you were a participant or volunteer at Game Curious and would like to contribute any impressions, corrections or additions, please contact me at <sagan@handeyesociety.com> and I will be happy to update the post!

1. PLAYED IN TORONTO

We looked at games set in Toronto or made by local developers! I decided to lead with this topic as it’s a good way to immediately draw people in with a familiar setting, while introducing the idea that game design and narrative can be inspired by personal experience and one’s own environment. Whether wandering a Queen Street West of the near-past in Benjamin Rivers’s Snow, dodging TTC logos in Alex Leitch’s Psychlepath, or noting the Brutalist aesthetic link between the Robarts Library and N+, playing these titles provided plenty of opportunities to look at games outside of the usual fantasy/sci-fi setting. It was also a good way to showcase the work of local studios such as Spooky Squid, Metanet, Capybara, Drinkbox and others.

As this was 2014, we also looked at a number of games inspired by a certain infamous mayor. These included City Council Chaos (Julia Alexander, Kimberly Koronya, Tanner Rogalsky), Stay Mayor (Extra! Extra! Games) and a Civilization V mod in which Rob Ford joins the ranks of Genghis Khan and George Washington as a playable world leader.

GAMES: Snow (Benjamin River), Scott Pilgrim VS the World, Psychlepath (Alex Leitch), Sissy’s Magical Ponycorn Adventure, City Council Chaos, Rob Ford Civ V mod, Stay Mayor, Guacamelee, N+, They Bleed Pixels, The Yawhg, Superbrothers Sword and Sworcery EP

2. LOVE, LIFE, AND RELATIONSHIPS

This was a very broad theme and does not include nearly as many titles as I could probably come up with, but I think it’s a pretty respectable selection. The goal of this session was to provide examples of the emotional and thematic range of games, and the ways in which the medium is able to tell stories that are distinct from film and novels. These games represent a variety of narratives drawn from their creators’ personal experiences or desire to explore the depth of their fictional creations. Many of the games dealt with topics like child abuse, dysfunctional families, mental health, social anxiety, aging, and other everyday struggles not often represented in more mainstream titles. Others were simply well-told stories with engaging characters. It’s pretty exciting that there were so many titles to choose from that I couldn’t fit them all in one session; however, suggestions are always welcome!

GAMES: Dys4ia, Papers Please, Home (Increpare), Lim, Depression Quest, Gamer Mom, Everybody Dies, Cart Life, Gone Home, Passage/Gravitation, To The Moon, Journey, Papa & Yo

PRESENTATION: Krystle Mackenzie,  a long-time volunteer since Game Curious’ first run at the Academy of the Impossible in 2013, presented Persona 4. The complex social system within the game made a good fit for the session theme.

3. INNER AND OUTER WORLDS

This was a really fun and diverse session as it was basically a catch-all for the many weird and experimental titles out there. Shadow of the Colossus, Fez, and Jazzpunk were very popular with the participants, and there was a lively response to a reading of a humorous review of David O’Reilly’s “anti-game” Mountain. This also turned out to be the ideal session to field questions about video game addiction, as many of these games are quite brief and provide a counterpoint to time-sucking ventures like Bejewelled and World of Warcraft.

GAMES: Shadow of the Colossus, Jazzpunk, Mountain (David O’Reilly), Paradis Perdus, Fez, Kentucky Route Zero, Katamari Forever, Dyad, Goblet Grotto, Aisle

PRESENTATION: Miguel Sternberg of Spooky Squid Games (They Bleed Pixels) did a great live demo of an obscure Playstation rhythm game called Vib Ribbon that was released only in Japan. Krystle Mackenzie presented Chrono Trigger as one of her favourite games and an exemplary example of pixel art. It was a good tie-in as Miguel also noted that Chrono Trigger was one of his inspirations as a pixel artist. Finally, Dave Murphy presented some video clips showing a variety of site-specific game installations, including projects by Babycastles, Toca Loca’s Halo Ballet, and Dancingularity.

4. MAKING GAMES

In this session we focused on free game-making programs such as Stencyl, GameMaker Studio, Twine and Unity, as well as stories about game development and the creative process. We looked at Portal’s origins in the oddly-named student project Narbacular Drop, as well as how thatgamecompany’s Flower has design echoes its early prototype Cloud. Games like Cave Story, I Wanna Be the Guy, and the results of game jams show what kind of projects can result from individual developers or small teams.

GAMES: Cave Story, Narbacular Drop, Portal 1+2, Cloud, Flower, I Wanna Be the Guy, games from the Artsy Games Incubator: Animation Edition

PROGRAMS: Construct 2, Stencyl, GameMaker Studio, Twine, RPG Maker, Unity

PRESENTATION: Yifat Shaik and Kim Koronya talked about their creative process and independent game projects they’ve worked on. Ken Cho helped demonstrate game-making software in action, and Joshua P’ng presented a video clip of Beyond Good and Evil, one of his favourite games.

5. PLAYING POLITICS, SCIENCE AND EDUCATION

This session was of particular interest to parents and educators, as many of them were naturally interested in what kind of games could be used to enrich and educate the lives of children and students. We started with Oregon Trail, one of the most well-known of the early “edutainment” computer games, and moved all the way to the complex interactive systems of Fort McMoney and Fate of the World. Other topics included Minecraft and Portal in the classroom, games as ironic commentary on historical and current events, the politics of Sim City, and the gamification of protein folding in Foldit.

GAMES: Cat and the Coup, Foldit, Unmanned, McDonald’s Game, Portal 2, Minecraft, Sim City, Fort McMoney, September 12, Oregon Trail

PRESENTATION: Adam Blake led the audience in a collective playthrough of Fate of the World, where we all tried to save the earth from global warming by manipulating various socio-economic forces. For example, we decided to turn all of Russia into vegetarians. This did not win us any popularity points with the Russians.

6. COMMUNITY (PARTY GAMES)

For the final session, we brought out a variety of multiplayer and co-op games for all to enjoy! Some of the games excited the participants so much that they were yelling at the screen. Although all of the games involved more than one player in some way, not all of them emphasized competition; for example, the ever-popular Lovers In A Dangerous Space Time requires players to work together to pilot a neon pink spaceship to rescue rabbit-like creatures from evil aliens. These games opened up the “community” theme to discussion, where I talked briefly about Hand Eye Society as well as other Toronto game organizations such as Dames Making Games and Vector Game Art Festival. I also spoke about the future of Game Curious, which is currently undergoing its third iteration at Glendower in collaboration with Art Starts.

GAMES: Space Race, Lovers In A Dangerous Space Time, Tether, Nidhogg, Retron 5 (Bubble Bobble), A Friendship In Four Colours, others

PROGRAM COORDINATOR: Sagan Yee

PROGRAM MANAGER: Jim Munroe

VIDEO AND PHOTOS: Brian Bernard

THANKS TO: Ab Velasco, Alex Dimitrov, Randall Ball, Baher Ramzy, Sukhdeep Brar, Krystle Mackenzie, Carrie, Daniel Case, Dave Murphy, Ken Cho, Adam Blake, Joshua P’ng, Art Starts, the Ontario Trillium Grant Foundation, all our guest presenters and developers, and many others without whom this would not have been possible! (If you volunteered at any point during Game Curious and were not mentioned here, please let me know and I will add your name to the list.)

2014 ADVISORY COUNCIL: John Porter, Jaime Woo, Emma Westecott, Sara Grimes