The Hand Eye Society, which is a rapidly increasing collective of Toronto game developers, will be having another one of their special social events on the evening of Thursday, April 15 at the Unit Bar located at 1198 Queen West in downtown Toronto. Doors open for the social at 7:00p.m., and presentations will begin at 8:00p.m. There will be two major presentations at this particular event.

Jim McGinley will be premiering a new type of game that is exclusively designed for a club environment. Everyone at the Unit Bar will play this game together, and it should be a very interesting gameplay experiment to take part in. Also adding to the fun will be the first live demonstration of Benjamin Rivers’ new interactive drinking game, Drunken Rampage.

On top of all of that, you get to hang out with other cool developers from the Toronto video game industry. It certainly sounds like there will be lots of things to do and lots of people to see at this event, so hopefully we’ll see you there.  For more information, you can check out The Hand Eye Society’s homepage.

Just a reminder to everyone that the registration for this year’s TO Jam is currently open, so now is your chance to sign up for this FREE event before registration closes on Sunday, April 18.

In case you don’t already know, TO Jam is an event that takes place each year in Toronto where game developers from all disciplines (art, programming, design, music, etc.) come together over the course of 3 days to develop their own indie games. The games being developed are usually based on a given event theme, but you don’t have to follow this theme if you don’t want to. The main objective behind TO Jam is to get game developers from all levels of ability to kick-start the development of their own unique games for the sake of having fun and learning from others. TO Jam is not a competion, and teams helping each other out is encouraged. In fact, if you decide to sign up for TO Jam without a team, you can participate as a “floater”, who is someone that gets to work with all of the groups at the event to produce game content for whatever they may need help with. You may also be pleasantly surprised at who decides to participate in TO Jam, as this event has attracted big names in the indie video games industry on several occasions. This is a great event to attend for anyone who is interested in designing and creating video games.

If you’re interested in signing up for TO Jam, or just want some more information, have a look at the TO Jam website.

Come out to U of T’s Bahen Centre on Wednesday, March 31 from 5 – 7:30p.m. in room 5250 to enjoy playtesting some games that were developed by the students of CSC404: Introduction to Video Game Design.  As a relatively new course in U of T’s Department of Computer Science, CSC404 has achieved a steady enrollment since its inception and has been attended by students who have later gone on to work in the video game industry afterward.  This is a great opportunity to see and play some very unique and original video games.  So, come out and have some fun.

It was mentioned during last week’s meeting that Toronto-based video game developer Drinkbox Studios will be making an appearance at U of T on Thursday, March 18 from 10a.m. – 12p.m. in room B025 at the Bahen Centre.

For those of you who are not already familiar with Drinkbox Studios, this video game developer has been involved with the development of both licensed and original video game products.  Their team consists of video game industry veterans who have developed on a variety of consoles and worked for a variety of developers such as Rockstar, Ubisoft, and Silicon Knights to name a few.  Attending this event would be a great opportunity to talk to some video game industry veterans and  get some answers to your questions about the industry itself.

Hello, everyone.

I just want to remind all of you that the CSSU Game Night will be taking place this week on Friday, March 5 from 7p.m. – 7a.m. in BA3200.  To get more information about this event, visit:

http://cssu.cdf.toronto.edu/?p=120

Also, keep an eye on the Game Club website as I will be putting up the links that we mentioned today during the meeting where you can find media resources for the games that you are making.

-Chris
UTGDDC Web Admin.