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September Main Event featuring Mike Wozniewski of Hololabs

By | Meetings, Presentations | No Comments
Mike is a game creator and a man with a gaze as intense as a thousand suns.

Mike is a game creator and a man with a gaze as intense as a thousand suns.

Hi everyone! Chris here to give you the lowdown about our next monthly meet-up at Swans. This September, we’re happy to have as our feature presenter Mike Wozniewski. Mike is the founder and president of Hololabs (www.hololabs.org), an award-winning indie development studio making games, mobile apps, VR experiences and art installations. He has recently relocated to Victoria from Montreal, where he spent over 15 years building interactive media of all sorts.

His Master’s degree (from the Centre for Intelligent Machines at McGill University) focused on authoring tools for intelligent environments, human-computer interaction, motion tracking, and virtual reality. After that, Mike joined the Society for Arts and Technology [SAT], where he developed software for immersive audiovisual environments. After founding Hololabs in 2011, Mike has worked with many artists, designers and developers to build creative, experimental, and somewhat wacky games and art projects.

Mike will be discussing the recent boom of game making apps, level editors, and the promise of user-generated games as a form of social media. From LittleBigPlanet, to Minecraft, Project Spark, Super Mario Maker, Pixel Press, and Hololabs’ own Papercade, Mike will discuss the world of consumer-focused game creators. With a long-term obsession for creative tools, this talk will explore the affordances necessary for successful game-making systems, and will also serve as a postmortem for Papercade. Along the way, Mike will introduce Hololabs, provide some of the history about the studio, and will give a sneak peek of Hololabs’ next game that will be developed here in Victoria.

After the talk we will be holding the usual open stage and social time. We have a private room with a projector and a ton of space. Show off your current projects; do some play-testing; or just relax and enjoy the awesome local food and craft-brewed beer. Let’s all come out and give Mike a warm welcome to Victoria!

Schedule:

  • 4:30pm: Doors open (room is locked earlier)
  • 5:10pm: Opening announcements by group organizers
  • 5:15pm: Featured presentation
  • 5:45pm: Open stage for show-and-tell, networking and socializing
  • 7:30pm: Venue closes (We are free to move to the main bar if we wish)

See you there!

Details:

Monday, September 7th, 2015

Buckerfields aka The Collard Room – Swans Hotel and Brewpub

506 Pandora Avenue, Victoria, BC

Doors open at 4:30pm

Please RSVP via the Meetup event

March LevelUp Radio Podcast – Brain Warp Studios' Stephen McCallum

By | General, Podcast | No Comments
Sweet logo!

Put this in your ear and see what happens.

LevelUp Radio recently released their podcast for March. This episode features an interview with Stephen McCallum of Brain Warp Studios. Stephen discusses his game development career and his crowd-funding campaign for OOG! Clan of the Caveman. Tune in to this open and frank discussion with the LevelUp Radio gang about crowd-funding and the challenges of launching an indie game company. And if you haven’t had a chance yet, check out the OOG! Indiegogo Campaign and support this original and fun game project.

The podcast is available at the LevelUp Radio homepage, or click here for a direct link to the latest episode.

GameHouse Canada Steps Up Its Hiring Game

By | Careers, General, Local News, News | No Comments

Alex Mendelev, general manager of GameHouse Canada, takes a moment to reflect on one of his games. Photograph by: Darren Stone, timescolonist.com

You may have already seen the article in the Victoria Time Colonist or read their press release, but in a follow-up to the story I posted earlier in the month, it appears that GameHouse Canada is looking to hire even more people than originally mentioned. Now they’re talking about doubling their workforce by adding at least 20-25 employees. Along with Microsoft Studio Victoria’s goal of bringing on 50-60 people, we’re now looking at potentially over 80 new jobs for game creators in Victoria. Wow. Things are definitely looking up for the local game development community. At this rate, we may have to start holding IGDA Victoria meetings at the Memorial Arena.

GameHouse Canada Looking for a Few Good Geeks

By | Careers, General, Local News | No Comments

And maybe someday you'll rock as much as this guy!

I just got the word that GameHouse Canada is hiring. GameHouse is one of our largest local game companies and a Platinum Sponsor of the Level Up/IGDA Victoria group, so if anyone in Victoria is looking for a good place to move forward with your game career, or if anyone outside of Victoria is looking for a reason to move here, you should definitely check them out. The job postings are located here on their Facebook Page. Myke Allen, who works as a Game Artist at GameHouse and is an all around good guy, was kind enough to pass on this information, so if you decide to apply, please mention his name.

With Local Game Company, Charity Begins at Your Homepage.

By | General, Local News | No Comments
Wordraiser

A screen-shot of Wordraiser - no relation to classic SNES game ActRaiser.

Charities teaming up with video game companies are becoming less unusual these days. Child’s Play, Charitii and OneBigGame are some of the better known examples of this trend. A new game company based in Victoria has continued with this idea, bringing charitable gaming to the social media sphere. Donate2Play is the brainchild of three friends, Tomas Ernst, Kelly Pereira, and Adrian Pereira, who were looking to inject new life into the process of charity fund-raising. On September 8th of this year, Donate2Play launched their first game, Wordraiser. Released on Facebook as a fund-raising vehicle for the Ancient Forest Alliance, Wordraiser is a simple but addictive word finding game that raises money by prompting players for donations as they go up in levels. So far the response has been positive, and Donate2Play are looking forward to expand their partnerships to other non-profits on a global basis.