GameChangers is a game design competition for diverse teams to collaborate, network, share and develop skills in software and game development. Join in at the Open House to get started!  Participation is FREE and teams will be a mix of women and men studying or working in software development and game design.  For anyone interested in joining a team this open house is the first step to get signed up.  The 2-hour open house includes: Snappy Info Presentation, Game Demos, Mix & Meet, and a Game Design Jam Improv.  For more information please visit the GameChangers website, or email GameChangers.

GameChangers is a project of the Centre for Social Innovation, made possible with seed funding from the mesh prize and with support from great community advisors and partners.

Congratulations to CFC Media Lab Alumnus, Suyin Looui, a New York Artist/Producer who developed Hey Baby, a provoking online first-person shooter game (available to play for free at heybabygame.com).

…At first (Hey Baby) appears to be a self-consciously ridiculous revenge fantasy for women who have felt oppressed or threatened by sexual attention or commentary from men. Think of “Death Wish” with a woman walking home from work in the role of Charles Bronson.

Yet over several hours my initial alienation and annoyance gave way to a swelling appreciation of Hey Baby, not as a game but as a provocative, important work of interactive art as social commentary. The people who should really play Hey Baby are men, even if you have never said a word to a woman you didn’t know on the street.

- SETH SCHIESEL, The New York Times

To read the entire NY Times article, click here: www.nytimes.com/2010/06/08/arts/television/08baby.html?_r=1

PLAY NOW! www.heybabygame.com/play

Way to go, Suyin! (I’ll certainly be thinking of you next time I walk by a construction site…)

Atmosphere Industries (atmosphereindustries.com), comprised of CFC Media Lab Alumnus and recent addition to our Guest Faculty roster, Kate Raynes-Goldie, Luke Walker, David Fono and Alex Raynes-Goldie, has created Gentrification: The Game!

In Gentrification: The Game!, small teams of players compete to collect properties and transform the neighbourhood. As developers, they’ll develop swanky lofts, erect coffee shops, and raise property values. As locals, they’ll form BIAs, build community centres, and try to thwart the developers.

With Gentrification: The Game!, anybody can enjoy the thrills and spills of urban renewal, without being directly exposed to hipsters, Starbucks, or a feeling of security mixed with vague unease… Along the way there will be art, vicious debates, and possibly an Apple Store.

Gentrification: The Game! has been selected for the “Come Out and Play Festival” in New York (the sole Canadian selection featured!), June 4-6, 2010. Kate and David will present their game to Toronto’s Kensington crowd as part of the Pedestrian Sundays program starting July 25, 2010.

comeoutandplay.org/2010_gentrification

Also, be sure to catch Kate Raynes-Goldie on the NXNEi panel “Can Social Games Do Social Good?” http://www.nxne.com/interactive/nxnei-presentations/#sgames

CFC Media Lab Alumnus, Rose Bianchini, will be speaking at INplay 2010 tomorrow, May 18 at 4 pm at Liberty Grand, in the Centennial Room, located on the Exhibition Grounds in Toronto.

INplay is a unique, international event that connects kids creative industries with insights and opportunities in the interactive space. From the video game business to the broadcast industry, from toys to toons, the INplay conference brings together leaders in the kids space to learn, network and be inspired by interactive.

The conference will feature 3 major streams each covering a different dimension of working with properties for kids aged 2-12:

Inspiration - creativity and content stream
Investment – business stream
Insights – research stream

Rose Bianchini has been selected to speak on an “Insights” panel for Cutting Edge Research: Input Devices. This topic will be addressed through a series of short presentations followed by a moderated Q&A.

The keyboard, mouse and headset are old school. What is coming next to improve kids’ interaction with the digital world?

Moderator: Steve Szigeti (Ph.D Candidate – Knowledge Media Design Graduate)

Other Presenters: Chris Muscarella (Cofounder at Do Crew) and Vincent John Vincent (President of Gesturetek Inc.)

Rose Bianchini prototyped Neighbourhoodie with David McCallum and Kathleen Climie during the Telus IAEP Fall Residency of 2009 at the CFC Media Lab.

Neighbourhoodie is a hoodie that combines the fun and dynamic of street games like ‘zombie tag’ with the technological experience space young people grow up with today, online or with computer games. The ‘Neighbourhoodie’ has the potential to motivate us to leaving not only the couch but the house by playing hybrid games that partly happen in the real world and partly in our all important virtual world.

Neighbourhoodie has been featured on top wearable electronics and gadget blogs, talk2myshirt.com and gizmodiva.com.

INplay is taking place May 18 & May 19. Tickets are still available!
For a full line up or speakers and sessions, click HERE.

Two of Canada’s foremost television and interactive production companies, Kensington Communications and White Pine Pictures, have joined forces to create City Sonic, a location-based documentary film series about places where music happens in Toronto. The unique selection of short films, directed by some of Canada’s most inventive award-winning filmmakers, is about extraordinary artists and the places where their musical lives were transformed.

Just launched is the City Sonic FREE iPhone App in the iTunes App Store (along with new content exclusive to mobile at m.citysonic.tv). This app merges short films with GPS to create a street-level cinema experience of Toronto’s music scene and music history.

Fans of Toronto’s music scene can watch films immersed in the location where the stories took place using the City Sonic map interface, guided by GPS, or simply watch their favorite City Sonic films wherever and whenever they want. They can also unlock exclusive bonus content connected to each City Sonic location – from rare archival video to intimate live performances and previously unreleased songs – through game-based challenges that put them in the middle of Toronto’s music stories: testing their wits in a series of quiz questions about places where music happened, finding codes at City Sonic locations, and even unlocking bonus content by GPS, tripped when they walk past select Toronto music spots.

We set out to create an entertainment experience for fans of music and film that is geared to the very particular environment of mobile phones. With the City Sonic iPhone app, I think we’ve done that by merging high quality documentary films with ideas behind locative cinema, where place is really a key element in engaging your audience.

The series of short films features artists such as:

Geddy Lee (Rush) at Massey Hall
Brendan Canning (Broken Social Scene) at the Drake Hotel
Serena Ryder at the Dakota Tavern
The Great Lake Swimmers, 2009 Polaris Prize nominees, at Spadina Subway Station
Damian Abraham (Fucked Up), 2009 Polaris Prize winner, at Rotate This

These short films were created in collaboration with:

Anita Doron (CFC Media Lab Alumnus)
Peter Lynch
Bruce McDonald
Rob Pilichowski
Charles Officer
George Vale
Robert Lang
David Oppenheim (CFC Media Lab Alumnus and Head of Development/Interactive Producer at Kensington Communications)

City Sonic premiered 5 of its films at NXNE and screened 11 films at TIFF last September as part of the Yonge & Dundas Square outdoor screenings, followed by a broadcast on AUX TV (Rogers Cable 107).

Watch a trailer for City Sonic HERE.

City Sonic has been made possible with the support of the Ontario Media Development Corporation on behalf of the Ministry of Culture. City Sonic is produced with the participation of the Bell Broadcast and New Media Fund and the TELUS Innovation Fund, in association with AUX and with the participation of Humber College Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning, the Toronto History Project and CIMA.