| Description: | What makes me incredibly happy is the support and the passion flowing in from the online community. How social networking has brought us that much closer to transparency in the gaming industry, and shows everyone that those of us releasing and promoting such a major form of entertainment should be held accountable for what we say and do on the internet. People don’t like being lied to, and even if there were legitimate reasons for taking down a review, handling it this way creates severe mistrust, which sends waves of anger and hostility rippling through the entire community.
Why don’t we stop trying to shove unpleasantness under the rug for once and start listening to one another? You never know, we could learn a thing or two.On the evening of August 18, site staff Vicky, Marce, and Jack headed out into the wilds of Toronto to visit Bento Miso, a creative collaborative workspace located just south of Queen Street West (862 Richmond Street West). It was here that the Dames Making Games (DMG) organization was holding a celebration to honour the creations of their ‘Jeuxly’ (pronounced July) initiative, which intended to introduce six women with no history of game development to the development scene.
The ultimate objective was for each of the women to have a playable game to offer at this showcase, six weeks after the program launched.Beginning with a brief introduction from the two project heads, Cecily Carver and Jennie Faber, each of the female developers was then introduced to the crowd, given a chance to show their game, and gave a brief talk on their backgrounds, their design decisions, and where they hoped to go from this point on. There was a definite variation in each of the background stories, although understandably, the majority came from artistic and creative backgrounds. The games were equally varied, with platformers, puzzlers and fighting games all on offer.
Several workstations were set up where guests were allowed to check out each of the games for themselves after the presentations, as well as being able to chat and mingle with the developers and founders.The first game discussed by its developer was entitled Une Semaine de Bonté, based on Max Ernst’s 1934 novel of the same name, and was developed by Julia Ediger. Julia comes from an animation production and comics background, and decided to create a card-matching puzzler based on the surrealistic imagery of Ernst’s work. The game also featured excerpts from Arthur Rimbaud’s A Season in Hell, a poem originally published in 1873.
Next up was Having It All, a career-based platformer with a comedic edge from Miriam Verburg. Previously a project manager for game design and development, Miriam was well-versed in the dynamics of office environments and the challenges that women face in such workspaces, and decided to focus on this with her game. Having It All is based on the article, “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All,†originally published in The Atlantic, and the game sees players taking on the avatar of a business Fut coins woman, with the objective of drinking as much coffee as possible, stomping on babies, and smashing through the glass ceiling, which becomes more than metaphorical in this game. |
