Matt Creed
ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT REPORTER
PHOTO COURTESY OF RYAN COULDREY // Audience members participate in a 3D demonstration at last year’s Gamercamp, November 13, 2010. Humber students will see their work showcased at this year’s festival, Nov. 25-28 in Toronto.
Humber is taking part in a three-day Gamercamp video game festival to highlight Toronto’s gaming industry from Nov. 25-28.
Gamercamp will feature 40 hours of content running over three days, including a MakerU series where you can make your own video game.
Guests also have the option to eat cereal and watch movies in their pyjamas, and there will be an emerging artists showcase and an “eye pilot” in which you can play a game that is optically controlled.
Humber chose a student who participated in the recent Great Canadian Appathon to represent it at Gamercamp, as well as another student who submitted a game for the International Game Foundation, said Lynda Hausman, instructor of game design.
Hausman said Gamercamp offers students the opportunity to network with many of Toronto’s independent gaming companies.
“When you graduate and you’re looking for a job, you want to know as many people as you can in the industry,” she said. “So it’s nice to be able to attend the sessions, go up after and introduce yourself, and ask them questions – kind of get your name out in the market place and get people to know your name and your face.”
David Unsworth is a second-year student of the game programming program who attended the festival last year as a participant, and attended this year as a volunteer in the Humber College booth.
He said Gamercamp represents what video games could and should be doing.
“A lot of people that are dedicating their lives now to making video games,” he said. “We want to be able to do more than just empty shooter games, empty fun – some of us want to make art.”
The festival spans four locations: The Bathurst Street Theatre, Toronto Underground Cinema, George Brown College, and the CSI Annex.
Rabo said they expect to attract over 2,000 attendees in comparison to 120 last year.
The three day run will feature 30 guest speakers, such as Academic Developer Evangelist at Microsoft Canada Alex Yakobovich, and Andy Keenan, a PhD student at the University of Toronto who researches decision-making in games and how interfaces can limit us from making satisfying decisions.
The festival will also include gaming sessions, demos, and films that are intended to inspire creativity, like in Will Perkins and Peter Kuplowsky’s film The FP, said Mark Rabo, artistic director of Gamercamp.
“The whole idea behind Gamercamp is that there is no limit to the experiences you can have throughout it, so a lot of what we do is built in such a way that we want people to have serendipitous and unstructured experiences at Gamercamp,” Rabo said.