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ORIGINAL TRANSMISSION FOLLOWS
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Burritos? Tacos? What’s the deal — ¿que’s the dillas?
With that successful mangling of not one but TWO languages, it’s time for another monthly meetup — and a surprising twist! A scheduling conflict! A dramatic reversal, a thematic upheaval! A different place with food and beer, where we will look at and discuss video games.
WHEN
Wednesday, February 1st, 19h30
WHERE
Burritoville, 2055 rue Bishop, top floor (internet map).
WHAT
You are presently jamming away at the Montreal variant of the Global Game Jam this weekend. Of course you are. You will make incredible and wondrous things! And we will play them!
All participants of the GGJ are invited to bring along their barely completed, hardly playtested, first-draft Jam games out for a celebration of all things hastily produced. Did you produce something hastily? Let us know down in the comments and we’ll play them all in an orderly fashion!
Come along and — taco in hand — we will sing the praises, and marvel at the wonders, of our amazing Global Game Jam lineup. Me gusta!
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Burritos? Tacos? Meetup? MENOUM.
Surprise! Ce mois-ci, un conflit d’horaire nous oblige à envahir un nouveau lieu avec nos discussions de jeux vidéo! Bouffe mexicaine, bière et pixels au rendez-vous.
QUAND?
Mercredi 1er février à 19h30
OÙ? – À vos crayons, il faut noter ceci!
Burritoville, 2055 rue Bishop, dernier étage
QUOI?
En ce moment même plusieurs d’entre nous participent au Global Game Jam. Profitons donc de l’occasion pour présenter les petites merveilles que vous aurez créé. Tous les participants de l’évènement sont invité à apporter le fruit de leur labeur! As-tu par bonheur fabriqué un jeu dans la hâte et la fatigue? Fais-le nous savoir dans les commentaires et nous les jouerons/testerons tous dans le désordre.
Allez, venez tous – un tacos à la main, une manette dans l’autre – nous chanterons des cantiques au rythme des pixels que vous nous présenterez. Me gusta!
Posted: January 5th, 2012 | Author:admin | Filed under:Announcements, Jams | Comments Off
There are a lot of things going on in the next few weeks — so with a maximum of one further ado, here are the things going on in the next few weeks.
ado.
Gladiators play test (Jan. 5)
If you’re in the downtown area tonight and want to see what’s going on in the indie board gaming scene in Montreal, Foonzo will be hosting a playtest of Gladiators, a new title from local video-game-industry-to-independent-board-game developers Geoff Rollins and Patrice Combatalade.
CUSEC and DemoCamp (Jan. 19-21)
The Canadian University Software Engineering Conference is a great opportunity to hear from and speak with software engineers from a wide range of backgrounds and industries. This year, Manveer Heir of BioWare Montréal will be speaking (among a long list of excellent presentations), and the conference is being sponsored in part by Riot Games (who are currently in the midst of a recruitment drive) — so, basically: video games! They are of interest. Relatedly, the CUSEC DemoCamp offers developers the chance to live-demo a work-in-progress; Norwegian Wood and other games have been shown rather successfully in the past. The application deadline for projects is Jan. 10, and thus many of you have several days of interesting programming ahead. Enjoy!
Global Game Jam (Jan. 27-29)
The Global Game Jam‘s 48 hours of international game development madness is approaching, and Concordia and l’ÉTS are co-ordinating on a jam site for Montreal participants. The plan is to accommodate up to 150 programmers/designers/artists/woodworkers/&c. for the duration; pre-made teams, randomly-generated teams, individuals, and floaters are all welcome, as are both digital and physical/board games. A URL with registration will be up shortly [EDIT: here it is!] — in the meantime, here is a list of different names for animal collectives, not counting the band Animal Collective.
Toy Company Festival (Feb. 10-12)
Local chiptune collective (“a linked-list of electronic musicians”?) Toy Company will be hosting a grand ole two-night shindig of 8-bit music, 16-bit dancing, and 93-bit revelry — more revelries than there are atoms in the observable universe. Local artists will be playing alongside special international guests, so not only is it contractually obligated to be a mad party, but it’s also a great opportunity to showcase the local game scene! Let’s make this explicit: WE ARE LOOKING FOR GAMES.
If you’d like to make and/or showcase a game for the show, we want you to do that thing as well. The call is open for retro-aesthetic/lo-fi, easily-accessible games — preferably ones that are not dependent on audio, since the music, scientifically speaking, will be bumpin’. Contact us and make it happen.
Whoa now! A few too many Festivus grievances were aired and a couple extra auld langs may have been syned — we’ve been remiss in announcing our upcoming meetup! But hey, we know you fine folk keep all your first monthly Wednesdays free, so let’s get right to it: a meetup this week!
Let’s start off the new Gregorian year with a bang, or in style, or with some other indicator — indicators for all! Did you participate in Ludum Dare? Looking for partners in the upcoming Global Game Jam? Want to make a game for the upcoming Toy Company festival?
Convene // discuss // indicate! We consider it unlikely that you will regret it!
WHEN
Wednesday, January 4th, 19h30
WHERE
Brasserie Artisanale l’Amère à Boire, 2049 rue Saint-Denis, 3rd floor
As we mentioned at last week’s meetup, there’s quite a lot in store to sate the palate of the sophisticated games connoisseur in Montreal. In no particular order by date:
Ludum Dare 22 (December 16-19)
The arbitrarily-regular weekend-long Internetional game jam is returning in just a few days to an Internet near you! Devote a weekend to variations on an LD-sanctioned theme.
Global Game Jam (January 27-29)
A similar game jam! One weekend! One theme! One love! We jammin’! Organisers at Concordia and l’ÉTS are putting together spaces for teams and individuals to get together over the weekend; we’ll be posting more about this as registration opens.
IGDA DemoNight (January 31)
The IGDA is throwing a demo night in January, and have put out an open call for submissions. If you’ve got a game idea rattling around, set yourself a deadline to show it to your peers (at least, the ones who don’t make it out to the meetups)! The deadline’s January 13th — grab those punch cards and get cracking.
Concordia Media Mix (February 4-5)
Concordia will be hosting a multi-disciplinary conference in February, focusing in particular on popular Japanese culture and contrasting it with the scene on this side of the pond. The games scene will also be showcased, with both Japanese and local titles playable on-site. Again, more info as it becomes available!
Toy Company Festival (February 11-12)
The local chiptune collective is putting on a two-day festival at the SAT, and they’re looking to showcase local game dev talent along with it. We’re looking for 4-6 games to fill the bill, with a few qualitative constraints: a non-reliance on music and sound (the tunes will be blaring pretty heavily), a retro aesthetic (SuperNES or backwards-Famicompatible), and an ability to be picked up and played while drunk (logistics). Easy peasy. CONTACT US if you’d like to submit a game and take part in the celebration. And check out Toy Company’s upcoming 8-Bit Noël concert for a glimpse into how the night will go down.
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Are you SO EXCITED yet? That’s good. There’s a tonne of interesting venues opening up, so start sharing ideas! Also we should probably do things like coding programs and making art and that stuff.
Io, Saturnalia! The festival of Cronus is almost upon us, and you know what that means! With the unbinding of the statues of Saturn in temples across the land, it’s time to rejoice! Join our Saturnalicius princeps as we exchange small gifts (sigillaricia) and allow slaves to gamble and dine with their masters!*
(*Courtesy Wikipedia — A personal appeal from Iacomus Wales.)
It’s meetup time, folks. Let us rock out as in days of old, before retiring for the holy-days. Togas optional but strongly encouraged.
WHEN
Wednesday, December 7th, 19h30
WHERE
Brasserie Artisanale l’Amère à Boire, 2049 rue Saint-Denis, 3rd floor
This past Wednesday, for the second year running, the Prince of Arcade came to town—giving MIGS attendees and game enthusiasts alike the chance to relax with their peer groups and play some amazing indie games. In no particular order, the following are things that made the evening rather spiffy:
The Games
La raison d’être. What would a video game party be without sweet sweet games? (Check out videos and trailers here)
Crafted by hardware hackers The Buttonmashers, our new indie arcade cab made its first public appearance featuring some amazing local games (and a special guest from out of town!). (More info here.)
The organisers at MIGS, for supporting the cause and getting the word out.
Battle Lava, for throwing down some incredible chiptunes.
Rich Lemarchand and Phil Fish for a seductively danceable DJ set.
And the kind folks at Eastern Bloc, for patience and professionalism in helping set up the event.
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And because the magical memories are so dear, the cameras were rolling and caught some magnificent moments of the event itself (Let us know if you’ve got your own!):
The Dirty Rectangles documented their journey here.
Nick Rudzicz, co-organiser, has a Picasa set of the preparations.
Photographer Antonella Fratino captured some amazing shots here.
Sagar Patel also caught a bunch and popped them up on Picasa.
James Everett has a great set of shots from both MIGS and the Prince of Arcade here.
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Encore une fois, merci à tous. It was époustouflant.
Let’s do this again sometime.
Long Live the Prince.
—- PS: And finally, a note to all our local MRGS friends—don’t forget that there’s a meetup Wednesday night, the 9th! We will meet each other there, and drink deeply from tall draughts of keen memories.
Have you heard? The Prince of Arcade is two days hence, and it’s looking pretty magical. We’re storming an art gallery and projecting some of the latest in beautiful arcade-style indie games on the walls, toasting our health, and incredibleing the night away. And there’s a superlative Facebook event, for all your legally-binding informational needs!
Oh, and then there’s this: we’re unveiling the Arcade Royale.
We’ve been working hard with local hardware hackers the Buttonmashers and several local developers over the past few weeks, and good heavens are we excited about this thing. Five absolutely delicious multiplayer arcade games from Montreal developers (and one special visitor from out of town!) are loaded up and ready to rock you like a tropical depression at the Prince of Arcade. It’s overwhelming!
We’ve had the pleasure of playtesting these games in the Buttonmashers dojo, and the results are astounding. We’ll be talking more about each game in the weeks to come, but for now head over to the Buttonmashers website for some sweet, arcadey video action.
Wait, you want more? Okay. Okay, fine. But don’t say we didn’t warn you.
SURPRISE GUESTS:
B-Cycle, by Collectif IN-Média, is an thrilling bicycle journey… THROUGH THE HUMAN BODY.
We’re pumped (oh ho ho ho.)
Oh, and hey, our co-organisers the Dirty Rectangles heard you like arcades, so they’re packing a minivan full of goodness, hitting up the T-Can, and unveiling their own classy cocktail cabinet: the Ottatron! Now you can play some arcades while your friends play arcades at the Prince of Arcade!
And if that weren’t amazing enough, our friends at die gute Fabrik have hacked their fabulous Johann Sebastian Joust to bring us a brand new creature: Joust of Canada, a Boards of Canada physical bonanzarama. Will there be swords? There may be swords.
Throw in some surprise special guests, and there is no excuse to miss this! Literally, if the 2012 conspiracy were more than a silly fancy, and the world really were to come apart—a year early—in the coming week, and John Cusack’s Cessna was the only safe harbour left in the world, we would bring the party to the plane and rock these games across the planet Earth.
A splendourous and sibilant celebration of indie games and the arcade spirit!
We’re renting out an art gallery, hooking up the projectors, and basking in the glory of some of the most beautiful arcade-inspired indie games out there. Did we mention beer? The question is rhetorical; we didn’t! But the bar will indeed be available — and with a cold beverage in hand and the music moving our feet, we will play amazing games on amazing screens with amazing friends. (We have anecdotal evidence from last year’s event that this party will remain statistically amazing, within one standard deviation of happiness, 19 times out of 20.)
WHEN AND WHERE DO WE HAVE THE JOY?
November 2nd, 20h00 — November 3rd, 01h00 Eastern Bloc
7240 Clark (near De Castelnau metro, Blue line).
SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
Tickets to the Prince of Arcade: $9 at the door $7 for those holding MIGS passes.
WE HEARD YOU LIKE VIDEO GAMES
Let the record show that we have some wicked-fantastic games to play. In no particular alphabetical order, let us hold hands and love.
(Photo courtesy the ever-rockin’ 
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