With GDC 2011 wrapping up last week, the Toronto chapter of the IGDA will be presenting GDC Round-Up with special guest speakers who attended this year’s conference in San Francisco and who will share their GDC 2011 experiences.

This event will begin at 7:30p.m. on Monday, March 14 at Metro Hall, which is located at 55 John Street, in room 308. Guest speakers for this event will include: Patrick Redding, Ubisoft Toronto; Jim McGinley, Big Pants Entertainment; Mark Rabo and Jamie Woo, Gamercamp; and Billy Matjiunis, GDC ’11 Scholarship Winner.

So, if you want to get all the inside details of what happened at this year’s GDC, then this is the event for you. It’s not mandatory, but will be appreciated if you can send an email to toronto@igda.org to RSVP ahead of time for this event.

After GDC Round-up the IGDA will have their usual social at the Elephant and Castle at 212 King St. West.

The first ever Great Canadian Appathon (GCA), presented by the National Post and XMG Studio, is an event where college and university students create a mobile game for Windows Phone 7 and compete to win one of several cash prizes, including a $25,000 grand prize, a $10,000 second prize, and ten $1,000 cash prizes.

If you’ve NEVER made a Windows Phone 7 game before, you might be pleasantly surprised to find out that you may already know how. Developers for Windows Phone 7 can use Silverlight, XNA Framework, and .NET compact framework to create their apps. So, if you’ve ever created a game using any of these technologies, then you’ve essentially made a Windows Phone 7 app. See http://silverlight.sys-con.com/node/1344487 for an example of how to write a simple “Hello World” app for Windows Phone 7.

The GCA takes place over the weekend of March 11, so you still have time to brush up on your coding and game development skills. Also, it is completely FREE to register! So, considering the fact that there’s a boatload of prizes to be won, it should be perfectly clear that this is THE game-making competition to enter.

Additionally, if you sign up for the GCA before 12 noon on Friday, March 4, you will be entered in a draw to win an Xbox Kinnect. Making games with the chance to win amazing prizes makes this event something to certainly check out. Go to the GCA’s website at http://www.greatcanadianappathon.com to get more information about this great event.

The Hand Eye Society will be having another one of their social events on Thursday, February 17 starting at 7p.m., which will take place immediately after our own utGDDC meeting. Once again, the Hand Eye Society Social will be held at the inconspicuous Unit Bar, located at 1198 Queen St W. (click here for a map).

This is a FREE event that is open to the public, so bring some friends, come down, and have some fun because in addition to a get-together of Toronto’s video game developers and a freeplay of The Night Balloonists, there will also be 2 special talks for the evening:

“Pancakes vs. Prototypes” – Jason Kaplan (Game Prototype Challenge) and Damian Sommer (Griddle Jam) – this talk will discuss and explore the benefits of rapid prototype in game development.

“Making A One Button, Skill Based Party Game That Doesn’t Suck”
– Miguel Sternberg and Andrew Pilkiw (Spooky Squid Games) – Miguel and Andrew will discuss what makes a great skill based party game and the creative design of their game, The Night Balloonists.