Level Up is a showcase of games made by students from Steve Engel’s Video Game Design course offered by the Department of Computer Science at U of T. In this course, students spend the semester creating video games in teams. This year, U of T computer science students worked with OCAD students to create what may be some of the best games to have ever been produced for this course.

The showcasing of these games will truly be a history-making event for video game development at U of T and it will be held at the Bell Tiff Lightbox on Monday, April 4 from 5p.m. – 9p.m. So come by after class or after work and join the Toronto video game community as we all enjoy this amazing event and see some surprising innovations in video game design.

For more information, you can check out the Hand Eye Society’s posting about Level Up.

The bi-annual CSSU Game Night will be held this week on Friday, March 18 at the Bahen Centre and will begin at 7p.m. This event will be an exciting 12-hour night of fun, gaming, and game tournaments with prizes and food. What’s even more exciting is the fact that we will be having a public showing of the GMD 2011 game submissions at CSSU Game Night. So, you’ll finally have a chance to play all of the games that were submitted for this year’s competition. This event should certainly be worth your time, so come out, have some fun, and support your friends from the utGDDC!

See you there.

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.

Now in its 6th year, the Vortex Game Conference and Competition is a huge event where emerging video game developers and entrepreneurs can network with industry pros to get the tools and contacts they need to succeed in the video game industry. Arguably, the main features of Vortex are its Boot Camp sessions and its video game concept and prototype competition.

The Boot Camp sessions offer individuals the opportunity to receive coaching and guidance from prominent and experienced video game industry leaders who will help advise attendees on turning their video game concepts and prototypes into commercial successes. The competition portion of Vortex allows aspiring game developers to submit their game’s concept or prototype to be judged by a panel of top-level industry professionals who will also provide direct guidance and coaching.

New dates for Vortex 2011 have just gone up on their website, and they are as follows:

Jan 19, 2011- Boot Camp – The Glass Factory
Feb 2, 2011- Round 1 Competition – Bell Lightbox – Toronto
Feb 24, 2011- Round 2 Competition – The Glass Factory
March 30, 2011- Finals – Bell Lightbox – Toronto

Considering the fact that many of you are making games for GMD 2011, this might be the ideal event where you can submit your prototype game for a chance to get professional feedback on it and have it developed to be sold commercially. With all of the big-named speakers and guests who are scheduled to be in attendance, including major executives from Disney Interactive and BioWare, Vortex is something to seriously consider.

The last day to enter a game concept or prototype submission for the Vortex competition is January 3. Visit the Vortex website to learn more about the speakers, workshops, and competition featured at this event. If you are signing up to attend and/or compete, consider using the early bird promo code that is mentioned here on the Vortex website.