So, in the couple months since my last post, I have become an indie video game developer with quite the buzz in the local industry surrounding my (soon to be released) first game.

I know what you’re thinking:

What?

Because I am thinking it myself.

How did this happen?

I’ve long had a interest in video games, but in recent years they have evolved into a truely transformative medium which allows for artfully rendered graphics, engaging story telling, and deep immersion via gameplay. It is an art form with potential, like no other.

So, a couple months ago, I applied to and got into the first edition of a Video Game making workshop, and met a group of amazing, life-changing friends.

The program is called the Difference Engine Initiative, and its aim was diversity in the Video Game Industry by way of getting women involved and integrated into the sausage party that is games. It proposed to do that by turning a small group of six women into indie game devs by helping us make our own, very first video games.

But what happened in between the game making was just as important as the game making itself.

What happened in between the game making, was that we discussed all the crappy ways we’ve been held at arms length from the industry and art form we all love.

And that galvaninized us:

To make our games awesome.

To continue making awesome games.

To talk about women in gaming (loudly).

To bring everyone we can in on the conversation.

To change things from the inside.

The reaction from the industry, from the tight knit Toronto based indie gaming community we are now a part of has been, absotutely ASTOUNDING. We have been embraced, and nobody really even knows what our games look like yet.

That, as you can imagine, is a lot of pressure.

But we are nothing, if not up to the task.

So in the next couple weeks, you’ll start learning more about what my game looks like, and what my new friends and I have planned for the future. Which is looking awful bright and shiny, if I do say so myself.

If you want to come see (and possibly play!) my game (and the games of my friends) in person, you should come out to the Hand Eye Society Social at the Gladstone on October third. You will not regret it, I promise you.