The second round of the Artsy Games Incubator went terrific: all five of us ended up with videogames you can download and play: check out Mouse Police, Bungee Fisher, Cupcake Challenge, Albacross, and my own Baby Runs This Mofo.

It’s a good excuse to interview one of the founding sponsors of the AGI project, Jon Mak, a Toronto game designer who Newsweek dubbed a “wunderkind”. His abstract videogame Everyday Shooter came out for the PS3 and now it’s available on the PC — if you’d like a chance at winning a free copy, leave a comment in response to the MP3 interview I did with him below. In it Jon explains why Guitar Hero is fun despite being a sucky game, that he learns best through failing, how he made ES while working part-time for money thanks to context switch, & how the work gets better the more you take away.

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I’ll be at my fave conference all weekend, mixing it up with some of the smartest weirdos around.

I’m doing a launch for Therefore Repent! in a party room on  Sunday with theculturalgutter.com, and doing these three back to back panels:

How I Did It All Wrong And Got Published Anyway
“Mom’s favorite aphorism was ‘Do as I say, not as I do.’ How you can learn from published authors’ mistakes (and unexpected successes) and tighten up that learning curve. ”
Saturday, 1:00-2:15 P.M.
Capitol B
M: Eileen Gunn, Kathy Steffen, Jim Munroe, Jeannie Bergmann

Here’s Where The Story Ends
“Maureen McHugh’s novels, some say, don’t have proper endings; others think that since life goes on past the end of the novel, the ending’s a matter of the author’s choice. We’ll discuss where to end a novel, how much denoument to give the characters, and other questions of wrapping things up.”
Saturday, 2:30-3:45 P.M.
Wisconsin
M: Jim Munroe, Ellen Kushner, Rachel Swirsky, Maureen McHugh, Paul Stevens

Does It Have to Get Boring Before it Gets Good?
Do you suffer from zombie fatigue? Are you getting superbored with superheroes? Excellent books like World War Z and Soon I Will Be Invincible seem to be the exception to the rule of endless zombie and superpowered crap being produced — but are they? Or does there have to be a pop culture saturation of a certain kind of genre–a laying of the groundwork–before we can get the kind of detailed and finessed dissection and resurrection of tropes that these books pull off?
Saturday, 4:00-5:15 P.M.
Assembly
M: Liz Gorinsky, Jim Munroe, David Schwartz, Nicole Bunge, Ellen Datlow

The lo-fi sci-fi movie I wrote and co-produced last year is now coming out as a DVD, complete with commentary from all seven directors with DIY no-budget filmmaking tips and tricks. To launch it we’re having a screening at the Royal Cinema, one of the last grand independent theatres in the city, Thurs. May 15th at 9pm (608 College, $10). This’ll be the first time it’s screened in Toronto since the amazing advance screening we did at Innis. There’ll be a q & a with the directors afterwards and as a bonus we’re also showing the premiere of “Luggage”, Craig Macnaughton’s new short. Craig did a great job with the design of the DVD and revamped the Infest Wisely trailer with all the great quotes we got from the media. Check out the official press release and the cover art below. Read the rest of this post »

There was a GTA4 bit recently on Conan O’Brien that made me think the writers might have watched my 2003 My Trip to Liberty City.