So if you’re up for a bit of transmedia fun, you can play the game before the movie’s released. Check out the cover art, a description of the game, and some info about the competition after the jump.

You and your brother’s job — scouring the city’s highest spots for a rare building material in the year 2040 — is already hard enough. Now Anton’s gone and gotten you trapped on a rooftop. Your acrobat bloodline will help you with the deadly heights, and your brain will figure out the genmodded plants — but will you be able to cope with having the most annoying big brother alive?

Play it now.

The jayisgames Casual Game Design Competition #7 gave people two months to make a text game with an “escape-the-room” theme. It’s got a cash prize of $1000, pretty high for a IF comp, and an engaged audience of game players. I’m looking forward to checking out the other 30 or so entries!

Session title:
Creating And Nurturing Your Indie Game Community

Description:
In two short, sweet mini-talks, notable independent game community organizers discuss how you can get involved in nurturing the indie community in your local area - or for your particular flavor of independent games. Firstly, SuperHappyDevHouse and TIGJam contributor Jeff Lindsay, who has set up Hacker Dojo in the Bay Area as a permanent base for the tech community, will explain what he’s learned from being involved in indie game site TIGSource and his other projects in the tech community. Next, Toronto-based independent creator Jim Munroe, the person behind local indie game-centric events like The Hand Eye Society and The Artsy Games Incubator, explains how the area has grown a strong indie community and how you can mobilize your area to flood “out of the basement and into the streets!”

(Note: The session time hasn’t been confirmed yet, but it’ll be either the 9th or 10th.)

* soundtrack composition
* special effects and titling
* colour correction
* audio post and ADR

If you or someone you know are into finding out more, drop us a line! We unfortunately can’t pay up front, but click through to see if you’re excited enough by what we’ve shot so far to help us out anyway.

In 2040, a generation of Torontonians have grown up after the economic collapse of the west. The movie consists of episodes of a documentary series popular in mainland China about the bad jobs some white people have — the plucky and resilient souls unlucky enough to be born into the slums of North America are both amusing and moving to the Chinese audience.

Oscar is a digital janitor, and has to manually cover up logos for copyright reasons in the future’s answer to Google StreetView maps.

He doesn’t really know why he’s on a show about bad jobs, because he thinks his job is pretty great — he gets to see history come alive in front of his eyes, like the garbagemen who fancy themselves like archaeologists.

But the long hours and loneliness are getting to him, especially since the death of his mother.

Gary and Karen are babymakers. They assemble robot baby dolls for the children of the wealthy in Asia.

They’re so indistinguishable from real babies that the crying, diapers and feeding of a half-dozen units at once is driving the couple a little crazy and straining their relationship. Both of them are hugely overqualified for the job, but while Gary has a reasonable ten-year plan, the more ambitious Karen would do anything to be making battlebots now.

Anton and Toph are silk collectors. Twenty years ago a herd of gigantic spiders ran amok over the eastern seaboard after a genelab outbreak, leaving behind buildings swathed in spider web silk.

Although highly toxic and difficult to collect, people like Anton and Toph risk their lives to get it — it’s worth its weight in gold as an ultrastrong building material.

Anton, the enthusiastic and delusional older brother, loves the idea of becoming famous for collecting the Tower silk. Toph, the more intelligent younger brother who actually does the collecting, knows it’s a deathtrap.

Serina is human spam. She makes a living by mentioning brands and products in casual conversation, and is credited based on their status and wealth.

Because of the life she’s chosen, she’s disconnected from friends and family but protected by a lipstick-sized tazer and her “people” in the Nigerian cartel.

A chameleon and professionally skilled at reinvention, her good humour and friendliness is only skin deep — beneath it is a cold and ruthless survivor.

Printed Matter or Printed Doesn’t Matter?
Moderated by Jeff Miller (Ghost Pine fanzine)
Sat. Nov. 14th, 3pm

Expozine is Saturday, November 14 and Sunday, November 15, 2009, from 12 p.m. to 6 p.m. at 5035 St-Dominique (Église Saint-Enfant Jésus, between St-Joseph and Laurier, near Laurier Métro). Free admission.

I’m also going to stick around for MIGS, the Montreal International Game Summit.

This year we’ll be unveiling the indie arcade cabinet, having stations where people can draw their own videogame character which we’ll bring to life, inviting artists to sculpt in the 3D environment of a first person shooter, and more!

Sunday Nov 1st, Gladstone Hotel (1214 Queen St. West), 1-7pm, $5.

It’s been tremendously encouraging to see the response to Everybody Dies, so much so that I’ve started planning a new adventure game with crazy-talented artist Ben Shannon. Click through for more!

A Nose For Trouble puts the player in the small shoes of Cynthia. Unknown to her friends and family, she’s a synesthete (an actual neural “crossed-wires” condition) and sometimes she “hears” smells, or sometimes even “sees” something when she sniffs it. This gives her clues about her environment that the people around her don’t get, and she uses them to solve mysteries in her colourful island community.

But the strangest mystery of all is that there’s a monster on the loose, and Cynthia and her nose decide to track it down. When she does, Cynthia’s faced with a choice: turn it in or befriend it?

Depending on what choice is made, Cynthia’s life goes in two radically different ways. Ten years later, living in a world torn apart by Monster vs. Human conflict, she has to deal with the consequences…

Click through to see the list and Sanford Kong’s awesome concept art. Get in touch at casting@lofiscifi.com with any questions/ideas.




Actors

• The Documentarian: An older Asian man, 40+.
• The restaurant owner: A 30+ Asian man or woman.
• The down-on-her-luck lady: A 40+ Caucasian woman.
• The high-flying businesswoman: A 30+ Asian woman.
• A well-off older gent: A 50+ man.
• Extras/Backgrounders: If you don’t fit any of these, we’d love to have you as one of the crowd of doodlefaces.

Art Dept./Crew

• Sound: if you’re available and reliable, we can train you.
• Lighting: If you like to sculpt with shadows, let us know.
• Wardrobe: Can you imagine what folks will be wearing in 2040? Know how to customize Value Village finds?
• Set dec: We have to dress up locations so they look different. Hopefully you have better ideas than “a lot of tin foil”.
• P.A.s: If you’re willing to be an extra pair of hands for the experience.

Locations
We have insurance.

• a luxury car/limo
• a bar
• a doctor’s office
• a doctor’s waiting room
• a convenience store
• a toy store

Get in touch at casting@lofiscifi.com.

One of the things we did differently with this book was research, and so I’ll take this opportunity to write a bit about that.

I’m a big believer in the notion that just living a varied life is a valid kind of research, and most of my creative work has pretty clearly drawn from my life in one way or another. (I have to rely on my recent history because, frankly, I have a pretty shitty memory — I’m envious of writers who can dip back into their childhood with ease.)

I’ve never liked research because it felt like homework. Obligatory. But I definitely needed to do it for Sword — I’d only visited Detroit once very briefly and I didn’t want to fuck up my characterization of that troubled and unique city. And it really helped — not only did it make me feel less fraudulent, but it gave the book a thematic core and direction I wouldn’t have hit upon myself.

Here’s five approaches to research that worked for me.

1. Choose a research subject that you’re fascinated in — not just something you think would make a good story subject. I’ve been interested in Detroit ever since a brief visit in ‘94, but despite it only being 4 hours away I’d never visited again. Writing a book set there was a great way to spend some focused time learning about the place. Even if I decided not to write the book it would have been time well spent.

2. Talk to people. Let everyone know what you’re researching. Talk to experts & enthusiasts alike. On the phone or in person — email interviews are just work for people. Be social, have some fun, meet some characters and see how far a conversation with a stranger can go.

3. Go places. There’s a million details that even a gorgeous photo won’t expose you to. Get a list of places of interest you’d like to visit and maybe go with one of the strangers from #2. Research as adventure! Shannon and I went to Detroit twice for a few days — she got tons of photo refs, and I got lots of story and character ideas.

4. Niche websites and blogs are good starting places. Especially when they can connect you with people and new places to go. For me it was a good starting point for cultural touchstones like scrappers, 8 Mile, political corruption.

5. Read some books in a style you enjoy. Long form non-fiction generally makes me glaze over (which allows me to daydream about the subject at hand, so admittedly still useful) so I went with some more entertainingly written books. While a bit sensational, Devil’s Night: And Other True Tales of Detroit by Zev Chafets was a compelling read and gave me some ideas about the racial dynamics that are still relevant today, 20 years after it was written.

Final thoughts: in excess, research can be a procrastination method with diminishing returns. But for someone like me, who is more on the make-it-up-as-you-go school, it’s helped bring a richness in ideas and specificity in detail to my recent work — and has been enjoyable to boot.