Interactive Indies

Graeme Borland is a multidisciplinary game developer, frequent game jam participant, and tall person who does not play basketball. From working on VR games at Owlchemy Labs to his daily sketch blog, Graeme is seldom without a handful of projects on the go. He enjoys coming up with tasty bite-sized games for events like Ludum Dare and Pegjam, and daydreaming about what to work on next. He also likes cats, ramen, and grapefruit juice - none of which are discussed in this episode.

Kert is a renowned indie game trailer craftsman and VFX industry veteran. He helped pioneer the creation of high quality Mixed Reality VR videos with the debut of the Fantastic Contraption and Job Simulator trailers for the HTC VIVE. While he isn't immersed in VR, Kert is making some of the greatest indie game trailers out there working with the teams behind games like Nuclear Throne, Hotline Miami, Spelunky, FEZ, Broforce, TowerFall, and many more. In a past life, he contributed to over 25 Hollywood movies such as Superman Returns, Across the Universe, X-men III, and Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D.

Julian Beutel grew up in the Canadian prairies playing classical piano and jazz trumpet, then moved to Los Angeles where a passion for composing for film and video games was awakened. In 2015 he composed the music for An Object at Rest, shortlisted for the Oscar for Best Animated Short. He now lives in Winnipeg, Manitoba as a freelance composer and game jam enthusiast. Other projects he's worked on include My Magical Friend, SkyBoats, and If It Ain't Got.

Born and raised in Winnipeg, Matheu grew up on the golden age of 8-bit video games. After graduating from the University of Manitoba with a degree in Film Studies and Philosophy, Matheu had a not completely unsuccessful run as a independent filmmaker before he became a programmer. Once he got into coding, his love for art and his love for video games drove him to get involved in the indie game community. While attending Red River College, Matheu founded a game development club where his classmate programmers, and the students from the school's digital arts program could meet, collaborate, and create games. A passionate student, Matheu is loving working in industry and is looking forward to the endless learning that lies ahead of him.

Adrian Cheater is a transgender woman, game programmer and co-founder of Complex Games, contributing to the development of over 15 titles. Born and raised in Winnipeg, she became interested in computers at a young age and has been actively coding for 30 years. She has worked with a number of languages and platforms over the years, though her professional work focuses mostly in Unity3D, and web development using a combination of C#, Ruby, and Python.

The bombastic Michael Gooch. QA Tester for Square-Enix by day, Game Designer by night, this nomadic fellow has been developing his own games all over Canada and the UK for over 4 years, with his most recent mobile release delving into the historic recreation of Hnefatafl, a board game played by traveling Vikings in their quest of discovery and up-to-no-goodery.

Currently working on a Space Dog Fight Card Game and other small side projects, Michael hopes to not only develop mechanically interesting games, but emotionally expressive and intrinsically investigative experiences that allows the player to explore complex ideas in the sandbox of game design.

Aaron Kostuik is the CEO of AYBOnline Inc which started as a small internet cafe in 2001 and grew to host multiple LAN parties a year by 2003. Eventually, AYBOnline directed its focus to competitive gaming and started to host some of the largest gaming tournaments in central Canada and the northern United States, these events have become known as BaseLAN. Although considered a university drop out, he is also an engineer for cloud security at Microsoft Azure/O365.

Josh Grand, formerly a SharePoint Developer/JIRA Administrator with Bell MTS, is a hobbyist game developer and professional procrastinator. When he's not playing games, he's thinking of game ideas that are far too difficult to implement at his current skill level. One day, he hopes to release an RPG that will rival those of his childhood favorites. Shera Starr is a 3D surfacing/modeling/character FX artist, having recently worked on the movie Next Gen. She loves making video games, gardening, crafting, and baking in her spare time. She's developed many personal RPG projects starting at the ripe young age of 11, dabbling within OHRRPGCE.

Together, they're a crime-fighting duo that teams up to tackle ridiculous game jam challenges and overall have a great time.

Daniel Blair founded Bit Space Development in 2015, working in interactive digital media focused on developing augmented and virtual reality experiences for serious purposes. He serves as technology advisor for North Forge Technology Exchange where he founded the Advanced ICT Lab. Dan also sits on the board of directors for New Media Manitoba where he works to grow the IDM industry in Manitoba. In 2016 Daniel received the future leaders of Manitoba award as well as the CICAN award. Daniel enjoys working with emerging technologies and will tell you he is almost addicted to new tech.

Sara Wilde is a 3D Character Artist, a coffee drinker, travel enthusiast and cat lover. Living and working in Winnipeg, Manitoba Sara does a combination of freelance, teaching, and convention work. Her love of learning and new challenges makes her extra appreciative to live in a community that allows for so much diversity in her work.