According to CBC’s Chris Boyce, the goal of this weekend’s CBCMusic.ca Festival is twofold. First and foremost, the CBC wants to celebrate Canadian music. Second, it wants to celebrate CBC Music, the broadcaster’s online music service, which launched a little over a year ago.

In 1996, Theatre Columbus premiered playwright Michael O’Brien’s “freely adapted” take on the famous Beaumarchais play The Barber of Seville, which was written in 1775. O’Brien’s version mixed in music from the 1816 opera of the same name by Gioachino Rossini, as well as original tunes by composer John Millard. The adaptation also propelled the story forward a couple centuries, with pop culture references galore. With Theatre Columbus co-founder Leah Cherniak at the helm, the musical ended the season with six Dora Award nominations (it won three) and plenty of critical acclaim.

Seventeen years later, Soulpepper Theatre is remounting this zany reimagination of The Barber of Seville, updated once again by O’Brien, Millard, and Cherniak. But, for some reason—the change in decade, or company, or sense of humour—whatever had made the original so magical, has faded, save for a few key performances.

It’s really only been a few years since the social web has become ubiquitous, and the growing pains are still apparent in what has already become an all-too-familiar story: an employee mouths off about their job, are found out, and summarily dismissed.

There are at least two sides in every conflict. In this particular kind of tension one can defend freedom of speech or the freedom to face consequences for that free speech—and few would argue that when you directly call out your employer online, you’re not asking for trouble.

But what if you create a work related to your line of work without referencing your employer? Do you deserve to be fired for that?

In December a Brampton man, David S. Gallant, released I Get This Call Every Day, a point-and-click game for PCs that he describes as a “personal tale of unwinnable realities.” In the game the player takes the role of a call centre employee trying to verify a caller’s details, trapped between the bureaucratic demands of a call centre script and (understandably) impatient customers. The unspoken inspiration for his game was Gallant’s day job at the Canada Revenue Agency’s call centre—unspoken, that is, until he was outed by the Toronto Star.

After their article about his after-hours creative work, Gallant was fired.

Gallant didn’t tell the Star who his employer was: the paper discovered where Gallant worked independently (when the reporter asked Gallant about this he declined to confirm his employer’s identity) and informed National Revenue Minister Gail Shea, seeking comment about Gallant’s game. She responded through her communications director, Clarke Olsen, that “the Minister considers this type of conduct offensive and completely unacceptable. The Minister has asked the Commissioner (of Revenue, Andrew Treusch) to investigate and take any and all necessary corrective action. The Minister has asked the CRA to investigate urgently to ensure no confidential taxpayer information was compromised.”

Some important points: I Get This Call Every Day features no references to the Canada Revenue Agency. There is one use of a (fake, eight digit) social insurance number to potentially locate the game within Canada, and one offhand reference to a tax return. The game captures the experience of working at an entirely generic call centre—as specific as an average Dilbert cartoon. And Gallant didn’t name his employer to any media outlet, not until the Star did so first.

Gallant, who I spoke with by phone last week, admits that he “always had in the back of my mind that the game could get me into trouble with my employer.” He didn’t, however, think it would go anything like this far. “It was just, ‘hey, great, media coverage, and it’s from a traditional outlet.’ I thought I couldn’t have asked for anything better… I didn’t think that termination would be the final result. I knew trouble could have been—that could have been a verbal or written warning, being asked to modify or remove the game from public view. Honestly I didn’t really think that Canada Revenue Agency would ever have a reason to pay attention to a little game like mine.” (It’s unclear whether they would have if the Star hadn’t been in touch; Gallant told us that his termination was related to his having been “identified publicly as a CRA employee” in the story.)

Gallant is adamant that his game was not targeting the CRA. “Even that one reference to a tax return, it’s not a focus to the game, it’s just one of the questions among several… The call is about changing an address. That could happen in any call centre, be that government or private sector or what have you. I mean, that was my intention, I very purposely tried to make sure the game didn’t reflect my current employment, when I made it, because I wasn’t trying to say anything about working at Canada Revenue Agency specifically, just about working at call centres in general.”

Valerie Hauch, the reporter who covered the story for the Star also doesn’t know what information might be in the game that could concern the revenue agency, make the game seem “offensive and completely unacceptable,” or worry that “confidential taxpayer information” could have been compromised. “I have no idea why they brought up that reference to confidential tax information, there’s no reference to that in the game,” she told us.

Playing the game itself makes it clear that it was no attempt to get fired.

“I worked for the Canada Revenue Agency because of financial need,” says Gallant. “If I wanted to quit, I would have quit. But I wasn’t able to quit. And I’m only really lucky that the situation has turned around so drastically that it’s not a complete financial meltdown for me and my family right now. I was really worried walking out of that office before sales of the game picked up. I didn’t know how I was going to pay my next month’s rent. I had February, but beyond that for March, I was incredibly worried.”

The future remains “a big worry” for Gallant. Game sales have picked up since his story garnered attention, but “that potential of financial failure is still there. It’s been deferred most definitely, but I don’t really know what’s going to happen next. I’m probably still going to try and get a job and try and make ends meet, that or I try and make a big indie success and we all know what kind of a huge gamble that is.”

As for the game itself, Gallant says, “The narrative has really been twisted by the media. A lot of people are seeing the game as putting down the type of people who call call centres, and that’s not the point. I really was trying to create empathy for both sides. The caller is in a bad situation, he is not a bad person, he may not have everything together, and may be rude at times but people are like that. No one can ever look at their lives and say they haven’t been that person at some point. And the agent is stuck in a position where really they do want to help, but they’ve got so many hoops to jump through themselves. If they just skip that bureaucracy and try and help that person, they get in trouble for that.”

Apparently, if they try to turn that experience into a game, they do too.

We look at concepts and products that, for better and worse, were developed in Toronto.

Diagram of the original table hockey game, from Donald Munro's American patent, issued 1936. Image from Google Patents.

Like many people during the Great Depression, Toronto resident Donald Munro was unable to lavish his children with Christmas gifts. Not wanting to go without giving them something during the 1932 holiday season, he took various items from around his home—clothes pins, wire hangers, clock springs, and lumber—and patched together a toy. The result, as described in the introduction of the American patent he received four years later, was “a novel and amusing parlour game simulative of hockey, and calling for the exercise of skill and judgement on the part of the players in order to score against each other.” He had, of course, invented table hockey.

Noticing the enjoyment shared by everyone who played the game, Munro pondered its commercial possibilities. He convinced Eaton’s to take several games on consignment. Almost immediately, the retailer asked for more. Munro soon established a toy company to manufacture his game, so he could supply major retailers like Eaton’s and Simpson’s. Many sales came through department store catalogues, where, by the start of the ’40s, a game could be ordered for five dollars.

Early versions of Munro’s game were like a two-player pinball game, with wooden pins representing players. A slight hump in the middle sloped the playing surface, making it easier for the puck (originally a ball bearing) to move to either end of the “ice.” The game evolved, growing from four flippers to five and adding on-ice elements like bluelines and face-off circles.

The game was popular with troops during World War II. Munro’s son, Donald Jr., is said to have been called upon to repair games around military installations in Great Britain. Back home, Munro Toys expanded its product line to include games like crokinole, as well as a mechanical baseball game endorsed by Babe Ruth.

Present-day competitive table hockey. Photo by Corbin Smith/Torontoist.

By the mid-1950s, it was estimated that 75,000 Canadian homes owned a table hockey game. Competition from firms like Eagle Toys spurred refinements, like the replacement of wooden pegs with rods that allowed competitors to spin their players and move them up and down the ice. Deluxe editions added goal lights, period timers, representations of NHL teams, and more realistic boards.

In 1968, Munro Toys, by then based in Burlington, was sold to Buffalo-based aerospace firm Servotronics. “They knew a lot about science,” Donald Munro Jr. mused to the Globe and Mail in 1995, “but they didn’t know much about toys or hockey.” In May 1977, after the company defaulted on a loan, Munro Toys went into receivership. While the popularity of table hockey has dipped since the advent of video games, loyal players continue to conduct home games and participate in local competitions.

Additional material from the May 24, 1977 and December 2, 1995 editions of the Globe and Mail.

The new exhibition "Plein-Air In My Pocket" at the Gladstone Hotel features works by artist Edward Chee done on the Nintendo DS.

“Plein-Air In My Pocket“
Gladstone Hotel Art Bar (1214 Queen Street West)
October 4–10

A new exhibition opens today at the Gladstone Hotel, filled with pieces of fine art with a twist—all the work in “Plein-Air In My Pocket” was created on the Nintendo DS, a portable gaming system. The DS has a touch-sensitive screen, and using a program called Colors!, artist Edward Chee was able to—as the title notes—paint “en plein air,” a French expression meaning “outdoors,” with a device that he could carry comfortably in his pocket. The context of the works shifts when Chee reveals that the mobility of the DS allowed him to paint during a family emergency, his father’s hospital stay while fighting cancer.

For Chee, the ability to paint was more than a way to pass the hours waiting in the hospital. “It allowed me to spend some time with him, look at him, draw him, see him, while he told stories about old-China or something,” he notes in an email. With his father now healthy, the paintings are a reminder of a difficult time, but one that allowed for bonding between the pair. (Chee jokes that although his father thinks the paintings of “Plein-Air” are well done, Chee should still get a “real job.”)

Chee chose the DS for his work because the Nintendo device has a pressure-sensitive resistive screen rather than the capacitative screen found in most smartphones and tablets. He says he is now awaiting the new version of Colors!, recently announced for the next-generation Nintendo 3DS device, which would allow for 3D artwork. Very soon, Chee will get an opportunity to push plein-air painting into a new dimension.

Hammill describes Gesundheit as “a little Bomberman, a little Metal Gear Solid“; players control an unnamed green pig trying to stealthily avoid being eaten by monsters while attempting to lure them into traps. You touch the screen to move the green pig and a slingshot motion fires mucous balls—an alluring snack for the monsters and, thus, the perfect bait. By landing balls of mucous near the monsters, you draw them Hansel and Gretel–style to their doom.
The odd concept stems from an endearing source as an homage to Hammill’s girlfriend, who during the design of the game was suffering from bad allergies. “At first, the idea was that you’d lead monsters around with food, but my girlfriend was sneezing all the time. And I had a sprite of her as a placeholder graphic, so I thought I’d make it sneeze, and then the sneezing kind of stuck,” he explains. “And we’re still together!”

Toronto illustrator and animator Matt Hammill was the brain behind the new iOS game Gesundheit. Photo courtesy of Matt Hammill.

The game began as a hobby project while Hammill was a student at Sheridan College. Hammill says he’s always had an interest in games, since the days of the Atari 2600, Nintendo Entertainment System, and Commodore 64, and as a child he made his own trading cards for the bosses of famed side-scroller Mega Man. He knew he wanted to make games when he found Adventure Game Studio, a programming tool that let people build point-and-click graphic adventure titles like Myst and Secret of Monkey Island. While Hammill didn’t end up making a point-and-click game, his interest was piqued and he set off to make a spatial puzzle game that would become Gesundheit.
The project, originally conceived as a computer game, drew notice from the get-go for its artwork, first shown in a student showcase at the Independent Games Festival. In 2010, a version of the game was built into an arcade cabinet (similar to the Torontron machines) for a video-game event held by the Hand Eye Society during Nuit Blanche. Although a demo for the PC was created, Australian studio Revolutionary Concepts approached Hammill to bring Gesundheit to iOS devices instead, and soon after games giant Konami, which has released seminal titles such as Contra and Silent Hill, came on board to publish the game. “To have it come from a little hobby project to something that was picked by Konami is pretty exciting,” beams Hammill.
In terms of expectations for the game’s success, Hammill says he’s trying not to think too much about it. Still, he adds: “I hope people respond to it. When you’re making indie games, it’s always in your little basement or wherever, so to see people play your game is pretty neat.” In the meantime, he’s working on his follow-up title, again with Revolutionary Concepts. No word if green pigs or snot-loving monsters are involved.

Sound Shapes is a collaboration between Mak and electronic music artist Shaw-Han Liem, better known as I Am Robot and Proud. Mak is well-known for his integration of sound and music into gameplay and, for the PlayStation blog, he describes the game as “both a musical instrument and a classic 2D platformer. You can use it to make music, but then you can ‘play’ that music like it’s a video game.” Players build levels in the game and at the same time build a song, since each component has a musical element to it. Music, instead of being a passive element, becomes an active part of gameplay. Notes scattered around a level map can be accumulated to build up the background music in the game. A laser beam is not only an obstacle, but might correspond to a beat from a snare drum.
The biggest downside for fans of Mak’s work will be the wait until Sound Shapes‘ release. The game is set as a launch title for the new PlayStation portable console Vita, which won’t appear in stores until Christmas 2011.

According to Wandel, his fascination with woodworking began at a young age in his father’s workshop. “My dad also used to make custom furniture for people,” he explains on his site. “This has always been lucky for me, as it meant having access to a large and well equipped workshop, as well as lumber.”
Today, he has his own workshop in his basement in Ottawa, and although other materials might be better suited for some of his projects, he still prefers to work with wood. “I have wood and you can make things out of wood a lot faster than you can make things out of metal,” Wandel told Torontoist. “You can also cut wood a lot faster than you can cut metal, so it’s quite logical.”
While some of his machines, like his combination lock, were built to drive traffic to his website, others were born from necessity. In 2003, when a neighbour’s apple grinder was unavailable for his parents to use, Wandel decided to construct his own, and in 2009, he built a marble run track out of wooden blocks to give to his nephew for Christmas. Wandel admits that the gift was probably too complex for a three-year-old, though he reports that his nephew’s parents had “a blast playing with the blocks.”

One of Wandel’s most time-consuming projects was his pipe organ, which he was inspired to build after taking an introductory music course in his final year of university. “The organ was also quite a challenging project,” said Wandel. “I wanted some kind of keyboard instrument and I didn’t really feel like buying one, so I started experimenting…It’s a good conversation piece for whenever I have visitors here.”
In addition to woodworking, Wandel has also built Lego marble machines, domino stackers, a digital camera from the components of a flatbed scanner, and a few online games, including an eyeballing game that tests geometric perception. (Warning: If you start playing the eyeballing game you won’t get anything else done today.) “I always felt that some people are better at [eyeballing] things than others,” explained Wandel. “So I thought, well, wouldn’t it be neat to write a little test for that?”

So far, working from home has been pretty lucrative. In October 2008, after receiving dozens of emails from fans wanting to buy plans for his machines, Wandel started selling some of his schematics online. “If you have a customer base, and the customer base keeps asking for something, they’re telling you there’s an opportunity,” he said. “A year ago I was selling one or two plans a week. Now I’m selling about thirty to forty plans a week.” From ad revenue and design sales, his site pulled in more than three thousand dollars in December 2009, and he expects to make around $3,500 this month.
Wandel told us that he’s still somewhat amazed by his site’s success, but added that while he appreciates feedback from his fans, he’s sick of people suggesting that he build a wooden clock. “Why would I build a wooden clock?” asked Wandel rhetorically. “That’s been done before.”