Category Archives: Arts and Entertainment

Champlain Montreal: 2019 Ubisoft Game Lab Competition

By Erin Warner | Management & Innovation Major | Class of 2020

Since the establishment of Ubisoft Montreal’s Quebec studio in 1997, the gaming company has devised a series of programs to educate and inspire young minds with a passion for STEM. One of these programs titled, The Game Lab Competition, has gained the attention of the Champlain College Montreal campus. The Game Lab Competition occurs over the course of 10 weeks in which a team of undergraduate students must deliver a playable video game prototype.

Nick Deluzio, a Champlain junior who is majoring in Game Design, will be collaborating with 7 other Champlain students ranging in majors from Game Animation to Game Programming on one of the two teams representing Champlain Montreal. Each team has been tasked with the creation of a game under the guiding theme, Spectacle. This means, the game must be designed where the player is an audience member guiding the plot through interactions.

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The Internship Chronicles: Genevieve & Megan

By Genevieve Guimond (GDES ’20) and Megan Hoins (PWRT ’19)

During the Fall 2018 semester, two of our students interned at Double Stallion’s Montreal studio. 

Genevieve

Double Stallion was founded in 2013, and was helped along in its inception by the game company incubator Execution Labs. Their first two games were mobile: Big Action Mega Fight! was released on iOS and Android in 2013 and OK K.O.! Lakewood Plaza Turbo! was released in 2016. That game is actually a property that Double Stallion partnered with Cartoon Network to create based on their show OK K.O.! Let’s Be Heroes. During development on two of these games, Double Stallion moved on to start their most recently released project: Speed Brawl. Continue reading →

Megan Says Goodbye

By Megan Hoins (PWRT ’19)

I’m going to be honest: I really didn’t think Montreal would have a huge impact on me. I just figured it would be another semester, albeit with a lot of new, fun experiences in a totally new place.

That didn’t happen. If anything, this semester had the most impact on me out of any I’ve had at Champlain, since it allowed me to get to know myself for, really, the first time in my life.

Going abroad meant depending on myself, in a lot of ways: making my own food, commuting to work, and living apart from the big college community I was used to. It also meant spending a lot of time by myself, which, as a social introvert, sounded perfectly ideal to me. Continue reading →

Abby’s Final Thoughts

By Abby Scott (MRKT ’20)

When I crossed the bridge into Montreal back in August it suddenly hit me that this is where I would be until December. I have previously worked at an overnight summer camp that would keep me away from home for two months during the summer, but somehow I was still a little apprehensive about being away from everything that was familiar for so long. It had been easy for me to say that Burlington was only an hour or so away so Montreal wouldn’t be too different until I arrived. The first week here I quickly realized that I was going to be living in a city with it’s own rich and unique culture. Almost immediately, I fell in love with the city and those who formed its unique culture.

I have deeply rooted faith that purposefully placing yourself outside of your comfort zone creates an environment that nurtures growth. If we were comfortable all the time, we would never test our limits and see what we are truly capable of. During my time in Montreal, there were definitely challenges that pushed me out of my comfort zone. For me, speaking French is something that makes me wildly uncomfortable. I studied French for three years in high school and picked it up again this semester. I can read quite a few things and understand when someone speaks to me. However, speaking was always difficult because I felt I would look dense or say something wrong. Continue reading →

City Flavours

By Megan Hoins (PWRT ’19)

When I initially came to Montreal, I was a bit wary of the supposed “lack” of student activities. There wouldn’t be any clubs up here, and I thought because of that, there wouldn’t be as many events to go to. Where were the volunteer sessions? The trips downtown? The free food???

Lucky for me, I was immediately proven wrong. Champlain Montreal constantly has activities going on and (even luckier for me) tons of those activities involve free food. Continue reading →

Experiencing Emerging Media

By Abby Scott (MRKT ’20)

One of the trends I’ve noticed while being in Montreal is that teachers will go out of their way to bring the class into the community of Montreal. All of my classes have had outings into the city to museums, cinemas, walking tours, and more. As someone who finds it really hard for concentrate on one thing for a really long time these types of classes really help me stay
focused and understand the content we are given to learn.

One class that has had a lot of these outings has been CCM 301: Emerging Media and Innovation. Earlier in the semester the class went to the PHI Center for an exhibition with a variety of virtual reality art pieces. Manic, one of the more popular VR pieces, is actually based on a documentary movie of the same title. It was filmed and directed by Kalina Bertin, a Montreal artist who later in the semester was kind enough to come talk to us at the academic
center after a screening of the documentary. Continue reading →

A Foot in the Door: Company Visits

By Emmett Friedrichs (GDES ’20)

Among the many off-campus activities I participated in this semester, there are none that I enjoyed more than the company visits. While many of our visits are simply tours of the establishment, some are more personal. Even the tours opened up untold secrets of the game industry, and new possibilities for networking. This all packaged into a single trip in which we explore the city of Montreal just a little bit more. Parties set up by companies/studios or events and conventions such as MEGA or MIGS allow even more networking and communication through direct conversations. Continue reading →

On That Note: The Music Scene in Montreal

By Megan Hoins (PWRT ’19)

Jonathan Vogt (PWRT ’19) at the Years & Years show in Montreal.

Everyone has their favorite hobby, and I think hobbies can often tell us about a place, whether it is poking around thrift stores, skateboarding, or something else entirely. For me, concerts are simultaneously my favorite thing to do in my spare time and my own way of getting to know a city.

It’s funny to me that I like them so much, too, as I’m a clear introvert who doesn’t seem like she’d enjoy being in the middle of a huge crowd of people. But there’s something about being in a room full of people singing to your favorite songs with an artist you love that makes everything seem worth it. Concerts are the places where I feel most happy, so it only makes sense that I would try to attend as many as possible when I came to Montreal. Continue reading →

A College Student’s Guide To Chinatown – Rian Atherton

By Rian Atherton (California Lutheran University ’18)

In order to talk about Chinatown, you have to first delve into the History and the customs of the people living there. Now you don’t have to be an expert on Chinatown but you should at least familiarize yourself with some of these basics. One of the most important things you need to realize if you are visiting Chinatown is that everything here is a bit different. Like all immigrant areas, the people here have brought some of their customs and traditions from overseas. First and foremost of these is that the elderly take priority sometimes you may be in a shop and you may be first and an old Chinese man or woman will walk in and a slew of rapid-fire Cantonese will fire out faster than a bullet train. Don’t be offended but you are no longer the priority, it has nothing to do with you and everything to do with the fact that they probably have known each other for decades and the Chinese have a deference for the elderly that western countries lack. That being said, it is worth the wait because the food in Chinatown is absolutely divine.

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The Internship Chronicles – Ryan Place

By Ryan Place (GDES ’19)

I worked at Tuque Games, a small game development studio situated in Montreal. Tuque is just coming off the heels of releasing their first original game, Livelock back in 2016. With the success of Livelock, the team has decided to amp up production and dive into a much more ambitious and exciting new unannounced project.

During my time with Tuque I worked under the Lead Designer Kevin Neibert and the rest of the design team on their latest unannounced project. The majority of the work I did for the team dealt primarily with player experience. In the early days of my internship I was mostly on bug testing duty while I familiarized myself with the game and its mechanics. Over time my role shifted away from specifically bug testing and more toward player experience design (though with a bit of bug testing). Continue reading →