2023 Accomplishments

My colleague Emily Schooley asked on Facebook “what's one thing that you're proud of that you've accomplished this past year”. I went to respond… but couldn’t. Because there wasn’t one thing in 2023. There was just so much, I didn’t know where to begin. Encouraged by many, I wrote it down. And then realized that my writing is getting worse as I get older (thank you autism and learning disabilities!) So I asked our talented marketing content creator Kenzie Pascoe to edit (whew!). And then Ted Brunt reminded me of some Sticky Brain Studios things I missed – because it has been that full of a year!

I will admit that it feels strange to have written a something about all sorts of happy at a time when there are seemingly daily layoffs in games and tech and many friends are going “what next?” in their careers as a result. Maybe what I write here inspires others to go “you know what, I’m going to do this thing I’ve wanted to do – I can do that now”. But also, maybe it's nice to celebrate some wins instead of no wins? That is my intent with this article at least.

So much good stuff at Sticky Brain Studios . None of these accomplishments are solely mine, they are all collaborative with Ted Brunt and the rest of the team, but still things I’m proud of.

Operationally

We grew the Sticky Brain team: starting the year with 1 part time and 6 full time employees (which included me and Ted) and ending the year with 1 PT and 10 FT. ?It is kind of scary to realize we have that many people to be responsible for (in addition to 3-5 regular freelancers!) but seeing their work and watching them grow into their roles helps reassure me that this is all good.

We now have an official employment policy and employee handbook! Huge thank you to Hermie Abraham from Advocation for guiding us through the process. We are proud of the document, and the balance we struck with Hermie's support between what is law, what is corporate culture, and what is just ethically the right thing to do. These practices will be ever evolving, but we are starting from the right place, and will listen to our colleagues as we consider ongoing changes.

To fulfill our goals of building internal training systems, we welcomed co-op students from Sheridan College and a field placement student from Centennial College. We hired new talent who had not yet found their way into the industry and gave them space to flourish. We also hired someone who had exclusively worked in film/TV, was impacted by the local animation industry layoffs, provided training on game animation software as part of their onboarding process, and in only a few weeks is doing amazing work! For many, these are big risks, but for us, it is our contribution to growing the industry.

More on training – a big thank you to The AbleGamers Charity for their generous bursaries, which allowed nearly everyone on our Rooster art, dev and narrative teams to get their Certified Accessible Player Experience (APX) Practitioner designation so we can challenge ourselves to make Rooster as accessible as possible for the broadest range of players.

I am proud to watch our newly minted senior talent grow into their roles. We didn’t go looking for people who had done the job before; Ted and I found people internally who had both skill and leadership potential and have been guiding them.

Thanks to Canada Media Fund | Fonds des médias du Canada ’s Accelerator Partnership Program, we were able to hire Jennifer Singh from She's Newsworthy Media and James Woods from Innovate By Day to provide valuable training for our team. Everyone on our senior creative team received media training, and our marketing team benefited from social media mentorship. As our projects progress, everyone is getting the opportunity to use these new skills which is making the gear up for 2024 exciting!

We applied for Creative Export Canada funding! If you haven’t done one of these before, they are a beast. Unfortunately, they are 12 weeks behind on announcing their results, so we still don’t know if our efforts paid off. Even if we aren’t successful, I’m still impressed with what we pulled together. Big thank you to the Toronto Region Board of Trade for their Trade Accelerator Program in 2022 which gave us the knowledge and therefore confidence to submit what we did.

Processes! With so many more people on staff, Ted and I realized that we needed to get our IP pipeline documented so the team understood how we take games from idea to pitching for funding. That way, if employees want to pitch us ideas, they knew how greenlight decisions would be made, how option agreements work, ?and what happens leading up to the funding pitches. We have so many more processes to develop. I wrote this section after meeting with our Technical Director for Rooster about the additional processes we need to get documented… hooray for 2024 planning already!

Finishing the seemingly forever project of finessing our branding. Our new website launched earlier this year but had a lot of content gaps in photos and videos. We are finally on track to fill those content gaps in early 2024! In lieu of a holiday party, we held an equally fun yet productive “everyone come to the office and get new headshots, star in some corporate video b-roll, and eat good food!” gathering. Thank you to Alice Xue and team from Alice Xue Photography and Doug Benn from Innovate by Day for all your work that day, and we can't wait to see the photos and footage! If you are in Toronto and looking for fun food recommendations for your team, we ordered from three small local businesses: Omusubi Bar Suzume, Real Empanada, and Mary's Brigadeiro.

Loki’s Castle

We launched Loki’s Castle in the iOS and Google Play stores! We started developing the game in 2016 (with many thanks to Ontario Creates IDM Fund), but even though Sticky Brain is backed by Ted’s and my extensive professional experience, we still made so many rookie mistakes finalizing Lokis Castle. And then, because of the delays, the integration of ad networks for revenue became so much more complicated than it was 5 years ago. I am pretty sure all our developers will quit if we try another ad-supported game. Why do all these large companies have such terrible implementation documentation and lousy customer support?!?

On a more celebratory note, we love the soundtrack of Loki’s Castle, which is all Janal Bechtold. We are super proud of her and her nomination for Best Original Score for Games and Interactive Media in the 2023 Canadian Screen Music Awards.

Rooster + GDC 2024

Rooster is looking amazing. That is all I can say right now. But yea – WOW.

Bigger announcements are to come, but we are going to GDC 2024 and making a splash of it thanks to the Canada Media Fund | Fonds des médias du Canada and Ontario Creates . We got a booth for the first time. We’re working with a PR company for the first time. The early creative discussions for the booth with Marshal Carper and the team at Carper Creative have been so exciting, even if it has made for an extra busy end to the year getting the base plans in place.

I also learned more about visas to the USA than I ever cared to know as we worked with NEW ERA IMMIGRATION Law Firm to help one of our permanent resident employees get cleared for US travel for GDC.

Teaching

This year, I made a difficult decision to step back from a lot of my teaching teaching activities. I have greatly enjoyed my experience teaching 10 different courses across three post-graduate programs over 14 years at Centennial College. But it was time to evaluate what I am enjoying at this time in my career, and that was putting a lot more into Sticky Brain (I mean, you got to this point and saw everything!) ?It was a mental health check and decision to let go to go forward.

I realized that I really enjoy teaching production accounting. Accounting and finances are so overly gate kept. We present accounting as hard and finance as an elite subject, and too many business schools take pride in how many people fail their Accounting 100 courses like it’s a badge of honour to teach it so badly. It’s taken me 10 years of teaching production accounting in Centennial College's Film and Television - Business post-graduate program, but I am now fully confident in my methodology, blowing up how introductory accounting is taught so creative people can feel more empowered in making financial decisions for their projects and companies. Seeing so many alums in the industry getting jobs and growing their careers because of these skills has validated that this hands-on, more coach-like approach works!

In 2022 I created a micro-credential in production accounting for Centennial College for mid-level industry professionals to get hands on experience with production accounting, better understand GST/HST, payroll tax, WGC and ACTRA remittances, cost reports and tax credits. I thought the course I developed was great, but there is nothing like running it to realize how many gaps were missed!! Thank you to everyone in that first cohort for your patience. The bonus for me - I met so many interesting people from all over the industry in that first run of the course. I’m excited that we’re doing it again! Registration is open now for winter 2024.

It was a busy year teaching with Women in Film & Television-Toronto programs too! I realized that I’m teaching a lot for them, which is great for me, but it is important for them to keep a fresh cycle of talent to lead their programs to talk about budgeting and accounting and financing. Diversity is good for everyone! A great thing about having now taught over 200 people from the Film and Television – Business program at Centennial, there are a lot of alums out in the industry now ready to give back. This is the circle of community building at work! More work on that to be done in 2024.

Mentoring

I don’t do formal mentorship, but I help in bits and spurts where I can. My mentees’ stories aren’t mine to tell or my successes to take credit for, but I am so very proud of everyone. Many were successful with their first funding applications! One had their dream come true when a national broadcaster licensed and aired their series! Another made the big decision to go back to school. Someone else did an incredibly brave thing and moved to a remote village halfway around the world to research and collect content to showcase another perspective of their culture and religion. International graduates on open work permits landed their first industry jobs in Canada, and even more got their permanent residencies. I love all these stories. And many more that are too specific to generalize here. You know what you have done and that I’m excited for you. Everyone’s hard work gives me hope for a bright future in the Canadian screen industries.

Industry

The Disability Screen Office may have officially launched in 2022, but 2023 was when we found momentum. I’ve been on many industry committees and boards throughout my career but working with this group of people on the Board of Directors has been so fulfilling! Our board meetings are actually fun! Mostly because we’re a bunch of governance nerds but also because we each contribute in our own way to the shared goal of making the film and television industry more inclusive for everyone. Working with the DSO also lead to a lot of firsts for me!

I got to be part of the hiring committee for the new Executive Director which was a whole different type of role to assess than I'm used to. Zero regrets on who we hired though – if you haven’t already met Winnie Luk, you will, and she’s fantastic!

I helped with so many funding applications… so… so many funding applications… but that is my skill set so I’m happy to put it to good use and I am keeping my fingers crossed these last two big ones we are wrapping up will be successful in the new year!

I’m super proud of myself for knowing when to step back on a project and when to shift the initiative to another board member and watch them totally own the next stage of the project vs trying to be a superhero and do it all myself.

For DSO I drafted a CRTC intervention, a reply, and a CRTC presentation for a hearing. A committee of Board members with a CRTC and cultural policy consultant took those drafts and made them magical, but I’m still giddy about being part of this process. If I could go back 22 years and tell undergrad me who was nerding out over a room full of boxes of interventions (pre-digital adoption!) and say – you know, you will be drafting stuff like this in your future I would have been shocked. I should totally do a video using that TikTok meme talking to your past self… (for all 10 people on TikTok who care about CRTC policy…lol).

Conclusion

2023 has been… a year. A very busy year. An exciting year, including so many more things not written above… Our team worked with Responsible Gambling Council to develop a multiplayer game to support their initiatives. We collaborated with our friends at Little Engine Moving Pictures on a game for their new property Tiny and Tall on TVOkids. We delivered a new game for Little Scooter Media’s Blynk and Aazoo Season 2 on TVOkids. I cut back on a lot of other industry engagement to keep my plate balanced. It’s been a lot of groundwork preparation for what is hopefully going to be a whirlwind year in 2024!