About Us

Founded in 2007, Atmosphere Industries is an award-winning, non-profit game design organisation based in Toronto, Canada. We have created a wide variety of unusual and boundary pushing games for a wide variety of contexts, such as a Bluetooth-based interactive narrative/scavenger hunt, a Twitter-based conference game and a GPS-enabled game of cat and mouse that was played in New York’s Times Square and as part of Indiecade 2010. Our games have been played at festivals around the world, including Toronto, London (UK), Los Angeles, New York, Berlin and Perth (Australia). Our latest effort, the critically-acclaimed Gentrification: The Game won Best Use of Tech and Best of Fest 2010 at Come Out and Play in New York and was selected for TIFF’s Sprockets 2010 in Toronto.

Action Heroes

David Fono, Co-Founder, is a 5000 year old robot is a pervasive gaming guru who combines his mad tech skills with his creative abilities to produce compelling game experiences. He has an MSc in human-computer interaction at University of Toronto. As an academic, David published several papers on the relationship between people and technology, while working at Microsoft Research, and the Human Media Lab at Queen’s University. Several years ago, he became enamored with pervasive games, and has delivered a number of talks and seminars on the topic to Australian organizations such as AWIA, ECU, and ICTWA. Currently, David spends his time making awesome games with Atmosphere, developing other fun digital content with Chocolate Liberation Front, and petting his cat.

Kate Raynes-Goldie, Co-Founder, is fascinated with the colonization of physical space by gamespace. She’s is an internet researcher, teacher and community builder focused on privacy, sociality, space and social media. Currently, Kate is a PhD candidate in the Internet Studies program at Curtin University of Technology in Perth, Australia. Her thesis is on Facebook. She is a Research Associate at Ryerson’s new Experiential Design and Gaming Environments Lab in Toronto, Canada where she is researching the importance of autonomy in MMOs and social media for kids. Kate also teaches online and networked media at the CFC Media Lab.

Special Guests

Alex Raynes-Goldie, Space & Design Consultant, likes to explore the interaction between people and the built environment – especially when it involves repurposing everyday spaces. She joined Atmosphere Industries in 2008 as a visual designer and in 2010 was part of the Gentrification: The Game! design team. Alex studied architecture at Victoria University of Wellington and is working as a graduate architect at CODA Studio in Australia, focusing on community infrastructure projects.

Luke Walker, Chief Communicator, works in communications for a education technology company. He has a background in teaching instructional design and technology and is passionate about education and games. Luke joined Atmosphere Industries in 2010 and helped to create Gentrification: The Game!