About Us

Founded in 2007, Atmosphere Industries is an award-winning, non-profit game design organisation based in Toronto, Canada and Fremantle, Australia. 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.


David Fono, Co-Founder (Canada), 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 (Australia/Canada), is a researcher, maker and educator focused on games and social media. Kate specialises in ethnographic approaches, which bring together her research background with game design to create inclusive and insightful outcomes, whether it be action research projects or pervasive games. Currently, Kate is a researcher and teacher at the Department of Internet Studies at Curtin University in Perth, Australia where she is also a PhD candidate. Her thesis is an ethnographic study of Facebook and Facebook users in the context of privacy. Kate is also an Associate at London’s Six to Start. Kate lives by the concept of ahimsa and is passionate about public space, community, and sustainable, conscious living.


Alex Raynes-Goldie, Design & Sustainability Advisor (Australia), is a graduate architect, researcher and a sustainable/conscious living enthusiast. She joined Atmosphere Industries in 2008 as a visual designer and in 2010 was part of the Gentrification: The Game! design team.

Simone van Hattem, Community Advisor (Australia) is a community organiser, founder of EnjoyPerth and an advocate for sustainability and Indigenous/Aboriginal issues. She has travelled, lived and worked all around the world, including remote Australia and The Netherlands.

 

Alumni

Luke Walker (Canada) 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!