Studio Work and Studio Fun!

Hello everyone!

Welcome to this month’s Clever Endeavour News!

Studio work

After more than two months of hard work behind the scenes, we’re proud to finally share Clever Endeavour’s public statement of our commitment to fight for marginalized devs in the games industry. We’ve always been enthusiastic about supporting local initiatives like the Pixelles, but the time felt right to inscribe that kind of drive into our company’s plans and policies, and to take it much further than before.

We aim to be a studio that holds itself accountable for the kind of impact that we have on the lives of the people we work with, our peers in the industry, and all members of the gaming community at large. We hope that this commitment can serve as our foundation moving forward.

In related news, this month Clever Endeavour became a sponsor for the Pixelles Creator Fund, which offers small grants to Canadian game creators of marginalized genders, no strings attached. The program is open to solo devs or small diverse teams of 3 or fewer people, and applications are due by August 31st at 11:59pm. We’re excited to see what the selected devs will create!

In unrelated news, we’ve been hard at work prototyping new ideas. Because we have such an active Ultimate Chicken Horse community, we can take the time to build out our ideas while learning new processes and methods that will help us in development of the next project. Every time we make a prototype, we ensure that the parts of the prototype we make could be used for other projects—we’re using a game architecture which may take more time up front but allows for much more flexibility and allows our non-programmers to do game design work more easily. With every new prototype we make, we get closer to finding the idea that will be our next game, and we’re learning a lot and growing as a team in the process. Onward!

Studio fun!

Last week, we did another socially distanced outing in the park to partake in team brainstorming activities, which is a great excuse to hang out when you’re in a prototyping phase. We armed ourselves with pens, paper, and our imaginations, and we essentially played party games meant to stimulate our creativity.

We warmed up with a textual exquisite corpse exercise, which yielded some… interesting results.

A tiny popsicle melts the stars in the sky with enthusiasm
They spelunked aggressively as they screamed:
“Wassup?!”
“Well, nothing actually”
and died.

Okay, so this might not be our next game pitch… but we still think it was totally worth it.

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Back at the (home) office, Fabio delighted us with something else that’s not actually going into a game, but we think everyone will love nonetheless: 3D models of three characters from Ultimate Chicken Horse, made in the VR tool Quill.

The charity corner

As part of our company’s commitments, we will be donating $5,000 every month to a charity or organization of our employees’ choosing. For the month of July, Gen chose to donate to Femmes autochtones du Québec to support their mission of helping Native women of Quebec increase their quality of life through the promotion of nonviolence, justice, equal rights, and health.

In addition to this, in response to the crisis in Lebanon in relation to the Beirut blast, Clever Endeavour also contributed to the United Nations World Food Programme in early August.

That’s all for this month!
Take care, and be excellent to each other!

<3
The Clever Endeavour team

Supporting Developers and Playing Croquet!

Hello friends!

No, unfortunately we did not support game developers by playing croquet, but that would be lovely if we could. Short update this month, as we’re still working on new prototypes and don’t want to share what we’re working on yet.

First off, we’d like to point your attention to this GoFundMe campaign called the Galaxy Fund, a “prototype fund for women, BIPOC, and queer founders of game development studios”. We donated to this fund and we think it’s a great cause, so if you’d like to show your support for marginalized developers, here’s a good place to do that.

Next, the team did a little picnic in the park where we met Alexis in person for the first time! It’s quite strange to meet someone in person after speaking to them every day on video chat since mid-May, but it was great! We can confirm that he is real. So we had a picnic with some food that Kyler picked up, and we played croquet! For many of us, it was our first time. For Kyler, who won twice, it seems it was not his first time.

And of course, after our hard work at playing croquet, we had celebratory ice cream. I think everyone appreciated the outing! Pics below 👇

Lastly, a quick reminder that every Friday we put up new featured levels for you to try out. To keep up to date with our goings-on, follow us on Twitter.

Simply launch the game, go into the underground area, and go to the ‘Featured’ tab in the computer to try them out!

That’s all we’ve got for today folks. Keep in touch!

<3
The Clever Endeavour Crew

Welcoming Alexis, Black Lives Matter Donations and More!

Well helloooooo there!

First off, welcome to our newest employee, Alexis! I think his words put it best—his job is to “fill in the cracks where needed and generally act as a jack-of-all-trades with an emphasis on prototyping.” There were some excellent candidates who applied, but his technical knowledge and experience with tool-building in Unity made him a perfect fit for our search.

As you probably know, we’ve been prototyping new game ideas and it’s been amazing to see how quickly the prototypes can move forward with his help. We’re psyched! It’s also interesting to note that he’s been with the team for three weeks now and we’ve never met in person, and probably won’t for a little while despite us all being in Montreal together.

Here’s one of my favourite things from his portfolio, a foliage tool that lets you plant seeds and procedurally see them flourish in your scene:

Also, our Ultimate Chicken Horse vinyl records are shipping now. If you haven’t gotten one yet (and you like records), here it is!

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Next up, we wanted to talk about the Black Lives Matter movement and our commitment to helping to fight against racism and prejudice in the games industry and beyond. You may have seen our statement on social media right when the protests were starting in the wake of the murder of George Floyd in the U.S. In that statement, we promised that we were dedicating time to thinking about how we can help moving forward, and our plan is drafted and currently being reviewed. We will share it as soon as we can.

First off, we’re making a one-time donation of $40,500 to help support the Black Lives Matter movement through a number of organizations that help support black youth, fight hate groups, give scholarships, and more. We split this donation among the organizations below:

Canadian Race Relations Foundation: The CRRF contributes to the elimination of racism and racial discrimination in Canadian society through research, distribution of information, resources, consultation, training, promotion of policies and programs, and more.

Canadian Anti-Hate Network: Monitors, exposes, and counters hate groups in Canada.

Black Youth Helpline: Multicultural helpline and services for children, youth, families, school boards, and other youth serving organizations.

DESTA Black Youth Network: Supports Black youth aged 18 to 35 in reaching their educational, employability, and entrepreneurial goals.

This shows how massive the Montreal protest in support of Black Lives Matter was. We’re proud! Video by Renzel

Black Business and Professional Association: The BBPA aims to advance Black communities in Canada by delivering programs that support business and professional excellence, education, and economic development.

Marsha P Johnson Institute: The MPJI protects and defends the human rights of Black transgender people by organizing, advocating, creating a healing community, and developing transformative leadership.

Center for Research Action on Race Relations: Promotes racial equality and combats racism in Canada through advocacy and legal defense, charter research and litigation, research-action projects, conferences and seminars, consultations and training, and more.

Black Health Alliance: Working to improve the health and well-being of Black Communities in Canada through research, public policy, fundraising, and more.

Standing Committee for the Support of Demonstrators: The SCSD aims at supporting individuals facing repression in the context of demonstrations and street protests.

Clinique Juridique de Saint-Michel: The CJSM promotes access to justice though legal consultation services, conferences and workshops.

Protégeons Montréal-Nord Ensemble: A Hoodstock initiative to distribute protective equipment and sanitation kits to one of Canada's poorest and most densely populated neighborhoods, which has been hit extremely hard by COVID-19.

But we recognize that a one-time donation, while helpful, isn’t a long-term solution to racism or a long-term commitment to anti-racism. For that reason, we’ve formalized our commitment to help all groups that are underrepresented in the games industry in a number of ways. It starts with learning, and continues with varying levels of financial commitment including long-term sponsorships of important organizations in the industry, donations, funding for investments into teams led by members of marginalized communities, and more. We’re still finalizing that page and will share it on our social media as soon as it’s ready. It will also be included in next month’s blog post.

None of these donations would be possible without the amazing community around Ultimate Chicken Horse, so we have you to thank most of all for the opportunity to help fight this cause. It’s amazing to me that through a cartoony party game, we can potentially help people in a significant way and try to fight for lasting change in our industry. Thank you again!

<3
The Clever Endeavour Team