Heart Container

Questions & Updates

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 16:03:02 -0500

I’m getting a lot of the same questions so I’m compiling a bunch of them here. Read on!

Where’s issue 02? I want it RIGHT NOW.

It’s coming! We’re hoping to launch issue 02 this summer. Follow us on Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter for updates.

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I want to be a part of issue 02, what do I have to do?

Great! Our submissions page contains everything you ever needed to know about submitting your work to Heart Container. If you’re looking for direction, we are really looking for art and critical analysis & discussion this time around. If you have any questions, just contact us.

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How do I get a copy of issue 01?

There are very few left. Email us at albertinewatson[at]gmail[dot]com to get your copy, and do it fast before they’re gone. Your donation to Child’s Play Charity is your payment, so use the ChipIn donation button on the side of our page to donate. Minimum donation is $5. Don’t forget your mailing address so we can get you your copy!

PNP Games at 915 McLeod Ave. also has a few copies left.

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I want to review Heart Container/interview you for my website/blog/magazine/podcast/radio show/etc.

Cool! Email us at albertinewatson[at]gmail[dot]com for a copy and more info.

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I ordered issue 01, where is it?

It’s on its way. Let’s not forget that it’s called snail mail for a reason! No but really, post is very slow. Our apologies. If you want a PDF in the meantime, let us know.

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Didn’t you promise us wallpapers on your Facebook page?

I did. They’re coming. Stay tuned!

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Why is HC01 in B&W?

All of our expenses including gas, printing, binding, store displays, and promotional items come out of the creators pocket. We opted to donate 100% of zine sales to Child’s Play to celebrate our first issue, and could only afford so much. Color printing is extremely expensive ranging anywhere from 3-5x the price of printing in B&W. It was unfeasible to print the first issue in color, so we opted to print in very high quality B&W. The printers we use are some of the best in the city and print at 1600 dpi resolution, meaning that even B&W imagery looks beautiful.

We are really hoping to print issue 02 in color, but we’ll see how it goes, as many of our readers are asking for a much bigger issue this time around. The bigger the issue, the more expensive it is to print, and the less likely it is that we’ll be able to afford printing in color. We are working on ways to alter our pricing structure so that we can factor our costs into the mix. We’ll keep you updated on what happens.

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Why is there no bleed?

Bleed is a print term meaning color/images/design elements that run off the page. You see this kind of thing in professional publications like magazines. Bleed is very expensive to do, and requires printing on larger paper and then cutting down to size. As mentioned earlier, everything for Heart Container comes out of the creators pocket, and at this time, we simply cannot afford to have bleed as part of our publication’s design.

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Why are there typos?

Fun fact: Heart Container initially started out as a college project. That’s right, for some reason I thought it was sane to create a publication from scratch, work a part time job, attend eight classes per week, maintain a 4.0 GPA, market the whole thing, and mail it around the world. As this thing was part of a school project, I had less than a week to finalize the design and get it to the printers. Lack of sleep and not enough proofreaders meant that yes, typos did happen. We regret them, but that’s life. We will do our very best to avoid typos altogether in issue 02 and have even arranged services with our very own proofreading genius.

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48 pages is too short, damnit!

In the world of indie zines, 48 pages of content is practically the length of a bible. Most zines are extremely small, with tons of white space. However, Heart Container has practically turned into a full-blown magazine.

We are definitely hoping to expand issue 02, but can only do so with more submissions. So get to it, folks!

Submissions

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 14:55:05 -0500

misterlorde replied to your post: HOLY EMAILS, BATMAN

I’m betting one of the questions is “how do I/when can I submit something for the second issue”, right?

That’s right.

Folks can start submitting right now. Everything you ever needed to know about submitting to issue 02 can be found on our submission page :)

HEART CONTAINER @ SECRET HANDSHAKE

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 14:52:54 -0500

If you’re creative and awesome, you need to go to Secret Handshake.

What is it? SH is a Meetup group for Winnipeg’s creative-type people. It’s an event where we can get out of our shells once a month to share ideas, collaborate, and drink a beer. Whether you’re a designer, programmer, illustrator, writer, photographer, ANYTHING, you should come. Really. The more the merrier.

Another reason you should come is because, there are but a few precious copies of Heart Container issue 01 left and we’ll be selling them there.

A mere $5 donation gets you:
- Your very own copy of HC01 filled with all kinds of gaming goodness
- Our undying gratitude
- A warm, fuzzy feeling in your heart for donating to Child’s Play Charity

So get your copy before they’re all gone! We’ve already begun work on issue 02 so having issue 01 is the perfect way to start your ultra-valuable (hehe) Heart Container collection. Game industry peeps like Morgan Webb, co-host of G4’s X-Play, Jane McGonigal, author of Reality is Broken, and Jamin Warren, founder of Killscreen magazine all have their copies. So what are you waiting for?

You’re thinking: “Wait! How do I find you?!”

Easy, I’m the nerdiest person there. Ha! No but really, everyone is wearing name tags. Mine will say Albertine Watson and I’ll be hanging out with a handsome ginger-bearded fellow who is my boyfriend. If in doubt, just shout Heart Container and I’ll find you.

SEE YOU THERE!

HOLY EMAILS, BATMAN

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 14:30:08 -0500

I swear, you guys all email me at the same time.

I’m working on a post to answer all your questions.

HC CHECKS OUT SXSW

Wed, 14 Mar 2012 16:13:58 -0500

One of our HC crew members just got back from SXSW Interactive in Austin, Texas. SXSW is one of the largest music, film, and interactive conferences in the world, with over 20,000 attendees a year. We wanted folks to know all about Heart Container so we purchased a bunch of copies and distributed them all around town.

We got to chat with some of our heroes, who graciously signed and posed with the first issue. Yay! Here’s what all went down:

SUPERBETTER WITH JANE MCGONICAL

Jane McGonigal, game designer and author of Reality is Broken gave a presentation called A Crash Course in Becoming SuperBetter. She discussed how a traumatic brain injury led her to change the way she thinks about everything, including the way games are designed and played.

We met up with her later where she checked out the first issue of Heart Container. Look, she even has her hand over her heart! Awww. You’re so sweet, Jane! Y’all should go check out her new app, SuperBetter.

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INDIE GAMES, INDIE FILM

We also checked out the ScreenBurn: Indie Games, Indie Film chat featuring our friends and directors of Indie Game: The Movie, Lisanne Pajot and James Swirsky, along with indie game devs Adam Saltzman, co-founder of Semi Secret Software, Phil Fish, game designer at POLYTRON, and Wiley Wiggins, creative director at Karakasa Games.

Heads up, because of where we were standing, those name tags make no sense at all. So from top to bottom it’s James Swirsky & Wiley Wiggins, Phil Fish, and Adam Saltzman.

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HOLY SHIT, IT’S JIM GUTHRIE

We bumped into Jim Guthrie, Canadian indie rock musician. He’s also behind the ludicrously good soundtracks for Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP and Indie Game: The Movie. He was super nice and said that So Small is favorite song too!

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JOURNALISTS DISCUSS THE FUTURE OF GAMES

We also checked out the Journalists Discuss the Future of Games panel with Jamin Warren, founder of KillScreen magazine, Matt Buchanan, editor of BuzzFeed, Morgan Webb, co-host of X-Play, N’Gai Croal, founder of Hit Detection, and Ross Miller, senior editor of The Verge. They all got copies of HC01!

Thanks for all the love, Morgan!

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PAINTING THE TOWN…HEART CONTAINER?

Part of the fun of SXSW was distributing pre-paid copies of HC01 pretty much anywhere.

Under the corners of huge JESS3 stickers:

Near cool city stickers:

With some very crazy Nokia people:

In the baskets of bicycles available for rent:

And on magazine stands everywhere:

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WRAP-UP

We had a fantastic time at SXSW 2012 and you’d better believe we’ll be there again next year! Special thanks to everyone who was kind enough to sign and pose with the zine, you guys are awesome and are helping to spread the word about this project!

Welcome, SXSWers!

Sat, 10 Mar 2012 11:48:06 -0600

If you’ve found us, that means you snagged a copy of Heart Container issue 01! We’re so glad you’re reading it. You are reading it, aren’t you? No? Well, get to it! Word on the street is that Morgan Webb, Canadian co-host and senior segment producer of the G4 show X-Play and host of the show G4 Underground has been seen reading a copy!

Your copy of issue 01 has been prepaid by us so that all the way over in Texas, you can find out what Heart Container is all about.

Heart Container is a submission-based video game art & culture zine. You can find out more about what a zine is here. All proceeds of zine sales are donated to Child’s Play, a fantastic charity that gives toys, books, and games to sick kids in hospitals across North America.

Heart Container is a love letter to the world of video games. Don’t let its small size fool you, this tiny magazine is chock-full of awesome gamer content. HC is made in little old Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada by Albertine Watson aka littlebluerobot.

If you like what you see, why not help spread the word by taking of photo of you and the zine and share with us on Twitter and Facebook? We’d love to see who’s reading the first issue!

We’ve gotten a ton of email about issue 02. Slow down, people, we’ve only just launched issue 01! Nonetheless, HC02 is on its way! Stay tuned for more details.

Thanks for all the love! We’ll leave you a video of the launch party, which was tons o’ fun.

Heart Container from Little Bird Films on Vimeo.

Posts coming soon...

Tue, 28 Feb 2012 08:05:19 -0600

Swamped with zine orders and other work! Will post soon :)

hey albertine. any chance i can order a copy and have it mailed to toronto?

Sat, 25 Feb 2012 11:56:10 -0600

Hey there! Yes, certainly! All you have to do is make a donation at childsplaycharity.org/donate and let me know your mailing address and I’ll mail it out to you :)

Hello! I absolutely adore your blog - and would love the lastest copy of 'Heart Container' (Spyro 3 is my favourite game of all time - I love the minimal spin on Midday Gardens on the 'zine cover!) I live in the UK, is there any way I would be able to get a copy? Thanks, Florence.

Sat, 25 Feb 2012 11:54:10 -0600

Hi there!

Wow, thank you so much. That’s so lovely of you to say :) I can certainly send you a copy. All you have to do is make a donation to Child’s Play Charity; that will act as your payment for the zine. Normally I send people to the ChipIn button here on our page but it’s not working right now. I’d recommend heading over to childsplaycharity.org/donate and donating there. Let me know when you’ve donated and what your address is so I can mail it out to you (don’t worry, I won’t publish that info!)

It may take awhile to get there as its coming from Canada, but I’m setting up the PDF version later today and you can have that one too :) Cheers!

MARATHON RECAP

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 13:19:20 -0600

Whew! Our apologies for the delay, these past few weeks have been a whirlwind of planning, printing, and more planning. What is sleep? We don’t know. If you find out what it is, please tell us so we can have some.

To summarize this past weekend, myself and my good friends Jeff Ward and Tom Higgins of 92.9 KICK-FM’s video game talk show The Bonus Stage ran a 24 hour video game marathon for Child’s Play Charity. We played games for 24 hours, streamed it live over UStream, and only took breaks for meals and media interviews. All in all, it was crazy. Crazy awesome, that is.

A whopping 294 of you tuned in to watch and support us and in total we raised over $440 in combined online and offline donations. Considering the zine hasn’t even officially launched yet, we are very happy with that number. We’re really hoping to reach the $1000 mark with the zine launch party.

We were interviewed by the local media three times. We did an interview with CBC Radio One’s Dan Vadaboncoeur, CTV News’ Melyssa Ward, and CBC News’ Wendy Buelow. Those first two interviews went to air, but unfortunately our third interview with CBC News didn’t due to the death of Cal Murphy, which is completely understandable.

We played a bunch of stuff. Some highlights included:

Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2, and the Mass Effect 3 demo
Portal 2 (Played from start to finish in 7 hours, 7 minutes)
Uncharted 2
BioShock 2
Pac-Man Championship Edition DX
God of War III
Forza Motorsport 3
Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 & 3
Red Dead Redemption

It was only a few months ago that Jeff and I met up at Starbucks to discuss the possibility of a game marathon.

Obligatory zine shot, complete with electrolyte drink and lip balm.

Tom taking a mini-break to avoid carpal tunnel syndrome. So many cables…

CBC News came by to interview us. I put on my fancy green scarf in an attempt to not look so gross and tired. The light on their camera was literally the brightest thing I’ve ever seen in my life.

CTV also stopped by. You can watch the story here. In the video player panel, click Sunday, February 19th. Our story comes on at the 8:10 mark. Yes, I know, myself nor the zine are in it. Hey, at least they showed the back of my head. Beggars can’t be choosers.

Probably the most exciting moment for us was when Victor Lucas retweeted our event! He is our hero! We all kind of sat there and screamed for a minute or two.

So there you have it, folks. We came, we gamed, and we blogged. You guys were wonderful supporters so thank you so much for tuning in and cheering us on. This event wouldn’t have been possible without Jeff Ward and Tom Higgins who set everything up and kept everything under control. We’re already talking about doing it again next year so stay tuned!

ChipIn Button Issues

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 14:13:00 -0600

We’ve been made aware that our ChipIn donation button for Child’s Play Charity is bringing up an “Untrusted Connection” error for some users. This is due to an expired security certificate. The error states that the certificate expired on February 18, 2012, but we checked in on the site on February 19 and everything was fine then.

Please know that we are looking into this issue to see how we can fix it. We ask for your patience as the creators of ChipIn have completely and fully terminated their support service. While we will do everything we can to fix this problem, the outlook looks grim. We would not have used the ChipIn service as a means of donating money to Child’s Play if we had known they’d terminated their customer support. We’re currently looking into using a PayPal button instead, but they have yet to agree to our terms.

While users can bypass the error screen and head to the website, it is not something that we at Heart Container can recommend doing. While we are almost certain that the expired security certificate is a result of neglect on the part of the ChipIn team, things like this are occasionally the result of a hacked website. While we doubt this is the case, we have to entertain it as a possibility. Our worry is that anyone who attempts to bypass the error COULD have something unkindly happen with their donation and we would never, ever want this. Please know that the $240 in donations that were made prior to the security certificate error are safe and are already in the hands of Child’s Play Charity.

Heart Container’s number one priority is to generate and donate funds for Child’s Play Charity and we will work until we can find a solution to this error. We apologize for any inconvenience this error has caused.

Until we are able to fix this issue, we ask that you consider heading over to the Child’s Play Charity website and donating there instead of through our button. Unfortunately, the only way we can track who donated is via the ChipIn service. Send us an email at albertinewatson[at]gmail[dot]com and we’ll get you your rightful copy of the zine in conjunction with your donation. We will only be able to offer this as a means of getting your zine for a short period of time. You are also welcome to come to our launch party and donate there.

Special thanks to our good friend Isabelle for making us aware of this problem.

LAUNCH PARTY GOOD TIMES!

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 12:20:42 -0600

We finally have a Facebook event for the premiere of Heart Container!

Head there now and click attending to be awesome. Click maybe if you want to be slightly less awesome, or you can click not attending if you are a weiner.

Come say hi to me and a bunch of the contributors and get your copy of Heart Container issue 01. We’re also working on getting the Winnitron there. The Winnitron 1000 is a free-to-play independent video game arcade cabinet featuring new games created by indie game developers from Winnipeg and across the globe. It’s pretty much the coolest thing ever.

See you there!

Updates coming later today

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 10:58:30 -0600

littlebluerobot:

Hey everyone, I’ve got a bunch of photo and video from the marathon that I need to blog about but I’m still working on catching up on my sleep and working my part time job. I can really feel myself getting sick again so I gotta take care of number one. I worked it out and I ended up being awake for 38 hours.

Stay tuned, posts coming later today/tonight.

Much thanks for your continued support and donations, you guys are utterly amazing.

Media Coverage

Sun, 19 Feb 2012 17:59:01 -0600

littlebluerobot:

Watch CTV News at 6 to see our interview during our 24 hour gaming marathon for Child’s Play Charity!

AND WE'RE DONE!

Sun, 19 Feb 2012 00:14:39 -0600

Due to extreme exhaustion, we have opted to end the stream 20 minutes early! We ended multiple breaks earlier than expected so we feel like we made up for it!

Thank you sooo much to everyone who tuned in! This event was super successful with lots of media coverage! In total (online and offline) we generated $400 in donations which we think is extremely successful for such a tiny little event!

We can’t wait to see you guys on Thursday, February 23rd at the King’s Head for our OFFICIAL launch party! Be there at 8PM, buy a zine, and have a beer with us :)

I would like to send out a huge thank you to Jeff Ward, Carly Brown, Tom Higgins, and Chris Pointon for being such amazing sports about this and helping out so much with the planning and execution of this event. You guys are awesome.

And with that, WE’RE GOING TO SLEEP! GOODNIGHT FOLKS!

LAST 3.5 HOURS

Sat, 18 Feb 2012 21:10:49 -0600

littlebluerobot:

Alright folks we are into the LAST 3.5 HOURS of our 24 hour gaming marathon for charity! Help us by heading over to HeartContainer.ca and clicking the ChipIn button! Also tune in to Jeff’s and Tom’s streams!

Media Coverage!

Sat, 18 Feb 2012 16:38:33 -0600

CBC Radio One interviewed us this morning and CTV just stopped by and interviewed us - very exciting business indeed.

I’m also happy to report that we’ve raised $350 for Child’s Play Charity. This isn’t reflected in the ChipIn donation window because not all of the donations have been made digitally. This is incredible news since the zine hasn’t even been officially launched yet!

It’s 4:35PM now and we’re going until 12:30AM tonight/tomorrow morning! Keep sharing! Let’s keep this awesomeness going!

Woohoo!

Sat, 18 Feb 2012 13:21:50 -0600

Things are going really well! We’re miraculously wide awake and have the media interested in the marathon! CBC Radio One in Winnipeg did a story on us and if things pan out they might be sending out some cameras tonight!

Keep it up folks! We’ve only got 11 hours left!

1/3 Down - 2/3 To Go!

Sat, 18 Feb 2012 09:38:36 -0600

littlebluerobot:

Hot dogs & taters for breakfast, now starting up the next portion of the marathon! Booting up Heavy Rain…

One game down...

Sat, 18 Feb 2012 08:16:25 -0600

littlebluerobot:

Finished Portal 2 from start to finish in 7 hours and 7 minutes.

It’s daylight now, which makes it a little easier to stay awake but my body sure is craving a proper meal! We take our first health break in 15 minutes so I’m glad to be eating breakfast!

8 hours in now.