Gold Bug Interactive is a Montreal based studio with over 15 years experience creating games and multimedia at the intersections of learning, culture, and social justice. Our international team is passionate about making a positive difference in the world. To that end, we are driven to leverage interactive technology to teach, learn, and positively impact attitudes and behaviors for prosocial ends.
Elisa Navarro Chinchilla is the CEO and co-founder of Gold Bug Interactive and a veteran educational video game developer with more than 25 titles under her belt. Her most recent projects include Sabz, a reforestation game for Afghanistan; Protection, a tabletop game to teach Results Based Protection for InterAction; Chuka: Break the Silence, developed for the Education for Justice initiative of the UNODC, that leverages social and emotional learning to help prevent domestic violence, and consulting for Project 21, FES, to develop a game for youth participation, governance and citizenship in the MENA region.
Convinced of the power of games to support underprivileged contexts through collaborative learning, she has received several national grants in Mexico (Fonca, Procine, Prosoft) to create educational experiences with networked technology, alternate reality games, and digital literacy workshops. Her games challenge players to develop resilience through problem solving, stimulate critical thinking, and practice transferable skills. Elisa has an MA from the Institute of Education at UCL, UK.
Paul Darvasi, PhD, is an educator, game designer, speaker, and writer who works at the intersection of games, culture, and learning. His efforts directly or indirectly aim to envision and implement better ways to teach and learn. He is a passionate advocate of media and digital literacy, design thinking, experiential learning, virtual simulations and digital games for learning, and locative experiences. He has designed pervasive games that include The Ward Game; Blind Protocol, a cyber warfare simulation that instructs on online security, privacy and surveillance, and series of archival and library orientation games for McGill University. He lectures at the University of Toronto, where he is a founding member of the Play Lab. Paul writes for a variety of publications about progressive and innovative education models, and his research explores how commercial video games can be leveraged for instruction. He wrote a widely circulated white paper for UNESCO about how digital games can support peace education and conflict resolution, and helped global youth develop games to prevent violent extremism in the Digital Games for Peace initiative run by UNCCT, UNESCO, and UNAOC. Paul is a frequently invited keynote speaker and panelist, who has lectured and presented at conferences and universities around the world. He has shared his expertise with the US Department of Education, UNESCO, the National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP), Epic Games, US presidential libraries, foundry10, Consumers International, iThrive, and Connected Camps, among others. His work has been featured on PBS, NPR, CBC, the Huffington Post, Polygon, Killscreen, Gamasutra, Sterne, Endgadget, Edsurge, Edutopia, and MindShift.
Diana is a producer who is the beating heart of Gold Bug Interactive. She manages all aspects of production, including personnel, timing, and resources. She oversees management, promotion and testing, and spearhead dissemination, communication and events planning. She is passionate about the intersections of technology and education, and has significant experience coordinating various ventures and events with schools and educational institutions.
Chris ‘Wombat’ Crowell is a Game Designer and Creative Director with 20+ years experience creating a wide range of globally known brands such as NASCAR, Tiger Woods, SimCity, The Sims, Indiana Jones, and Kung Fu Panda. In 2013, Chris launched Crowell Interactive to focus on working with educators to create engaging and effective game-based learning and gamified digital education experiences. He has worked with leaders in this field such as Glass Labs, Pearson, Prodigy Game, TVO, and UNESCO’s MGIEP to develop cutting edge projects such as TVO’s mPower suite of classroom games and UNESCO’s Chi learning portal.
Chris is a past member of the Board of Directors for the International Game Developers Association, and is a founder of the Positive Impact Games SIG. In 2014, he was honoured to participate in President Obama’s White House Educational Game Jam. He frequently speaks and runs workshops at Digital Education conferences around the globe. He currently teaches game design at Sheridan College in Toronto, Canada.
Jorge is an accomplished game engineer and game development consultant, pushing the limits of the Unity 3D engine for the last 13+ years, preceded by an award-winning 20-year career as a CGI artist and technical director for film and TV. Offering a broad understanding of gaming trends and expertise in the development pipeline, Jorge is a talented programmer with a cinematically trained eye and a proven track record delivering dozens of games and applications for a wide variety of markets. He is proficient in C#, C++, Objective C, JavaScript, Python, Lua, CG, GLSL, HLSL, Shaderlab, OpenGL, .Net, FireBase, AWS, CloudFront, Microsoft Azure, Git, Plastic, SVN, and Agile methodologies. Jorge is driven by a passion to contribute to the evolution of AR/VR, mobile gaming, and simulation technologies, he designs and implements full development pipelines while specifying every single technical detail, from overall application architecture and art asset creation guidelines to the smartest optimizations in shaders.
A gamer and a game developer through and through, Ren recognizes the importance of making a game fun for the players while having fun developing the project. She stresses that the same level of entertainment should be reflected on the tech side, and while it's not always smooth sailing (Surprise bugs! Engine crashes! Bottlenecks!), Ren finds enjoyment in ensuring that the codes she writes are scalable, maintainable, and well-documented. But even with C#, Android Java, Kotlin, JavaScript, CSS, HTML, PHP, Git, and many other programming languages and tech tools already in her arsenal, she strives to dabble in other fields to keep an exciting variety of expertise. In her free time, she either makes her own games, does traditional painting, expands her fingerstyle guitar repertoire, or self-publishes her digital webcomic HellRaiser under the pseudonym ReGaSLZR. Kids, stay away from this comic: it can be a little dark and serious for you!
Dean is a programmer who now specializes in Unity game development. He has previous experience in web development and Salesforce development. He has worked on game projects targeted for mobile, web, and PC/Mac platforms. He has also worked on gamified business processes and WebAR. Apart from gaming, Dean is also passionate about music: he is part of a vocal ensemble, singing as a tenor/countertenor.
Edgar is an experienced web developer and interface designer who has created countless interactive websites, applications, and game components. He is passionate about interface design, optimizing function and aesthetic, which he delivers with his proficiency creating HTML sites with Bootstrap and his knowledge of CSS, including LESS, STYLUS and SASS preprocessors. He is skilled at conveying a clear, attractive and efficient online solution for any web concept or idea.
Helios designs systems that manipulate and control data optimally and effectively, and uses diverse technologies to create and innovate. He is passionate about portability and is skilled at developing solutions to logical problems, which he likes to tackle from the ground up. His technical skills include knowledge and experience with: CSS, HTML, Java, Java Server Pages, Javascript, JDBC, MySQL, Oracle PL/SQL, PHP, PostgreSQL, Servlets, SQL, Apache Struts, Swing, XHTML, and XML.
CMónica is a concept artist whose distinctive work has appeared in video games, films and comics. Her art has been featured in two individual and twenty group exhibitions. She was the graphic artist for the Zorbs animated series, the animated features film KOATI, the Pinatize.me project, the Dokki 2017 anthology, Behind the Scenes, and the superheroes anthology, amongst others. She has also created art for a number of digital games, including UNODC’s Chuka: Break the Silence, UNODC’s Peluconas, and Inspector Pok. Her graphic design work is regularly featured in magazines such as QUO, Gotica, Flesh, Illustrated girls, Neuroblasto, and ETEL.
Rick has worked as a cartoonist and digital illustrator for nearly 15 years, from storyboards and 2D animation to comic books and character designs. He specializes and is experienced in character design, storyboard, concept art, cartoons, illustrations, and comics. He aim to adapt his art to the specific needs of his clients’ and users, and brings his creative passion to all his projects. Rick is also passionate about teaching and helping others to discover the great art of cartooning.
Victor is a season animator with experience in animation, graphic design, and cartoons. He has worked as an independent consultant for several animation and post-production studios, as well as developed independent projects in various disciplines such as comic, animation, videomapping, interactive design, and video games. He is also the author of three augmented reality children's books written in the Indiginous language of Nahuatl for Resistencia Publishers.
Alejandro is a Mexican filmmaker, writer and cinematographer with a degree in cinematography from the Film Training Center (CCC, Mexico). He has written, directed and produced two feature films: Vaho (Becloud, 2009) and Viento Aparte (A Separate Wind, 2014), collectively featured in more than 40 international festivals. In addition to features, he produced six short films that were also widely distributed in national and international festivals. He has directed several historical documentaries for television; and has been a screenwriter for numerous television series. He is currently developing two feature film projects: You Will Not Kill / You Will Not Die and Dead Man’s Ring. Alejandro is a member of the National System of Artistic Creators of the National Fund for Culture and the Arts (2018 - 2021), a fellow of the Proa Foundation (Argentina), and a member of the Mexican Institute of Cinematography. He has collaborated with the Alejandro Galindo script workshop, and contributed to PADID, the Mexican government’s arts development program. He currently writes and contributes to several series on Netflix and HBO, among others.
Nicholas Vassos studies film at Queens University and nourishes his passion for filmmaking and design in an array of multimedia projects. He has directed, shot, and produced a multitude of short films and videos, and has recently turned his creative energies towards game development. He co-directed, designed levels, and produced film and audio for The Circle 1964, an archival alternate reality game (ARG), and he produced the various cutscenes and short films for Raising Spirits and Quiz That So?, two online orientation games for the McGill University Library. He also crafted promotional videos and narrative voice-overs for Laverna Park, an upcoming StoryGame Studios narrative game.