Dionysian Dream is an original "serious game" created by Phantom Compass, a Toronto-based game production company. This is the company's first 3D game, and first game to be sold directly to consumers in the educational market.

Team members include:


Tony Walsh, Producer / Director / Writer

Founding Director of Phantom Compass, Tony Walsh has over 14 years of interactive media production experience. He has specialized in projects at the intersection of TV and games since 1998 and has been a game designer and writer on four award-winning extended-TV games since 2004. After founding Phantom Compass in 2008, he co-wrote Liberty News, the extended-TV component of BBC 3 series "Spooks: Code 9" and in 2009 co-produced Breakout Games, a suite of Flash games supporting CBC TV series "Breakout!"

Tony is currently producing, directing and writing the Dionysian Dream project for Phantom Compass. He will work closely with all team members, providing critical vision and oversight during every stage of development, publishing and distribution.

Tony's full bio can be found here.

Nanci White, Academic Consultant

Dr. Nanci White has been teaching at York University for 30 years and in that time has taught over 200 courses in writing (business and academic); humanities and English literature. She has consistently delivered in the top 2% of the rankings of teaching evaluations in her courses.

In the last 10 years, she has devoted her research aims to improving the student-centered delivery of web based content to a wide array of courses. She has consulted with a number of web designers, game designers, online education and curriculum designers, learning commons networks and neurocognitive psychologists to design highly interactive courses that will promote the process of critical thinking and information retention. This is her first project with Phantom Compass.

As the Subject Matter Expert for Dionysian Dream, Nanci will be providing key research, insight and advice pertaining to the historic and present-day impact of Greek Drama. She will ensure the facts and ideas presented in the game are true to the subject matter, and that the game project serves the needs of the academic community.

James Allan, Creative Lead

A multi-award-winning veteran of the motion picture and interactive industries, James specializes in the research and design of Serious Games, providing situated learning solutions through challenging game play.

James began his career as a Visual Effects Designer, Concept Illustrator and Storyboard Artist in the film and television industries. His fascination with the visual storytelling medium led him into the fledgling New Media Industry in the early Nineties and concurrently the visual design of games. Focused now exclusively on game design, James has found the perfect marriage between linear and interactive design, a blend of the traditional and digital media, storytelling and the sandbox.

James now brings his enthusiasm, expertise and humour to the realization of the various components of Dionysian Dream.

James is responsible for all day-to-day creative matters relating primarily to the game's visuals, such as artwork, 3D model creation, and interface designs. James will work closely with Tony to establish and maintain a creative concept, and will work in tandem with Technical Lead Marcos Novacovsky to ensure that all creative assets are appropriately executed and integrated into the game. James will also collaborate with the two Game Designers on the project.

Marcos Novacovsky, Technical Lead

An experienced designer and programmer of several commercial IT systems, Marcos became a Torque Game Engine enthusiast several years ago. As a long-standing member of the Torque development community and as the creator of several personal game projects, Marcos has acquired a deep understanding of the game engine.

His involvement in the Torque community piqued the interest of GarageGames (makers of the Torque engine). The company hired Marcos for development projects of increasing size, utilizing his skills in programming, scripting, producing and team leadership.

Marcos joins Phantom Compass as the Technical Lead for Dionysian Dream, and is responsible for all day-to-day technical matters relating to all phases of the game project, chiefly game programming and scripting. Marcos will work closely with James Allan to ensure that a technical support structure facilitates the game's creative assets, and with the two Game Designers on the project to ensure that all game features and functions are technically feasible and well-executed.

Steve Tassie, Game Designer / Writer

Steve Tassie, B.F.A., B.Ed. is a classically-trained actor and drama teacher turned game designer. He has worked in film, stage, and the fields of board, card and video game design. During his acting career and education, Steve has had the pleasure of exploring Greek Drama. He has performed in the Greek tragedy "Antigone," as well as "The Greeks," Parts 1&2. In his exploration of Hellenistic theatre he has studied Oedipus, Lysistrata, Trojan Woman and other works of Aeschylus and Sophocles.

The worlds of gaming and theatre intersect often in Steve's life. His award-nominated line of card games, the "B-Movie Card Game" series, takes its inspiration from the movie industry. He has helped to design, write or manage a number of Live Action Role Playing (LARP) games--a hybrid of gaming and improvised theatre.

For the Dionysian Dream project, Steve will work closely with our other Game Designer, Lindsay Mills, to establish a series of engaging game play features. His focus is on meshing the "fun" of game systems and mechanics with "serious" learning objectives, and is secondarily concerned with such things as interactive scenes and situations.

Lindsay Mills, Game Designer / Writer

Since discovering collaborative cross-media games (known as "Alternate Reality Games" or ARGs) in 2003, Lindsay has immersed herself behind the scenes as a core team member of several successful games and interactive initiatives. Lindsay was a puzzle-designer and writer with Phantom Compass for two "alternate reality" projects, and comes to the Dionysian Dream project with a year of Hellenic Studies under her belt.

Lindsay will work closely with our other Game Designer, Steve Tassie, to weave a series of engaging interactive scenes for the Dionysian Dream game. Her focus is on the game's characters and storyline, secondarily concerned with such things as puzzles and interactive objects.

Joel Walsh (Studio 13), Audio Designer

Joel is a veteran Audio Designer with a decade of experience providing creative and technical production services to award winning audio post, music production and console game projects.

As a freelance service provider, he worked for five years with two of Canada’s top award-winning commercial music and audio post production companies; RMW Music and Q Music. He most recently teamed up with Capybara Games on “IGN’s PlayStation 3 Best of E3 2009” Critter Crunch and is currently working on both Dionysian Dream and an iPhone arcade game.

Jason Rothery, Script Doctor, Voice Director, Voice Actor, Drama Consultant

A playwright based out of Toronto, Jason is the author of POLITIkO, Wedgie, The Drop, Wilson's Leg, Menace, the space between us. He wrote the films Dead End Days and Wank, and was co-author and story editor for the podcast Cerealized. He has worked with several collaborative ensembles with whom he scripted Re:Generation and Something to do With Death.

Jason was the co-creator/-producer of the Walking Fish Festival, and has worked for Playwrights Theatre Centre and Alberta Playwrights Network; was the co-founder and Festival Director of the 2006 Calgary Fringe Festival; and was the Artistic Director of Ghost River Theatre. He is the Head of Development for Rocket Ace Moving Pictures, and the resident playwright in the 2009/10 Academy at Soulpepper Theatre, where he is currently working on a contemporary adaptation of Oedipus Rex.

Jesse James Lord, GUI Developer

Jesse James Lord has strong religious convictions, is a devoted family-man, and has been both an Eagle Scout and Honorable Return Missionary. A programmer since the advent of Commodore 64 Basic, Jesse is now fluent in the major C-based coding languages and is currently working on a Bachelors Degree in Virtual Reality Technology.

A member of the Garage Games Community since 2007, Jesse has created prototypes using Torque game engines, and is developing his own game projects including a multi-player dungeon-building game and the top-secret "Infinity Project (Alpha & Omega)."

Jesse brings his programming and scripting skills to the Dionysian Dream team as the Lead GUI Developer. He is chiefly responsible for the technical implementation of the game's menu systems and heads-up display.

Chris Labombard, Interface and Audio Programmer

Chris has been working in the games industry as a programmer since 2005. Educated at the University of Waterloo (Computer Science, minoring in Physics), Chris began his employment as a low level programmer, quickly evolving into lead programmer before becoming a freelancer. He has contributed to dozens of games in roles ranging from bug-hunting to lead programming. Focusing on physics and audio, he has worked on games for PC, Mac, XBox 360 and Nintendo DS platforms. As part of the Dionysian Dream team, Chris created Torque audio functions and honed the game's interface elements.

For a list of Chris' work please visit his portfolio.

Raymond Bishop, Business Development Consultant

A professional generalist since the early 1990's, over the last decade and a half Raymond has been a software developer and network administrator with Aquila Mining Systems, interactive digital new media Project Manager with ExtendMedia, Performance Manager for TELUS, and, most recently, consultant, strategic analyst, and legal researcher. He has managed the full scope of project lifecycle activities for such companies as Bell Canada, Manulife, World Championship Wrestling, Kellogg¹s Canada, Microsoft, Barrick Gold, TELUS, McGill University and many others, ranging from small projects and one-on-on consulting to large-scale cross-functional team deployment on corporate website redesigns.

Ray's love of gaming dates back to the early 80s, in the MunchMan days of the missing link of console platforms: the Texas Instruments TI-994a. Since then he has been an avid fan of text-based and graphical Interactive Fiction, 7th Guest-genre puzzle-solving games, RPG's, MUDs, MUSHes, MMORPGs, ARGs and beyond.

He does have a Wii-Fit board but will never admit to enjoying hula-hooping, even under duress.