Ever since childhood, programming computer games on his Commodore 64 and experimenting with photography, Bitcasters president and founder Nathon Gunn has had his sights set on the convergence of new media.

Bitcasters, a new media shop, opened its doors in Toronto three years ago, and instead of focusing on one specific medium handles film, television and music videos and works with broadcasters looking to take advantage of the Internet. The shop recently completed a cd-rom interactive game called The Temp for Citytv.

‘Rather than be a tv company that tried to do something on the Internet or an Internet company trying to learn tv, we decided to do it all,’ says Gunn. ‘We feel they cross-pollinate one another; working in film informs our work in new media and working in new media informs our work in film.’

While some broadcasters enlist the help of the new media shop for traditional promotional Web pages, for Gunn, the most exciting work comes from those ‘who are willing to take leaps into the future,’ the ones, he says, who are going to have success on the Internet.

‘Broadcasters who are going to make a difference are those who are looking at the Internet and its own specific advantages over tv and are thinking of ways to innovate rather than just put their video online,’ says Gunn. ‘They look at how the Internet can build community or how community in turn can support your efforts as a content creator, [they] recognize there are entirely new things you can do with the Internet.’

The Temp, described by Gunn as an ‘interactive branching video narrative,’ is modeled after a MuchMusic contest where some lucky kid wins a temporary, non-paying job at the nation’s music station. On-air promotions for the competition are tongue-in-cheek, showing the winner living in a hovel and serving everyone at City, something Gunn decided to carry over into the game.

The game starts off with you, the player, as the winner of the competition. City makes a big deal with a special little broadcast, but once the cameras are off no one cares about you, and so begins your lowly life as a City temp.

From the outset you have a hard time getting past the security guard; you can fight and talk with him, but you can’t get into the building. When eventually you do gain access, you can navigate around, talk to familiar City people, meet rock stars and collect objects.

Ultimately the player solves puzzles and collects videotapes, with the final goal being to get into Moses Znaimer’s office and program the station. If you program the station well, you win, and if you do a bad job you land in the dungeon and have to start all over.

The Temp was created over the course of a year on Macromedia Director 7. Gunn says the budget for the game was very low, less than $100,000, but when he showed it to an Intel vp at the milia new media expo in France last year, he was told it was worth around $1 million, which Gunn says bodes well for them to leverage the work into bigger projects down the road. The Temp will be sold in record stores and should be ready for release this summer.

In the beginning, when Bitcasters began to gel, Gunn came across a number of creative individuals looking to do more interesting and innovative work in different mediums without feeling the constraints of tv or the Web. They came together under the Bitcasters banner and formed what he refers to as ‘a collective of artists.’

Bitcasters represents ‘individuals innovating in their medium,’ such as Justin Stephenson, who recently directed a music video for the Rheostatics, programmer/designer Ed Christensen, Web designer/illustrator Davin Risk, designer/new media producer Oli Goldsmith, director/editor Michael Heydon and director Alisa Kerr. Bitcasters does not have exclusive representation of its artists.

Gunn studied media arts at Ryerson Polytechnic University. In his second year he took a job at City where he became a producer and helped found City Interactive, cd-rom distribution label City Rom, and Websites for Bravo! and MuchMusic, which according to the new media guru became some of the most popular sites in Canada.

He left City for New York a few years later where he ran the Internet broadcast component of the New York Music Festival. He returned to Toronto, and in 1996, kick-started the Bitcasters with Duane Wall as vp.

Activity has been high at the shop: Jennifer Burkitt recently joined the Bitcasters crew as director of marketing and business development. Gunn was recently in New York to discuss a film project, the details of which he won’t divulge, and in the next few months he plans to move his company into commercial production.

Some projects coming out of Bitcasters include music videos for Patricia O’Callaghan and Ron Sexsmith, and the creation of interactive games for the Charles R. Bronfman Heritage Project.