Who We Are

Golden Gear, Inc. has been building games and enterprise applications since 2010. With a combined 25 years of experience spanning children's games, online gaming, social games, financial software, mobile, and consoles Golden Gear, Inc. is ready for any challenge.

Golden Gear has worked with organizations and companies such as TIFF Nexus, Lionsgate Films, Fremantle Media, Kill Shakespeare, Social Game Universe, Bento Miso, Dames Making Games, TO Jam, Metanet Software and the Toronto After Dark Film Festival on a wide variety of projects. Golden Gear and their related works have been mentioned in various media outlets including Kotaku, Rock Paper Shotgun, Torontoist, the Arduino website and The Financial Post's Download Code.

Alex Bethke Pixel version of Alex, courtesy of Miguel Sternberg

Alex Bethke has been developing software professionally for 18 years with works spanning websites, interactive experiences and applications, cross-platform game development, business application development and event planning. Bethke has developed 86 games over 11 years, recently working with Pop Sandbox as lead programmer and systems designer on Pipe Trouble, which has gone on to be the first game shown at Cannes International Film Festival, specifically at the Marché du Film. Of note as well, in 2014 Alex had one of his own game designs, Brother Nature, shown at a one day event at the Art Gallery of Ontario.

Bethke began his development career providing services for websites ending with 13 years experience while transitioning fully to game development. During this time Bethke worked provided website development services for a variety of clients such as the government of St. Kitts & Nevis, the Labour party of St. Kitts & Nevis, Mackenzie Financial, Saint Cinnamon, and Toronto City Councillour (at the time) Peter Milczyn to name a few. Of note the work Alex provided along with the producer for the government of St. Kitts & Nevis's website was recognized in 2002 as the best Caribbean government website and the 13th best government site worldwide.

After transitioning out of website development Bethke spent a year and a half working with Ganz Interactive developing 28 games for Webkinz World which cumulatively were played by millions of children for over 100 million hours. Before Starting Golden Gear with Andrew Traviss, the two worked together at Cryptologic Inc. for five years creating the next generation of card and table casino game software. Leading a small team of international developers, Bethke with the framework he designed and built with Andrew, produced 14 games for a dozen brands which were translated to a dozen languages. During this time Bethke also had the opportunity to work on two additional casino games licensed for DC Comics as part of the Cryptologic suite of games.

On top of his professional work Bethke is also an active member of the Toronto indie game development community. Working the last year out of Bento Miso, Bethke has had many opportunities to mentor and support the Dames Making Games initiative. In 2010 Golden Gear planned and hosted the Indie Arcade, a one night only indie game arcade showing a cross section of locally developed games. 2012 saw the After Darkcade, an indie game arcade running for 9 nights started and co-curated by Bethke, as part of the Toronto After Dark Film Festival's Pub After Dark. In 2012 and 2013 Bethke was one of the lead organizers for the 7th and 8th annual TO Jam event.

Andrew Traviss Pixel version of Andrew, courtesy of Miguel Sternberg

Andrew Traviss has been developing games for 23 years (professionally for 11) with releases on the web, PlayStation 2, Nintendo Gamecube, XBox, XBox Live Arcade, PC, Mac, iOS and Android. Recently he contributed to Pipe Trouble, by Pop Sandbox, which was the first video game ever to be shown at the Cannes International Film Festival as part of Le Marché du Film. He also designed and developed the new features for Metanet Software's nv2. His current solo project, Terra Infirma, is slated for early alpha access through the Humble Store in October 2013.

Traviss was a gameplay designer and developer on The Behemoth's Alien Hominid, which was the best selling title on XBox Live Arcade when it was re-released in 2008. He also designed the browser-based MMO Most Wanted in 2002, supporting a dedicated community of hundreds of players for two years. Over the course of five years working at Cryptologic, Traviss became a technical lead and software architect, making decisions affecting all game development at the company before deciding to co-found Golden Gear in order to return to his game development roots.

For the last three years Traviss has been primarily engaged with Golden Gear, providing development services as well as creating their own IP for web, desktop, iOS, Android and Arcade Cabinets.