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If Frank Ong's Inkspire initiative takes off any further, he may have to publicly attribute his success to the Hamilton Street Railway buses.

"It started as an idea just outside the [Health Sciences] bus stop, waiting for the really slow Hamilton buses," said Ong, laughing.

So you could argue that, if the HSR came more frequently, InkSpire might never have happened.

It's a simple idea with a clean presentation: an online publishing platform for young individuals to share and explore topics in the world relating to social issues, the sciences and the arts.

Ong realized that many of the outlets he and his friends on current and global issues were turning to for information were not targeted for their demographic.

"Sometimes they're not too relevant to young people today," he said. "If I talk about ... politics, you have a lot of old people in politics, you don't have a strong youth voice in there."

"A lot of the issues that they'll be discussing are for an older generation."

Ong himself is a Master’s student in Medical Sciences at McMaster. His passion for this venture is continuing to grow along with the success it's seen so far.

Only launched in January, the initiative has seen a lot of support and success on platforms like Kickstarter already. In the span of a month, InkSpire managed to raise over $10,000 on Kickstarter, and the project recently received an endorsement on Kickstarter's home page as a "project we love." Ong explained that the majority of the budget will be going to help market the platform in Ontario, but they've received funding from all over the world, including places like the Netherlands and India.

A lot of the work on the infrastructure of the website has also come free of charge, an amount that Ong estimates would've otherwise cost far beyond the $10,000 they raised.

"Our CTO is covering the website platform pro bono," he said. "She worked about 400 hours from September to January, which was our launch."

And who would be so generous with their time?

“Actually, my sister," Ong explained, laughing again. "So that's $25,000, in kind support, which is pretty good."

Frank Ong is one of three co-founders of InkSpire, along with his sister, Joanna Ong, and Ellier Leng. While it's difficult to evaluate just how much work has gone into their platform so far, the team at InkSpire have spent a tireless amount of time trying to bring this project to life.

"It's a great experience. I now have experience in marketing, experience in finance, budget planning, legal aspects, anything in starting a start-up," he said.

He's ultimately hoping it's a platform that youth — defined as individuals ranging from 14-29 — will identify with and even come to contribute to it over time.

As he put it, "as long as you have a context behind it," the platform is open to all kinds of submissions that could range from traditional articles to videos to more artistic contributions like photos.”

Still in its nascent stages, InkSpire's first topic of the month is mental health, and they've had a variety of contributors from both the featured organization and members of the InkSpire team. Although the initiative is still young, Ong has high hopes for where the project will end up.

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Hamilton has long been synonymous with the "Steel City" moniker, but a growing market for entrepreneurs is helping to re-shape that perception.

This, along with the growing popularity of online crowd-funding models like Kickstarter have allowed developers like Nathan Dworzak, Parker Martin and Michael Huynh to gather support for their own online action role-playing game they're calling Dragon of Legends.

The three are founders of Thrive Games, which they initially began in 2013 as Thrive! Entertainment. The project, their first game developed from scratch, is described on their Kickstarter page as a "2D online [action] RPG inspired by Celtic and Norse mythology" and resembles the style and art reminiscent of video games in the early 90s.

"If you grew up playing the Super Nintendo, it's kind of tapping into that aesthetic," explained Dworzak.

"But we're also adding more advanced mechanics, like being able to play the game on any device."

At the time of writing, the game had accumulated nearly 500 backers and $18,000 on their Kickstarter with a couple weeks left in their campaign to reach their $60,000 goal.

While the team made the decision to briefly shut down the campaign as they didn't expect to reach their end goal, Dworzak went on to explain that an investment firm had very recently stepped forward to cover 80 percent of their costs.

The campaign is expecting to re-launch on Kickstarter before the end of February with a more modest goal of $12,000 for the project to be fully funded.

The project follows in a style of games that have grown in familiarity in recent years. Cult-hit titles like Shovel Knight, and more recently, Undertale, have demonstrated that independent developers like Dworzak and his team can experience critical success with their games, despite having a minimalist approach to the game's aesthetics.

However, the team at Thrive has certainly spared no expense in attempting to flesh out the world that they're promising on their Kickstarter page, and the wealth of information they've provided on the world and the mechanics of their game indicate just how serious they are.

With a team that Dworzak has estimated to have involved up to 25 people, the input and background of the team has had a variety of influences as well, both within and outside Hamilton. While Dworzak graduated from Wilfred Laurier University with a degree in music composition, Martin graduated from McMaster University with a background in Multimedia/Theatre & Film.

However, the three co-founders have grown up as friends in Hamilton since middle school, and have shared a passion for video games that they've been able to turn into more than just a passion project. They’ve had the opportunity to collaborate with The Forge, a start-up accelerator associated with McMaster, as well as McMaster’s Innovation Park.

“For me, it was just a passion, and I’ve always wanted to make games,” Dworzak explained. “But as a composer, I was limited … I managed to be lucky with the people I knew.”

“We shared the same vision in what we wanted to do; we wanted to create a gaming company that would create heartfelt experiences.”

With their Kickstarter set to re-launch, they’re hoping that others will share in their passion for these experiences.

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