Village Gamer

Vancouver – Over the past two weeks I haven’t had as much time as usual to search out the news from Canada’s digital media industry, so I’m taking a different angle tonight to catch up on a few things. One of the reasons for the busy schedule on our end was a visit to Vancouver by representatives of World Cyber Games, Inc. They have been visiting cities around the world scouting possible future locations for a variety of World Cyber Games events. During their visit, the representatives had a chance to tour Relic Entertainment, EA Burnaby, the Great Northern Way Campus, the Electric Playground studio, then attended a small reception hosted by Radical Entertainment and the SIGGRAPH presentation of Modern Princesses given by Ubisoft Montreal – but more on that later in this post. Thank you to everyone who took part in the tours and events.

The month began in the best way possible with the Game Design Expo presented by Vancouver Film School. This two day expo which features the top guest speakers is one of the consistently best-run events around. Every seminar and panel topic was relevant to today’s game development industry, and it’s small wonder why GDX sells out every year. Over the next short time, I will be posting articles about the seminars – and hopefully once you’ve read them, if you weren’t at GDX this year, you’ll make a note to attend next year. Aside from the myriad of topics and opportunities to learn, the biggest announcement at this year’s event was the estalishment of the Women In Games International $30 000.00 – $47 000.00 full scholarship. This scholarship will provide full tuition for a female game design student to attend the VFS Game Design Programme. Other scholarships announced range from $2000.00 to $7000.00, and are sponsored by G4techTV, EA, Big Fish Games, Annex Pro, Obsidian Entertainment, and Radical Entertainment.

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Vancouver – New iPhone application ReachMyFile lets users search for a file on their remote home or work computer across the cellular data (3G or EDGE) or Wi-Fi network.

ReachMyFile enables home users to download movies to watch or photos to show to friends. It allows business users to download documents, images and presentations to share with colleagues and to email documents from their remote Mac directly to the person who needs the information most, all in real time.

ReachMyFile’s purpose-built, intuitive, user interface means there is no need to navigate a tiny desktop on the iPhone screen. Users simply get access to the information they need, where and when they need it.
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Vancouver – The Game Developers Conference Canada® is the premier forum for Canadian developers to share best practices for creating games with long production cycles, large development teams, and multi-platform releases. Unique to GDC Canada, is its focus on production cycle improvements every game professional can make to build innovative and quality games. Collaborate with industry veterans from EA, Propaganda Games, Next Level Games, Radical Entertainment, Relic Entertainment and more.

GDC Canada Featured Sessions

Concept/Preproduction Track Featured Sessions

• Realism in Animation. Misnomer or Oxymoron? – Speaker: Owen Hurley (Relic Entertainment)
• The IP Toolkit: Making Ideas Real – Speaker: Eric Holmes (Radical Entertainment)

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Markham ON – MAGIX, a leader in multimedia software, leverages Dolby technology within their premium products to the market. MAGIX has incorporated Dolby’s award winning technology, Dolby® Digital 5.1 Creator, into its own award winning software, Video Editing Software Movie Edit Pro and its professional video editing software Professional Video Editing Software – Video Pro X.

Dolby Digital 5.1 Creator maintains audio fidelity while preserving valuable disc space to allow for sharper picture quality or longer recording time. Dolby Digital 5.1 is crucial for the truly amazing audio creation in MAGIX video editing software tools. Users are able to create professional surround effects with Dolby Digital 5.1 Creator surround creator, so MAGIX included it in a number of their key products for people to create real surround sound with channel control and live mixing.

“Dolby Digital 5.1 Creator brings brilliant surround cinema sound to your DVDs or Blu-ray Discs. We are happy to work together with Dolby, the leader in multi-channel sound processing. This truly makes Video Pro X and Movie Edit Pro powerful video and audio editing tools.” says Senior Product Manager Video at MAGIX, Sven Kardelke.

MAGIX continues to work closely with Dolby technology to deliver professional tools to its customers and ensure the highest fidelity experience.

Montreal – The developers of Far Cry 2 have thrown down the gauntlet –  Canadian players can win the chance to take on the development team in one of three matches on a special downloadable map. The Jungle Seizure Map is presented by Microsoft Visual Studio®. Players with Ubisoft accounts can enter the contest by answering three multiple choice questions. While the first drawing has already taken place, there are still two more challenge nights to go – one on March 12th and one on April 9th. Click here to read the contest rules – and good luck! Far Cry 2 is rated M (Mature) by the ESRB.

Alberta – The Banff World Television Festival (BANFF) announces the extension of the Program Competition submission final deadline for the Banff World Television Awards (“The Rockies”) to Friday, February 20, 2009. BANFF will take place at the Fairmont Banff Springs in Banff, Canada, June 7-10, 2009.

“Extending the final deadline for submissions is our way to ensure producers can participate in this opportunity to showcase their work on the international stage,” says Georges Leclere, Director of the Banff World Television Awards.

Recognized as one of the world’s most prestigious program competitions, “The Rockies” honor excellence in international television, covering 21 genres and 2 interactive categories. The 2008 competition attracted close to 1000 entries from 44 countries.
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Californian creative marketing and public relations firm will use social media monitoring to help build and execute communications plans for clients

Fredericton – Just Drive Media has selected Radian6’s social media monitoring platform as an asset to their public relations, online marketing, and multimedia capabilities. The high-tech public relations firm will use the intelligence they gather through social media to build successful integrated campaigns for clients and improve their blogger relations efforts.

Radian6’s social media monitoring platform gathers real-time-as-discovered information from across the social web, including blogs, video sharing sites, boards and forums including LinkedIn Answers, and emerging media such as FriendFeed and Twitter.
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Ottawa/Toronto – Amberwood Entertainment and Xenophile Media are proud to announce the launch of the RollBots Online Gaming Experience accessible through YTV.com.

This fully immersive experience will allow kids to create their very own RollBot avatar to explore Flip City and the world of RollBots which is featured in the YTV original series. RollBots Online is available at www.rollbots.ytv.com and the series premiered Saturday, February 7th at 7:30am on YTV’s CRUNCH.

In making the announcement, Jonathan Wiseman, Vice President, Sales & Acquisitions at Amberwood said, “RollBots Online is a wonderfully rich gaming world that features original content and games that will be updated throughout the broadcast of the series. Xenophile Media has created an innovative online experience for the future fans of RollBots.” Read the rest of this entry »

The World’s Leading Experts and Authorities in Cloud Computing to Convene on April 20-24 at Cloud Slam ’09 to Analyze and Uncover Top Trends and Challenges

Toronto – Cloud Slam ’09, a virtual conference developed to promote collaborative analysis of the latest trends and challenges in the world of cloud computing, will commence on April 20. Organized by more than 30 leading experts and authorities in the field, this five-day conference will highlight research, developments and accomplishments by industry leaders whose contributions are helping to shape the future of cloud computing. Key topics will include the significant benefits of an open cloud, enterprise readiness of IaaS architectures, and the impact of cloud computing on application developers.

Cloud Slam ’09 gives industry leaders and professionals keen insights into published research, unique and evolving ideas and best practices, as well as an opportunity to network with leading experts in cloud computing. The conference is designed to be a career-enhancing experience for researchers, engineers, directors and IT professionals. It’s also an ideal opportunity for corporate leaders to glean information on the latest innovations in cloud computing, generate leads and develop ideas on how to capitalize on what’s estimated to eventually become a $100 billion dollar market.
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Airing Six Days a Week, the New CG Animated TV Series OLIVIA Begins Monday, February 23 on Treehouse

Toronto – Treehouse invites children into the life of the
adventurous, can-do 6 3/4 year-old girl named Olivia with the Canadian television debut of the CG animated series OLIVIA. Based on Ian Falconer’s award-winning book series, which has sold six million copies to date, OLIVIA premieres on Treehouse Monday, February 23 at 5:45 p.m.

Olivia is a today’s girl. She believes she can do anything and sees every day as an opportunity to try new things. Her real life revolves around friends, family and school, while her vivid imagination takes her to Egypt, the Wild West and even to outer space! Though Olivia’s imaginary adventures are bigger than life, her day-to-day challenges are preschool size and her unique ways of dealing with these obstacles provide moments of fun and drama. Olivia demonstrates how kids can use their imagination to work out what’s happening in their own world, because she experiences the same daily trials and triumphs as they do.

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