Village Gamer

Burnaby – This past Saturday we took in the Vancouver leg of the annual Canary Foundation’s soapbox derby, the Canary Derby. We sponsored Brenda Bailey of Deep Fried Entertainment, who was representing Women In GamesVancouver as part of the Wired Woman team. While the Wired Woman team did finish in the top ten, they didn’t make the trophy round. That said, the whole team had a great time and raised a total of $2,355.00 for the Foundation. Many thanks to our “Silk Spectre” driver, Sanaz Jahanbakhsh. You can check out our photos of the race in our Gallery. In total, over $ 113 000.00 was raised at the Vancouver version of the Canary Derby. I have not yet found a total for the Victoria race which ran yesterday.

Burnaby’s Acting Mayor presented the speed award to Aquatic Informatics, whose cart managed to hit speeds of up to 46km per hour (in a 30km zone), with a final run time of 16.50 seconds from the upper starting line. Finishing in second place was the Rogers Wireless cart, followed by Webnames.ca and BCTIA. Other teams we saw still in the race included Wired Woman, SalesXperts Closers, ACL Systems Ltd., Clearly Contacts, FinCAD, and 6S Marketing. At least three other teams unfortunately succumbed to accidents in the earlier trial runs. Cisco Human Network received the Bent Wheel Award for their crash – hopefully their driver is recovering from his dislocated shoulder.

6S Marketing took home the Style Award with their very stylish and musical Mario Kart – driven in Saturday’s race by Princess Peach herself, while Mario helped out on the crew. The Princess’ royal kart managed to hit speeds of 32km per hour, despite those who tried to sabotage her run by throwing banana peels in her path.

Congratulations are also in order to the Webnames.ca team for winning the Top Fundraiser Award. Canary Foundation Chairman and Founder Don Listwin presented the trophy to Cybele Negris, COO and a co-founder of Webnames.ca for raising $11,476.10. Cybele was also the winner of the event’s Volunteer Award.

The Canary Derby is an outstanding and fun event, raising funds for research in early cancer detection, something which will undoubtedly save countless lives in the future. Congratulations to all of the organizers, volunteers, sponsors and participants for an exciting day at the races.

Village Gamer is already planning to participate next year with the Women In Games Vancouver – Wired Woman team, and we challenge all of our local associations, game, VFX-CGI and software developers to get involved – along with all of the post-secondary schools and peripheral corporations who support the digital and new media industry.

Chicago – SIGGRAPH 2009 announces the addition of a special Production Session as part of this year’s Computer Animation Festival that will detail the behind-the-scenes production of the much anticipated Fight Night Round 4 and Gears of War 2. Fight Night Round 4, as many of you already know, was developed in Burnaby at EA Canada.

The session, “Big, Fast, and Cool: Making the Art for Fight Night Round 4 & Gears of War 2” will explore the making of the art of these games, and how these processes have exploded the boundaries for what is possible with real-time rendering graphics. This Production Session will take place as part of the special focus on videogames and Real-Time Rendering during the SIGGRAPH Computer Animation Festival program.

“So much of what makes today’s videogames so great are the responsive graphics and the stories that unfold during game play,” stated Evan Hirsch, SIGGRAPH 2009 Real-Time Rendering Chair. “This year’s sessions will offer a rare perspective into how animation and graphics can really enhance and impact game development and the user experience and investigate the future of gaming.”

SIGGRAPH 2009 expanded its programming focus this year to showcase more Games content than ever before. The Games programming will include a Keynote presentation by famed videogame designer, Will Wright, creator of Spore™ and The Sims series, innovative Game Papers, demos and galleries highlighting the best work in experimental game art direction during The Sandbox, and a dynamic new game development competition, GameJam!

Vancouver – 2K Sports today announced a free demo of The BIGS 2, developed by Vancouver studio Blue Castle Games,  is now available for download through PlayStation Network, and a demo on Xbox LIVE ® Marketplace was released last week. The demo will support two players, local only, and offer fans the exciting opportunity to experience the new Batter’s Wheelhouse, thrilling power ups, and incredible player models in a three inning game as either the American League All-Stars or National League All-Stars. Fans will also have the chance to smash home runs into building windows and neon signs in the return of the hugely popular mode, Home Run Pinball, in an all-new Las Vegas venue.

The BIGS 2, available on all major video game consoles, has been elevated to new heights this season with amazing visual effects and a variety of newly added modes including the fan requested Season and Become a Legend. With improved player animations and pick-up-and-play controls, The BIGS 2 is guaranteed to deliver an action-packed MLB videogame experience. Scheduled to be in retail stores on July 7, 2009, the big leagues just got BIGGER with The BIGS 2.

Toronto – This year marks the 10th anniversary of DesignThinkers, Canada’s largest annual design and communications conference. Presented by the Association of Registered Graphic Designers of Ontario (RGD), DesignThinkers 09 will be held November 3 – 5 at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, where creative professionals will gather to celebrate strategic design thinking.

“More timely and relevant to a broader audience than ever before, design is now the great differentiator and key to engaging customers,” says Lionel Gadoury R.G.D., president of RGD. “Design thinking, brand experience and conversations on creative innovation are occurring at leading companies.”

The speaker lineup includes Ben Blumenfeld, communication design manager at Facebook; Conor Brady, senior vice-president and chief creative officer of digital marketing agency, Organic; John Bredenfoerder CMG, design director at Landor Associates; Robert Brunner, author of Do you Matter? How great design will make people love your company; Matthew Carter, principal of Carter & Cone Type Inc.; Marty Neumeier, best-selling author of The Brand Gap and Zag; V Sunil, creative director at Wieden + Kennedy Delhi and Gael Towey, chief creative officer and editor-in-chief at Martha Stewart Living.
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I see many valuable uses for this application and its updates – kudos to Techneos

Vancouver – A significant upgrade will soon be available for Techneos® Entryware™ mobile survey software, opening up new capabilities for mobile research. Featuring a new survey engine for Windows Mobile® devices, this July 8th release will also provide an enhanced user experience for conducting mobile surveys on Windows® 98/XP/Vista, Palm OS® and webOS™ devices.

The Entryware platform for mobile research handles long, complex questionnaires with ease, enabling sophisticated consumer feedback on mobile devices ranging from entry level PDAs to the latest Smartphones and Windows-based Netbooks. With support for over 200 languages, Entryware software is ideal for face-to-face interviews, mystery shopping and diary studies.

Building on the unique notification system and scripting language already used by some of the world’s leading research organizations, the new release of Entryware software provides new capabilities to support self-completed research such as consumer diaries. Photo support and “lockdown” mode, already available for Entryware customers on Palm OS devices, are now available on Windows Mobile as well, allowing researchers to turn a wide range of PDAs and Smartphones into personal survey appliances. Enhanced project automation is also provided to simplify the user experience for self-completed surveys.
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Ottawa – Zip.ca and California-based Sonic Solutions® today announced a partnership to provide Canadian consumers access to high-quality digital movie downloads. As part of the alliance, Zip.ca will introduce a digital movie service powered by Roxio CinemaNow®, offering movies and TV episodes that can be instantly downloaded and enjoyed on PCs. In addition, the service will be embedded in consumer electronics (CE), enabling consumers to stream premium video entertainment directly to a range of home and mobile devices.

The partnership and introduction of digital movie delivery enhances the Zip.ca subscription service, which currently offers Canadians access to over 72,000 DVD titles via mail. It will also mark an important expansion for Roxio CinemaNow, which will gain a strong foothold in the Canadian marketplace and the ability to offer CE device partners a more flexible, multi-region enabled solution.

“Our collaboration with Sonic will allow Zip.ca to provide subscribers a new, flexible way to digitally access high quality entertainment in addition to the full catalog we currently offer by mail,” said Curt Millar, CEO, Zip.ca. “We are already Canada’s leading DVD rental service; now we hope to fuel membership and growth by becoming consumers’ destination for seamless digital movie access – a one-stop Entertainment shop.”
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Montreal – Ubisoft has today announced that it will reinforce its partnership with Metaboli, the European leader in the digital distribution of PC games. Its titles will be available as download-to-own via GamesPlanet in EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) territories at the beginning of June, and via GameTap in the U.S. Ubisoft was one of the first independent developers to build commercial relationships with Metaboli in 2001 through its subscription-based services.

“We are very pleased to pursue our partnership with Metaboli. This fruitful collaboration will offer users the opportunity to purchase digitally a large range of our most successful games,” states Stéphanie Perotti, chief operating officer EMEA.

“There are 47 Ubisoft titles available in the catalogue and they have been particularly popular with our users. Several games including Assassin’s Creed®, Rayman Raving Rabbids®, Prince of Persia®, Far Cry®, Brothers in Arms®, Rainbow Six® and the Splinter Cell® series have performed consistently well across our subscription-based platform,” comments Pierre Forest, VP content at Metaboli. “These games will undoubtedly achieve the same success through our download-to-own model, especially since they will now be distributed in the U.S. market following our acquisition of GameTap.”
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I missed this news due to a death in the family, and I know that several other sites have already reported this development, but I feel that it would be remiss of me if I didn’t at least mention that Electronic Arts has restructured their MMORPG games development process, uniting but not merging Mythic Entertainment and BioWare Corp. under one umbrella. BioWare’s co-founders take over the leading roles, with Ray Muzyka as the Group General Manager and Greg Zeschuk as the Group Creative Officer. There will be no changes at BioWare, however Mythic’s co-founder and General Manager, Mark Jacobs parted ways with EA on June 23rd. Rob Denton, Mythic’s other co-founder and former Chief Operating Officer, has become General Manager of Mythic Entertainment, and he will report to Ray Muzyka. As a Mass Effect fan, I will be very interested to see what developments emerge from this meeting of the minds responsible for such other great titles as Dragon Age: Origins, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Jade Empire, Neverwinter Nights, Baldur’s Gate, Warhammer Online, Dark Age of Camelot and Ultima Online.

Burnaby – Electronic Arts Inc. announced today that the highly anticipated Fight Night Round 4 is now available in retail stores worldwide. Recently named the Game Critic Awards “Best Sports Game of E3 2009”, Fight Night Round 4 is developed by EA Canada under the EA SPORTS™ brand. Fight Night Round 4 is the latest entry from the critically acclaimed Fight Night franchise, and is the first title ever that will allow players to pit “Iron” Mike Tyson against “The Greatest” Muhammad Ali.

Designed with a revolutionary physics-based gameplay engine, Fight Night Round 4 replicates the sweet science to an unprecedented degree of realism. Witness gloves grazing off an opponent as he dodges at the last second, or watch as a vicious uppercut rips through the block of a boxer who turtles for too long. With realistic physics, height and reach become major factors in how each boxer approaches a fight. Shorter fighters, like Tyson, will look to weave inside and deliver punishing hooks to the head and body, while taller fighters, like Ali, will use their reach advantage to pump their jab while staying out of range of their opponent’s punches.
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Victoria – The TCS Bootcamp, being held on Tuesday September 15, is a full day event being offered by the Canadian Trade Commissioner Service in partnership with VIATeC.  This event starts with a morning seminar that first teaches you what California investors are looking for, then helps you to polish your pitch.  The morning session is open to any individual who wants to learn how to access investors. The seminar will be held at the Vancouver Island Technology Park Conference Centre in Victoria, BC

In the afternoon you will pitch your company to a panel of California investors and local judges.  You will receive instant feedback from the panel on your product and presentation.  All ICT (Information and Communication Technology) emerging tech companies are eligible to apply for the limited number of presenter spots available. Applicants will be juried before the event.

After the presentations in the afternoon, the 6-8 Vancouver Island ICT companies who stand the best chance of success in California will be invited to the next round of presentations in Silicon Valley and San Diego.
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