Village Gamer

Vancouver Film School presents its Digital Design Winter Graduation Show, Delicious Bites of Digital Design, on Wednesday, December 15th at the VFS Main Theatre.

Not your typical grad show, this event is open only to those from the design industry, and each graduate will be presenting the one project of which he or she is most proud in back-to-back three minute presentations. The presentations will be followed by a festive mingler with interactive portfolio kiosks and plenty of food and drink in the lobby.

Come and meet these promising designers before they are snatched by others in the industry who are looking for talented team members and be among the first to sample the tastiest student work in areas such as branding, music videos, interactive design, experimental motion design and iPad applications.

Special guest Adam Neilson from the Nation Film Board will be kicking off the evening’s festivities as he walks guests through the NFB’s most immersive, interactive projects, such as Test Tube and Waterlife, that have swept the design awards this year, including SXSW Interactive.

Wine, beer, eggnog and hot chocolate at 5:00pm with the presentations starting promptly at 5:30pm. Please see this event’s Facebook page for information on how to register – deadline for registration is December 13th.

The BC chapter of CanWIT (formerly CATA WIT) will be holding its  Holiday Networking Event from 5:30 – 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday December 15th at the Yaletown Milestones restaurant on Hamilton Street. This event is free, but pre-registration is required.

You are invited to come network with other professional women in the tech community and learn about our exciting programs for the new year. During the event, CanWIT representatives would like to hear from you about your interests and suggestions for future CanWIT workshops. Be sure to bring your business card for door prizes. We look forward to seeing you for holiday cheer!

Pixel To Product and 49 Pixels would like to invite you to a casual 2 hour working session, where attendees will gather to hear from digital media professionals about the kind of work they do and what they’re interested in learning more about where it concerns the habits of those who work in the Canadian digital media space.

This event is part of the 49 Pixels study currently underway across the country which is gathering information to aid Canadian in their drive to understand the digital media space we work in, one of the goals of our research study is to get a sense for the size of the digital media workforce; how many professionals are employed in our industry, their geographical location, salary, benefits and other qualitative, quantitative and behavioural data.

Agenda

5:30: Pre-event networking
6:00pm: Gather in the event space to set the context for the conversation
8:00pm: Wrap-up and break for the evening

Many thanks to Jet Cooper for donating their space at Jet Cooper # 307 – 20 Maud Street, Toronto, and helping to convene this working session, which is being styled as a roll up your sleeves, break-out-your-moleskin working session with clear goals and deliverables. Expect a casual working session with smart and creative industry personalities like yourself working together towards a larger outcome.

The next industry survey will be looking at the qualitative, quantitative and behavioural aspects of Canada’s digital media professionals; namely, where they’re located, what they do, and their working habits. The outcomes of this working session will be a draft list of questions for this survey, a strategy to distribute and promote the survey as well as put together a team of advocates to help further spread the word.

Register online by selecting the ticket type that best describes you in the list.
Add your contact information, and tell us what gifts you’re bringing to the table. Remember to check your inbox afterwards, as you will receive an email confirmation of your registration.

Please note, space is limited for this working session, so please do not register unless you’re absolutely certain you can attend. If your plans change, please let us know as soon as possible so that we may offer your ticket to the next person on the wait list.

Also, a reminder that the Call for Papers for the Canadian Games Conference 2011 is now open. Everyone loves a good story….and there are many out there. If you have a riveting tale to tell about challenges faced or success achieved in the Game industry – we want to hear about it!

The Conference will take place at the Vancouver Convention Centre next May 19th and 20th. All entries must be received by midnight of January 25th, 2011. Invited speakers will be notified by March 10th, 2011.

2011 Conference Topics:

New Business Models
Rapid Game Development
Box vs. Bits – Alternative Distribution Models
Game Design Stories
Social Games
Games on the Go
Content Creation
Programming
Student Stories

Session formats this year will include 25 and 60 minute lectures, panels and roundtables. The advisory board will be selecting submissions based on depth of content, relevance and interest, speaker credentials, and takeaway value. The intellectual property rights of those submitting papers for review will be respected throughout the process.

Submissions will only be accepted online, please provide the following information with your submission:

Name of speaker
Title
Organization
Phone number
E-mail Address
Expertise Level: (Executive, Management, Developer, Publisher)
General Theme (see below)
Topic (25 words or less)
Abstract (250 words or less)
Bio (200 words or less)

One of the best parts of being on Twitter has been learning more about the great independent developer community we have in Canada. There is an incredible camaraderie shared by these talented entities, and they are very prone to sharing their knowledge and experience with each other – something I don’t generally see with the bigger conglomerate studios, although I have seen such sharing amongst those designers who are employed by EA, Ubisoft and THQ studios (to name a few), it’s not to the same extent shared by the independents. Naturally, this could be due to contractual agreements and requirements put in place by the big studios, which is understandable for proprietary areas, but experience and knowledge never shared impedes the advancement of our digital industry.

Perhaps it is because in smaller, independent studios everyone is accountable for the success (or failure) of their creations, and this in turn leads to working at improving their publicity efforts as well as their end product. The sharing of opportunity is something else I see much of between the indies, and it’s because of this that I have been able to discover and share information about studios and Canadian-made products that I may have never found if it weren’t for the folks on Twitter passing on leads and links to me, because I, too am an independent, and appreciate the assistance I am given and battle daily to catch up on indie titles I need to play and review, as well as keep up on the news. One such discovery was sent my way yesterday by Celsius Game Studio.

Chaotic Box touts itself as a one man game making machine. The man behind the machine is Torontonian Frank Condello, and true to the independent genre, he is Chaotic Box’s developer, 2D/3D artist, music & sound designer. Chaotic Box has released four titles for the iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad: Flooid, Pollywog, Pinch n Pop, and his newest title, Silverfish, which is currently on sale in the iTunes App Store for $1.99 USD.

According to the game’s info page, Silverfish pits the gamer against swarms of menacing space bugs that the player must weave through and defeat with powerful detonations, combining pure arcade action with stunning visual effects. Silverfish currently offers three game modes with more on the way, leader board and achievements, Retina Display graphics, intuitive swipe-anywhere controls and an original soundtrack.

DreamCatcher Games is happy to announce the release of Learn Science for Nintendo DS™ just in time for the holiday season! Learn Science let‘s kids learn while having fun. Learn the basic principles of: Light and Sound, Physics, The human body, Biology and Geography while playing a variety of engaging mini-games. Unlock new mini-games by scoring high marks in Career Mode and then perfect your skills by mastering unlocked mini-games in Game Mode on one of 3 difficulty levels. Kids can challenge their friends in multiplayer mini-games, or they can co-operate and challenge the AI.

Features:

· Learn the basic principles of: Light and Sound, Physics, The human body, Biology and Geography
· Integrated age check with traffic light system offers gaming fun for every level of knowledge
· Two different in game guides to help with explanations and examples
· Multiplayer mode: Hot seat, Single card and Multi card for common learning with parents and friends through mini games

Learn Science is priced at $19.99 USD and is available in retail stores across North America. Rated ‘E’ for everyone.

Get Set Games has just announced that their hit title Mega Jump will be coming to Android in the next couple of weeks. Mega Jump is compatible with Android 2.0 and up and will be free to download. Mega Jump for Android makes use of OpenFeint’s great social gaming features including global high scores and unlockable achievements.

Mega Jump has been downloaded by more than 7.5 million people worldwide in the App Store, and the studio is looking forward to inviting Android gamers to join the mix. The exact release date has yet to be decided, but you can be sure that once I know, you’ll know.

Congratulations again to Vancouver start-up Ayogo Games Inc., who won the prestigious “Hottest Digital Media Company in Canada” title at nextMedia in Toronto last week.

Ayogo’s latest Facebook® game, called HealthSeeker™, was the entry that helped win the hotly-contested award. The game is built on Ayogo’s GoodLife Gamification Engine™, and aims to help people living with diabetes habituate healthier behaviour around diet and exercise. Michael Fergusson, CEO of Ayogo, was excited to accept the award.

“Gamification is touching all areas of our lives, especially online,” said Fergusson. “I’m proud that Ayogo, and our GoodLife Gamification Engine™, is being recognized for being at the forefront of this exciting new trend, and for using the power of constructive play to help make people’s lives better.”

Xona Games, that very talented and award-winning indie team who has been creating some of the most critically-acclaimed indie arcade games to date, announced today that the first of its two Xbox LIVE Indie Games launching this week, Decimation X3, is now available for only for 80 Microsoft Points ($1 USD)! Having been chosen to be a main title featured in the Indie Games Winter Uprising, Decimation X3 features intense shoot-em-up action in a ridiculously affordable package.

Decimation X3 is the thrilling sequel to one of the most popular 2D-retro shooters on Xbox LIVE Indie Games, Decimation X, which is one of the top-rated Indie Games in Japan (currently #3 out of approximately 1,500). Get ready for intense local four-player action, never-ending waves of enemies and a continual rain of power-ups to significantly improve your offensive and defensive capabilities. Featuring decidedly retro pixel art graphics, an overload of explosion particle effects, normal and challenge game modes, 60 frames per second and a hypnotic trance beat soundtrack from Imphenzia, Decimation X3 is everything an arcade junkie could wish for and will put your reflexes to the ultimate test.

The Indie Games Winter Uprising is a celebration of the best that Xbox LIVE Indie Games have to offer, and was recently expanded from just the first week of December to the entire month. Orchestrated by a group of fellow developers longing to promote the higher-quality games that can be found on the platform, the Indie Winter Games Uprising takes place during December and features 14 top-tier games that they hope will elevate the impression of the Indie Games channel.

Ubisoft has announced that Your Shape: Fitness Evolved will offer new exclusive workouts and fitness programs available on the Xbox LIVE® Marketplace for the Xbox 360®.

“When we started working on the development of Your Shape: Fitness Evolved, we contacted several renowned fitness experts and trainers”, said Claudine Cézac, game’s producer for Your Shape: Fitness Evolved. “Each trainer insisted on the fact that in order to keep people motivated, it would be important to consistently bring new varieties of exercise to the game. That’s why from the very start, we thought of Your Shape: Fitness Evolved as a comprehensive fitness program that players would be able to enrich at their will. There are many different ways to work out and get in shape, and that’s what we want to offer with the add-on content.”

The add-on content for Your Shape: Fitness Evolved will include personalized workouts, dance-related fitness programs, and a variety of cardio and toning exercises, expanding the overall gameplay experience. The first installment of add-on content will become available in early December 2010 and will include:

• The “Toned Body Program”, to strengthen all your muscles and get a firmer body
• “Cardio Boxing Platinum”, a new advanced level of the Cardio-Boxing class

The second installment will come shortly after and include:

• “New Year New You”, a specific program to get back in shape after Xmas and New Year’s celebrations
• “Dance Workout: Bollywood”, a high impact dance workout using popular Bollywood dance moves.

All extra workouts and programs will be offered individually or in bundle packages. In the first half of the calendar year, over 12 new fantastic workouts for Your Shape: Fitness Evolved will be released on Xbox LIVE. All of these extra workouts and programs will be offered individually or in bundle packages. In the first half of the calendar year, over 12 new pieces of add-on content for Your Shape Fitness Evolved will be released on Xbox Live. Pricing will range from 320 to 560 Microsoft points.

BCIC-New Ventures has announced the top 20 finalists in its newly launched BCIC New Ventures – Regional Competition for early-stage BC technology entrepreneurs based outside the Lower Mainland. Similar to the province-wide competition that celebrated its 10th anniversary in September, the four-month, three-round regional competition includes a unique mix of business education, networking and mentoring. This year’s regional competition attracted more than 40 applications from technology startups across our province.

The winners of the 2010 BCIC-New Ventures Competition: Regional will be announced February 24, 2011 at a special reception in Kelowna. The top 20 finalists include businesses in the life sciences, cleantech, sustainability, new media and high technology sectors:

A22 Rent-A-Bike, AC Global Systems Ltd, EcoMeter by EnviroSpeak Media, Find It EZ, HuStream Technologies Inc.,
Hydra Cat Performance System, JuliasWild.com, KoK Technologies Inc, Map Jungle, MemoryLeaf Media Inc., Rapid Water Testing Ltd., Reef Safe Fish Inc., Resonessence Labs, Ripcharger, SchedulePanda.com, SideStix Ventures Inc.,
Smile software (Smart Menu), TRiBiNET, Vida, Wolf Trailer Company, Inc.

The top 20 companies will now be paired with a team of mentors and will attend a final business education seminar in January. Each company will have one more chance to present to a panel of experts from February 9-11 in Victoria and Kelowna where they will convince a jury of venture capitalists, financiers and angel investors of the commercial viability of their business idea and that they have what it takes to succeed in the marketplace.

BCIC is the title sponsor of the 2010 BCIC-New Ventures Competition: Regional and proud to support the competition’s top three prize packages for a total of $60,000. They include the $30,000 BCIC First Prize, $20,000 BCIC Second Prize and $10,000 BCIC Third Prize. This contribution is part of BCIC’s overall commitment of $390,000 as title sponsor of both the regional and larger provincial technology idea competition advancing BC’s emerging technology industry.

Ottawa-based mobile IT solution company Rove has announced its support for tablet computing form factors. Offering true portability without sacrificing screen resolution, tablets are an ideal platform for business applications, giving users “always-on” access to the systems and services they need to get the job done.

“We’re seeing mobility become an integral part of IT Service Management practices, with many of our customers looking at tablets such as the iPad, Galaxy Tab and RIM’s PlayBook as providing an ideal interface for the IT professional on the move,” said Russell Ure, President, Rove. “To this end, providing support for Rove Mobile Admin on tablets is a key priority for us.”

One of eWEEK’s 2010 Products of the Year – “offerings that had the biggest impact in their spaces and that did the most to move enterprise technology forward” – Rove Mobile Admin was singled out along with products by Cisco, VMware, Apple, Microsoft, salesforce.com and Red Hat. Rove Mobile Admin delivers advanced mobile IT administration capability, providing IT staff with comprehensive, secure access to a wide range of servers, services and platforms. With Mobile Admin in hand, IT professionals can identify, diagnose, triage and resolve IT issues without the need for a laptop computer or internet connection, enabling them to reduce network downtime and provide their users with exceptional customer service.

At the forefront of providing mobile IT solutions, Rove will continue to lead this dynamically evolving market and introduce software optimized for the variety of tablets becoming available. To date over 3,000 customers worldwide, including many of the world’s financial institutions, have deployed Rove Mobile Admin – get a free 14 day trial now.

If you’re looking for newspaper apps, you’re in luck because earlier today Postmedia Network announced that nine Canadian cities now have a new way to experience their local newspapers with new apps for iPad use in the App Store. The ten Canadian newspapers with apps for iPad are: The Vancouver Sun, Times Colonist (Victoria), The Province (Vancouver), the Calgary Herald, the Edmonton Journal, the Leader-Post (Regina), The StarPhoenix (Saskatoon), the Ottawa Citizen, The Windsor Star and The Gazette (Montreal). The Postmedia newspaper apps are available at no cost to the reader. This is made possible through sponsorships from Air Canada, CISCO, Rogers Communications Inc. and Disney’s TRON Legacy.

“This is the latest step in our digital first strategy,” said Malcolm Kirk, Executive Vice President, Digital Media. “By combining innovative technology with our newspapers’ compelling content, we are proud to invite our readers to experience the latest innovation in Canadian publishing, on iPad. The new apps also give our advertisers an opportunity to reach their target audiences in dynamic new ways.”

The new newspaper apps give users a rich and personalized experience and include the following features:

* Heat Map – readers see and read “Stories Around Me” and check out which stories are most popular in their neighbourhoods and across the country
* My Articles – saves and stores articles that users want to read later
* Social Media Tools – the ability to comment live on stories and share with friends through Facebook, Twitter and email
* Integrated Video Player – readers can view a variety of videos within articles
* Photo Gallery – a wealth of high resolution photos and inline photo galleries

Each of the apps takes advantage of iPad’s large, high-resolution display and innovative Multi Touch interface, and feature customized newspaper content pulled from the best of the web and print editions as well as mobile specific content. Readers can download, save, comment, interact and customize the content, their way.

Raytheon Canada Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of USA-based Raytheon Company, has partnered with Let’s Talk Science to engage Canadian youth in science and technology. As an innovative technology and engineering company, Raytheon Canada is keenly aware of the need to motivate young people to continue their studies in science and technology.

Let’s Talk Science is an award-winning, national, nonprofit science outreach organization. Let’s Talk Science creates and delivers science learning programs and services that turn kids on to science, keep them engaged in learning, and develop their potential to become 21st century stewards, innovators and citizens.

“Raytheon Canada employs some of the smartest, most innovative and capable engineers in our industry, and we understand that the future of our country depends on the skills of the next generation,” said Denny Roberts, country manager for Raytheon Canada Limited. “This partnership will help meet our responsibilities to young Canadians.”

“Science education opens many more doors for career opportunities than today’s youth realize,” said Let’s Talk Science President and Founder Bonnie Schmidt. “Raytheon Canada, like Let’s Talk Science, understands the acute need to get kids excited about the possibilities of science, so they stay in science in high school and pursue it at the post-secondary level. Through this partnership, we hope to showcase the unique career opportunities available with a background in science, engineering and technology.”

This holiday season, shoppers will have a way to check how busy malls and mall parking lots are before they venture out to buy gifts. PayPal Canada is introducing “mall traffic reports” on Twitter through @PayPalCA. The reports are an easy way for shoppers to share information about wait times, store lineups and congested parking lots by posting tweets or real time pictures, alerting others to the busiest shopping destinations using the hashtag #ESCTheMall.

The campaign is a response to the findings of a recent Ipsos Reid survey conducted on behalf of PayPal Canada, which revealed that half of all Canadians find the crowds and long lines of holiday shopping frustrating. The survey also found that holiday shopping takes a lot of time – an average of five trips to the mall and 11 hours for Canadians.

“PayPal’s goal this holiday season is to help those who are frustrated by the typical, overcrowded shopping experience to escape the mall,” said Nicky Mezo, head of marketing at PayPal Canada. “With so many merchants now accepting PayPal through their websites, why not do more of your holiday shopping online, from the warmth and comfort of your home?”

The Twitter feed will also provide online shopping tips as well as timely retail news, and will be integrated with PayPal Canada’s other online platforms including its Blog, Facebook page and Escape The Mall microsite, aimed at helping Canadians find holiday deals online.

In addition, starting today, PayPal is launching a contest through which Canadian shoppers can enter to win a $2,500 online shopping spree. The Escape the Mall contest, promoted through the PayPal Canada Facebook page and a newly-launched microsite, encourages Canadians to vote on the best Holiday gift from a range of gifts available online and runs until December 20th, 2010. Through several rounds of voting, contestants can enter to win one of ten gifts valued at approximately $100 each, and also be entered into a draw for the Grand Prize – $2,500 transferred into their PayPal account.