Village Gamer

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.

Vancouver – Wednesday night was Game Presentation Night at Vancouver Film School, with three teams presenting their projects. Before going any further, I would like to say that the instructors at Vancouver Film School have every reason to be proud of this term’s students.

All three projects were built on the Unreal 3 engine, and followed a platform puzzler format. Each project was original in its concept, with some very unique elements. The teams each presented their games, with all team members taking a turn in the project’s moratorium with support from visual slides and a game trailer. Going from concept to finished levels, the teams had to work through every step of the development process, just as if they were creating a title for a real game studio. The growth of the project included extensive focus testing and feedback, then working towards a game which met not only the team’s vision but also the expectations of the player.

The first game presented was Apex. The purpose of this game is to use a hi-tech futuristic grappling hook to navigate through several industrial-styled levels built inside of a large tower. The game is played in the first person, and the player needs to solve various puzzles to work through each level, all the while evading and destroying the evil robotic hunters. Once the player reaches the top of the tower, he must defeat the mechanized villains by pushing three buttons.
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Introduces “Master” Membership Level for Advanced MSPs

Ottawa – MSP Partners, an alliance founded by Cisco, Ingram Micro, Intel, Level Platforms and Microsoft, with the active participation of over 20 leading IT vendors and thousands of solution providers and MSPs, today announced the launch of its comprehensive all new 2009 education program.

Based on demand from the large number of solution providers now moving to more advanced Managed Services, MSP Partners is today introducing a “Master” membership. Master members will benefit from a series of professional courses and live events addressing the challenges and opportunities they face in moving their business to the next level.

“Our new Master membership level demonstrates the vendor community’s ongoing commitment to help solution providers grow and prosper in their business transformation to managed services. Our 2009 content provides the research and education solution providers need as they launch and evolve their Managed Services businesses,” said Jim Hamilton, Executive Director of MSP Partners.

New 2009 content includes:

* A comprehensive suite of on-demand courses covering both foundational Managed Services concepts as well as advanced concepts dealing with marketing, sales, operations and best in class Managed Services practices, all based on extensive and exclusive new 2009 research.
* Eight 2009 live web events describing new Managed Services opportunities in networking, security, business continuity and much more.
* An MSP Benchmark tool that evaluates a solution provider’s Managed Services business and provides a detailed best in class analysis.
* An “Ask an Expert” feature, where industry thought leaders answer members’ Managed Services questions.
* Monthly analysis of current trends in the Managed Services market.

Montreal – Gamerizon, an emerging game development studio, today announced its official opening in Montreal, a city well-known for its vibrant video game industry. The new independent casual game development studio – led by a team of seasoned industry experts – aims to be at the leading edge in defining the next generation of casual games.

“Gamerizon has a unique and innovative vision of the development of casual games,” says Dominique Bélanger, President of Gamerizon. “Our unique game design approach combined with our long-standing expertise allow us to create innovative gameplay mechanics that appeal to today’s gamers. Gamerizon is quickly carving out a distinctive niche into the casual gaming market.”

The young Montreal studio currently focuses its efforts on the development of multiplatform casual games, targeting digital distribution on various platforms – from smart phones to new generation consoles – as well as PC and Mac. Its first title, the highly-anticipated and soon to be released QuantZ, offers a simple yet addictive organic gameplay that refreshingly merges elements of the marble popper, action-puzzle and match-3 genres. The demo version of the game has already made a great impression on industry experts and video game enthusiasts alike.

Gamerizon was founded by brothers Martin and Robert Lizée (two seasoned video game entrepreneurs who have produced and developed several popular titles) and by digital media entrepreneur Dominique Bélanger. Focusing on an industry experiencing booming growth, Gamerizon is also seeking to hire senior level candidates to complete its talented Montreal team.

Vancouver – One of the co-founders of the award winning science fiction show Sanctuary is bringing his gaming talents back to the classroom. The Art Institute of Vancouver is proud to welcome Marc Aubanel as Academic Director of Game Art and Design and Visual Games Programming.

Marc, originally from Montreal, took Communication Studies at Concordia University, On relocating to Vancouver in 1992, the lifelong hockey fan channeled this passion as Online Editor for the Canucks magazine, Winning Spirit. At an exciting, up and coming time for the gaming world, Marc found himself drawn to the industry and joined Electronic Arts Canada (EA), the largest 3rd party games publisher in the world. Marc spent 13 years and worked his way to vice president / executive

Marc Aubanel

producer, working on such video games as chart breaking FIFA and Need for Speed Underground producing over 50 SKU’s for revenues generating more than a billion dollars.

Marc left EA around the same time as Damien Kindler left his role as co-executive producer on the hit show Stargate and they formed Vancouver based production company and full service visual effects house, Stage 3 Media. Deciding that there must be a better way of making entertainment in the new, emerging electronics market, they set about creating the first broadcast quality, High Definition dramatic series designed specifically for the internet, combining live actors and CG sets and backgrounds. In 2006 the web based series Sanctuary was born.

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Toronto – The economic downturn is forcing companies to restructure and contract, but Delvinia Interactive, a pioneer and authority on digital marketing and interactive solutions, has reaping the benefits of the digital space that is showing strong, stable growth and enormous potential. In fact, Delvinia was recently selected to re-architect the Princess Margaret Hospital Foundation’s 5km Breast Cancer Run website, rebuild Aeromove’s website and formed an alliance with enterprise computing company IGLOO.

“The digital space is an area that hasn’t come to a complete standstill like other industries,” said Steve Mast, Vice President and Managing Director, Delvinia Interactive. “The state of the economy has created an opportunity for companies to re-invent the way they interact with their audience in the digital space and create an engaging and interactive experience, beyond just a company website.”

Princess Margaret Hospital Foundation’s 5K Your Way website to receive makeover
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Ottawa – Corel Corporation introduced an International Design Contest and special anniversary edition of CorelDRAW® Graphics Suite X4 to mark 20 years of design innovation with CorelDRAW. The contest is open to current and new CorelDRAW Graphics Suite users around the world and closes on May 31, 2009. The special anniversary edition of CorelDRAW Graphics Suite will be available in nine languages worldwide, including English, French, Dutch, German, Italian, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Polish, and Russian.

“CorelDRAW 1.0 revolutionized graphics on the Windows platform, providing many more people around the globe with a new avenue to express their creativity,” said Gérard Métrailler, Senior Director of Product Management, Graphics for Corel. “Our community of CorelDRAW users has continued to grow and flourish over 20 years marked by exciting new breakthroughs in functionality, expansion into new international markets and a continuing commitment to delivering a superior graphics experience on the PC. The developers, designers and product managers behind CorelDRAW are continually inspired by the insights and contributions of CorelDRAW users around the world. It is our users’ passion, energy and ingenuity that motivates us to continually deliver products that open up new design possibilities.”
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Vancouver – Today Ubisoft announced it will be expanding its studio operations to Canada’s west coast through the acquisition of video game developer Action Pants Inc. This marks Ubisoft’s first in-house development studio on the North American West Coast.

Established in 2006 by industry veterans Simon Andrews, Nik Palmer and Omar Al-Khafaji, Action Pants Inc. currently employs more than 110 video game developers. Based in the trendy Yaletown area, the studio was ranked as one of the province’s Top 50 employers in 2008 and 2009, and among BC Business magazine’s “Best Companies to work for in BC in 2007.” 2009 will see the release of the studio’s first title, a sports game developed exclusively for Wii™. This new intellectual property will expand upon Ubisoft’s recent success in the sports genre with the Shaun White Snowboarding franchise.

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Vancouver – We dropped by SFU Harbour Centre on Saturday afternoon to check in on the local entries for IGDA’s Global Game Jam event.  There were 26 entrants for this inaugural competition, which was opened with a Keynote address given by Kyle Gabler (World of Goo). This was followed with the reading of the competition’s constraints and team formation.

The smallest team, Scorched Physics, was comprised of just 3 members, while One Tonne Punch weighed in with an 8 member team. Several participants came from UBC, SFU, VFS and the Masters of Digital Media programme at GNWC, while several were recent graduates now working in the
game development industry at studios such as Relic, Radical and Deep Fried Entertainment, with one competitor hailing from Seattle, who works at Satori Software. The only female competitor, freelance artist Rachel Curtis worked on The Treelings’ team.
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via Facebook:
Vancouver – Relic Entertainment will be holding an open house from 2pm – 4:30pm on Wednesday, February 4 for programmers who have 4+ years’ experience in the following areas:

·Senior Database Engineer
·Senior Security Programmer
·Senior Tools Programmer
·Senior AI Programmer
·Network/ Architect Programmer
·Generalist Game Programmer
·UI Programmer

The Open House will give employment-seekers a chance to tour the Relic studio and chat with other designers working at Relic Entertainment, which is located on the 15th floor at 550 Burrard Street, Vancouver. Interested parties are asked to please RSVP to “jobs [at] relic [dot] com”.