12th February 2010

Points of Reference

Orby - Proud to be CanadianWith the opening of today’s Winter Olympics it’s a busy day in the city, and with all of the great things we’ve been hearing about the Opening Ceremonies, I might even be persuaded to take a break from the Xbox to watch them on TV. Later this weekend we’ll be taking a look at Mass Effect 2, Dante’s Inferno, Army of Two: 40th Day and Assassin’s Creed 2: Discovery for the DS. In the meantime, here’s a bit of the game play that’s been going on in the cave. I didn’t know that Mordin could sing. Interesting. Must investigate.

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The IGDA is conducting an ARG SIG demographic and salary survey; if you are involved in the field of Alternate Reality Games, the IGDA would like a few moments of your time.

PsychometricsFor today’s article, I would like to draw attention to a study of leadership in the Canadian workplace which was done by Edmonton’s Psychometrics Canada. An assessment publisher and consultant for the development and selection of people in business, government and education. There is a quick form to fill in prior to viewing the complete study, but I feel that the information which this study contains is worth the time.

In many cases strong leadership has resulted in dramatic effects on work engagement, team performance and innovation. However, the report also shows that poor leadership has negative effects on employee morale, project success and working relationships. I feel that in today’s Psychometrics Studybusiness climate, good leadership is important not only in the success of a company, but also in the development of employees and their quest for career and creative satisfaction.

The study, which involved a poll of 517 human resources (HR) professionals across Canada, confirms that leadership is seen as an important area of organizational functioning and development. The majority (63.2%) see leaders as having a lot of influence over their organizations’ success, with only 2.5% reporting that leaders have very little influence. The most common effects of good leadership are increased motivation (85.5%), improved working relationships (85.1%), higher team performance (80.7%), better solutions to problems (68.9%), and major innovations (41.6%).

Leadership does have its downside, however. When not properly used, leadership can have negative effects. HR professionals have witnessed good people quitting and a lack of morale (91.7%), employees’ skills not being utilized (87.2%), feuding staff members (68.3%), and failed projects (60%). Three-quarters (76%) have also witnessed a disconnection between the organization’s goals and its employees’ work. Read the rest of this entry »

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10th February 2010

marblemedia Contributes to CODE

marblemediaVancouver – Demonstrating marblemedia’s gold medal talent at the 2010 Cultural Olympiad, the award-winning production company announced today that it will be a contributing artist to the Vancouver 2010 Cultural Olympiad Digital Edition (CODE).

“All of us at marblemedia are excited and honoured to be a part of Canadian history,” said Mark Bishop, Co-Founder and Executive Producer of marblemedia. “We want to thank CODE for allowing marblemedia to go global at the Winter Games!”

Two of marblemedia’s kids properties, This is Daniel Cook-Figure Skating; and This is Emily Yeung-Learning Ballet (co-produced with Sinking Ship Productions) and two films from the marblemedia anthology series The Art of Seduction – Electric Chairs and On Fire (co-produced with the National Film Board and Bravo!FACT) have been selected to be featured on towering high-definition screens at the Vancouver and Whistler Celebration Sites during the 2010 Olympic Games.

digital albertaCalgaryDigital Alberta invites you to come learn about Google at an event which will take place on the evening of February 23 at Mount Royal University. Come and meet some Canadian googlers at this exciting event where they will discuss some of the technical challenges faced at Google, with highlights from 3 areas of focus at Google Waterloo: Ads, ChromeOS and Mobile. Read the rest of this entry »

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10th February 2010

VFS Grad Presentations and Game Design Expo 2010

VFSVancouver -Last night we attended the GD14 Pitch ‘n’ Play Presentation at Vancouver Film School, and as always, we were impressed with the talent and innovation shown by the school’s Game Design Programme students.

Two of the games were built using the Unity engine, while two were built using the Unreal Developer’s Kit. Nerves and glitches aside, all four teams did very well with their presentations and follow-up play sessions. It’s also good to see so many industry people attend the presentations to provide valuable feedback to the students.

The first game presented was Premonition, which was built using the UDK. Premonition is a third person action adventure game featuring a hero who has the ability to see one second into the future. The premise of the game is to complete challenges utilizing this ability to avoid traps and defeat enemies and ultimately triumph over the evil forces who have taken over the game’s world. The trailer for Premonition was very well done, and with some further polish I believe that this title has good potential.

The second game to be featured was I Don’t Know How Not To Be A Robot. This game, in the words of the team, is a “twisted retelling of the story of Pinocchio” featuring a very cute little robot named Pin. The trailer for this game was also very well done and through the antics and easily understood expressions of Pin was quite engaging. The environment design for this game was very rich and made good use of depth and advance lighting features available in the Unity engine. Again, we feel that with more polish and design correction, this game has good potential, although I prefer to attack enemies outright, and would like to be able to put Pin’s talents and power-ups to better use and not have to depend so much on avoidance mechanics.

Title number three was Smart Shopper and is a multi-player game built using the UDK. Smart Shopper is a fast paced food fight which takes place in a grocery store. With over 60 different items to use as weapons, the design team assign a calorie count value to the store’s items based on size and weight. The higher your calorie count, the better your game standing. This first-person-thrower was highly imaginative and I believe that the team met their goal of creating a visually silly, easy to play game.

 

Eat Em Up

Eat Em Up

The final title to be showcased was Eat ‘Em Up, and I have to say that this is the presentation which we chose as our personal winner for the evening. The team built their game on the Unity engine, and in our opinion made the best use of their short development period. Their presentation was polished and well thought out with well-placed injections of humour. Eat ‘Em Up is a colour matching strategy game done in the style of a 1950’s TV show. The objective of this game is to turn buildings into yummy treats for your evil minions to devour while avoiding the cops who will beat your minions and steal your cash. This game also had a very well-done trailer and does a good job of getting the viewer to want to try the game.

Congratulations to all of the students for their efforts and presentations.

Game Design Expo 2010Tickets for Vancouver Film School’s very popular Game Design Expo will go on sale to the public on February 16th. Tickets to the Expo, which takes place April 10 & 11 will cost $75.00 (+ applicable service fees) for the Saturday Industry Day, with the Sunday Open House at Vancouver Film School being free. I have attended every year since the first Game Design Expo, and in my opinion this is a great event to attend and as it always sells out, I recommend getting your tickets as soon as they go on sale. Read the rest of this entry »

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10th February 2010

Canadian Innovation and New Releases

Congratulations to the teams of Assassin’s Creed 2 and FIFA 10 for making the shortlist in the BAFTA Game of the Year nominations. The public are invited to vote in this category, so I hope you’ll head over to the vote page and support our Canadian products. The Awards ceremony will take place on March 19th at the London Hilton.

IUGOVancouverIUGO‘s fantastical and ridiculously fun dual stick shooter, Daisy Mae’s Alien Buffet is now available in the App Store for the introductory price of $1.99 USD.  Daisy Mae’s peaceful, simple life in her little desert trailer park will never be the same. A full scale alien attack on earth has begun and Daisy becomes the unlikely heroine outta nowhere. Take hold of the steering wheel and help Daisy Mae shoot and blast her way to victory in this fun and quirky dual stick shooter. Aliens: you have been served!

Features:

* More aliens than you can shake a stick at!
* The baddest selection of weapons known to folks ’round these here parts
* Purty graphics and fancy sounds effects
* Sassy costumes to unlock for Daisy Mae’s alien hoedown
* Daisy Mae “taunt” moves to kill the aliens dead in their tracks
* Control options to suit every varmint’s needs
* VIP points to be earned towards an additional costume
* Global leaderboards
* Auto save

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OMDCToronto – The Ontario Media Development Corporation (OMDC) proudly announces that it has invested $2.9 M in funding support through its Entertainment and Creative Cluster Partnerships Fund (PDF) to leverage an additional $7.1 M from 94 partners to support 17 innovative projects.

The Partnerships Fund was designed to help Ontario’s entertainment and creative industries invest in smart ways to grow and increase their competitive advantage in the global marketplace. The industries eligible for funding include book and magazine publishing, music, film, television, interactive digital media and commercial theatre. Read the rest of this entry »

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10th February 2010

TransGaming Appoints GameTap Creator Blake Lewin For GameTree.tv Digital Home Division

TransGamingTorontoTransGaming, Inc. is pleased to announce the appointment of Blake Lewin as President of TransGaming’s new GameTree.tv digital home division. The company is also establishing a dedicated office in Atlanta, Georgia, that will serve as headquarters for all GameTree.tv development. Blake Lewin was most recently the Vice President of Media & Entertainment at Turner Broadcasting and is renowned as the creator of GameTap, the first-of-its-kind broadband entertainment network. As President of TransGaming’s digital home division Blake will lead the design, development, and commercialization of GameTree.tv, a comprehensive on-demand games platform which will provide consumers with constant access to a broad range of video games through their connected consumer electronic devices.

GameTree.tv is a powerful on-demand digital distribution games platform available to consumers through their Intel CE Media Processor powered set-top box or consumer electronics device. The platform will provide consumers with the ability to instantly play a broad range of games from the comfort of their living rooms, while providing CE device manufacturers and cable/satellite partners with new revenue opportunities. The first set of Intel based CE platforms are expected to be available to consumers in the coming months with GameTree.tv being commercially deployed before the fall. Read the rest of this entry »

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9th February 2010

AMD Canada Slated to Receive $56 Million CAD Grant from Ontario Government

AMDMarkhamAMD has announced that it has entered into a Memorandum of Understanding with the Ontario Ministry of Economic Development and Trade, under which the Ministry will award a five-year grant of $56.4 million CAD ($52.8M USD) to AMD Canada under Ontario’s Next Generation of Jobs Fund. The grant is expected to fund R&D activities by AMD’s Markham-based engineers in the development of its upcoming AMD Fusion™ family of processors, related software infrastructure and integrated computing platforms. Ontario expects to make its initial investment of $11.2 million CAD to AMD upon signing the formal agreement, with periodic payments occurring thereafter throughout the grant period.

In turn, AMD will commit to substantially invest in AMD Fusion processor-related R&D activities in Markham, and retain and create hundreds of high-value R&D jobs during the grant time frame. AMD also plans to increase collaborative activities with local universities.

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“With this partnership, Ontario will be at the forefront of helping to bring this game-changing technology to market, and will deepen the province’s reputation as a seat of technology innovation,” said Dirk Meyer, AMD president and CEO. “AMD Fusion technology is set to enable significant breakthroughs in personal computing and our R&D facility in Markham, Ontario is playing an instrumental role in creating this technology. AMD Canada is a critical part of our global footprint, and a wellspring of our technical innovation.” Read the rest of this entry »

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9th February 2010

New DLC for Mass Effect 2, EA Announces Perspective 2011 Titles, VX2010

Bioware CorpEdmontonBioware has added to the Normandy’s armory. According to the Mass Effect 2 web site, the new Cerberus Assault Armour and M-22a Eviscerator Shotgun DLC are now available for free through the Cerberus Network on both the PC and Xbox 360.

Cerberus Assault ArmorCerberus Assault Armor
Cerberus assault armor is designed for shock troops, who are expected to turn the tide of battle against creatures or forces that would decimate normal soldiers. The troops demanded three things in its design: shields, armor thick enough to last against a superior foe, and a rechargeable pack to extend a heavy weapon power cell. The only drawback of the armor is its weight, which the troops carry as a point of pride. They have a saying: “Out of shape going in, in shape coming out.”
Increases heavy weapon ammo capacity by +10%
Increases shields by +10%
Increases health by +10%

M-22a Eviscerator Shotgun
The M-22a Eviscerator Shotgun is a longer-range shotgun with armor-piercing loads. This design also violates several intergalactic weapons treaties, so the M-22a is not distributed to militaries.

EA GamesEA has released their Key Titles Schedule for Fiscal Year 2011, and while this is only working schedule, there were some title announcements that mean our Canadian EA studios are going to be busy, busy, busy.

As expected, there will be new additions to the EA Sports franchises – FIFA 11, NHL 11, EA Sports Active, NBA 11, NBA Jam and of course Need For Speed – but what gave me the happy gamer warm fuzzies is the announcement that there will be a new Dragon Age chapter in Q4 2011. There will also be additions to the Monopoly family plus a few genre-only announcements, such as a news sports title. Read the rest of this entry »

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9th February 2010

Future Shop announces 2010 recipients of Future Generation Tech Labs

Future ShopBurnabyFuture Shop, Canada’s largest retailer and eTailer of consumer electronics, today announced the latest recipients of its Future Generation Tech Labs, which is awarding $250,000 worth of state-of-the-art technology and resources to update Canadian classrooms. Five schools from across Canada were selected by Future Shop to receive major donations from the Future Generation Tech Lab program.Future Generation Tech Lab

“Future Generation Tech Lab created an immediate impact at launch in 2009 and we’re thrilled to continue to provide opportunities for students and teachers this year by announcing our latest recipients,” said Todd Empey, Vice President, Operations, Future Shop. “This program is designed to give back to the communities we serve, as well as help reduce both the digital and economic divide within secondary schools.”

Future Shop received entries from communities across Canada with over 40 applications from secondary schools to receive a Future Generation Tech Lab in 2010. The following five schools are recipients of a Tech Lab, which further demonstrates the company’s commitment to secondary students and schools across Canada to help students be career ready after graduation: Read the rest of this entry »

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8th February 2010

Our Take On The New BC Tax Incentives

Orby - Proud to be CanadianAldergrove – As many of you are already aware, the Province of BC announced their new proposed Tax Incentive program for the digital media industry, to be combined with changes to the film industry’s tax credits last week. This is very good news not only for the video game sector, but also for many aspects of the interactive entertainment industry.

Speaking to the announcement, Tim Lewinson, Creative Director of Vancouver’s Massive Bear Studio, stated that “as a rising company in the Vancouver development scene, Massive Bear is happy to see the provincial government recognize the importance of sustaining British Columbia’s position as one of the world’s preeminent game development hubs. By working with government to reinvigorate job growth and investment in BC, we can continue to create some of the world’s best games. There’s too much talent and history in BC’s interactive entertainment sector not to take advantage of the opportunity to work with film, television, and animation industries in building a next-generation digital media hub right here. This announcement is an important first step in getting there.”

Sadly, the film industry is crying somewhat foul in regards to the changes to this program. Shawn Williamson of BrightLight Pictures was quoted in CBC’s coverage of the announcement as saying “”What they’ve announced is the increase for video games, which will put money into the pockets of the Pixars and Electronic Arts and large video game companies which are based primarily in Los Angeles,” Williamson told CBC News. “Those companies are likely to invest and be happy. Companies like ours who produce and finance our own productions that keeps the wealth effectively in the province didn’t get a bump on the tax credit.”

While I respect Mr. Williamson’s feelings, he perhaps doesn’t understand the long history of Electronic Arts in the local game development culture and the important role the Burnaby campus has played in the growth of our local industry. I would like to direct him to an excellent article in the Georgia Straight. Written by Blaine Kyllo, this article takes a look at BC’s video game development family tree and how the industry has grown since the day Don Mattrick and Jeff Sember released the first Vancouver-developed game, Evolution, in 1982. The global video game development industry, in comparison to the film industry as a whole, is quite young and Vancouver was right there in the industry’s infancy.

Minister of Tourism, Culture and the Arts Kevin Krueger Touring Ubisoft Vancouver

Minister of Tourism, Culture and the Arts Kevin Krueger Touring Ubisoft Vancouver

 

For example, the first documentary filmed in Kamloops dates from 1912, and then during the 1930’s, several Hollywood studios began filming their “Quota Quickies” (today’s “B” movies) in Vancouver. One of the first TV series filmed here was the original Littlest Hobo, which was filmed at Hollyburn Studios in West Vancouver from 1963 through 1965. The point I am trying to make here is that Vancouver, and British Columbia as a whole, has had a presence in the early days of not just one creative industry, but in many.

Going back to Shawn Williamson’s comment about the “large video game companies which are based primarily in Los Angeles” – what he neglects to understand is that there are thousands of people employed in the digital media industry in BC – by small to medium-sized enterprise as well as by the bigger studios such as EA Canada, Radical Entertainment (Activision-Blizzard) and Relic Entertainment (THQ). Small studios such as Fit Brains, who may employ only a dozen people, and medium-sized studios such as Next Level Games, who employ a few dozen people will benefit greatly from this program. All of the above-named studios were producing product long before there any kind of provincial tax credits available to them. They didn’t stay because of a possible video game tax incentive some time in the future. They stayed because BC has talent.

I do have to wonder if Mr. Williamson has ever sat and watched the credits roll by at the end of a video game; just as in film and television production, there are many talented people employed for a game production beyond those who create the characters, build the environments and write the computer code. There are audio specialists, voice actors, office administration, human resources, marketing specialists, video compositors, musicians, motion-capture specialists, story and technical writers and so many more.

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8th February 2010

BioWare’s Dragon Age: Origins Reaches Triple Platinum Sales

Bioware CorpEdmontonBioware announced today that according to internal EA data, Dragon Age™: Origins has sold-in over 3.2 million units worldwide. The “RPG of the Year” as named by Game Informer, G4, SpikeTV, AOL.com, and PC Gamer, Dragon Age: Origins has been hailed by Seth Schiesel of The New York Times as, “…perhaps the best electronic game made yet.” Dragon Age: Origins has won over 30 “Best of 2009” awards and has an average review score of 91 on PC according to Metacritic.com. This staggering critical and commercial success makes Dragon Age: Origins the sixth consecutive blockbuster from BioWare, alongside Baldur’s Gate™, Neverwinter Nights™, Star Wars®: Knights of the Old Republic™, Jade Empire™ and Mass Effect™.

Since the release of Dragon Age: Origins in fall 2009, the studio has continued to enchant gamers with additional content packs including Warden’s Keep and Return to Ostagar. The upcoming Dragon Age Originsexpansion pack, Dragon Age: Origins – Awakening is set to launch on March 16, 2010.

“This is a tremendous start for the Dragon Age franchise and we are extremely pleased with the great reception the game has already received from critics and fans worldwide,” said Dr. Ray Muzyka, co-founder, BioWare and Group General Manager of the RPG/MMO Group of EA. “Our team is dedicated to crafting high quality, engaging new adventures and stories in the world of Ferelden for our fans!”

Dragon Age: Origins – Awakening, BioWare’s next installment in the Dragon Age lore, occurs following the events of Dragon Age: Origins. Players assume the role of a Grey Warden Commander entrusted with rebuilding the order of Grey Wardens and tasked to uncover the mystery of how the darkspawn survive after the slaying of the Archdemon. How players choose to rebuild their order, resolve the conflict with the mysterious “Architect,” and determine the fate of the darkspawn are just some of the many intriguing moral choices that will shape each player’s heroic journey. Players will be able to import their character from Dragon Age: Origins or start out as a new Grey Warden from the neighboring land of Orlais.

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