Village Gamer

Vancouver – Canada will celebrate its world-class video game and digital art developers at the 1st Annual Canadian Video Game and Digital Arts Awards ceremony to take place in Vancouver, British Columbia on May 5, 2010 at the beautiful, award-winning Vancouver Convention Centre.

As the third largest producer of video game entertainment in the world, it’s only fitting that Canada launch the Canadian Video Game and Digital Arts Awards with the second annual Game Developers Conference (GDC Canada), to celebrate this impressive designation. The show will also be broadcast across the country on G4TV through the Rogers Network, and tickets for the event will be available to the public in the coming weeks.

“Canadians are masters of their craft when it comes to making games, visual effects and computer animation,” said Victor Lucas, head of Greedy Productions and host of Electric Playground, Canada’s national video game and electronic entertainment show. They work tirelessly to build some of the world’s best entertainment, which then becomes a world-class export that the entire planet consumes. It is time to let everyone know where this amazing work comes from.”

To add to the event, Video Games Live will provide the entertainment for the evening. This musical convergence of sound, games and effects has garnered fans across the globe, and is the first and most successful video game concert tour in the world.

Sponsors for the event have begun to come onboard with notable participation from Microsoft’s Xbox Canada, Electronic Arts, AnnexPro & Rogers.

Nominations opened today for the Awards and are welcome from all parts of Canada’s digital media industries. The Call for Nominations will close on March 7, 2010. Seven awards will be presented for Visual Effects and Animation and nine awards will be given for Video Games.

Finalists in all categories will be announced March 15, 2010.

The Canadian Video Game and Digital Arts Awards are co-produced by Reboot Communications, Greedy Productions and Seven Group. The producers are joined by a national industry committee of developers and leaders of the Canadian digital entertainment industry.

Village Gamer is Proud to Be Canadian

GO CANADA GO!

Edmonton – A Smartphone as an x-ray machine? “There’s an app for that.” This phrase is starting to become as commonplace as saying “hello” when answering the phone. According to Gartner Research, Smartphone consumers are estimated to spend more than $6 billion and download over 4.5 billion mobile applications this year. With the mounting popularity of this phenomenon, AppBoy launched an easy-to-use, revolutionary social network that aims at connecting mobile app developers and users.

“AppBoy was developed to help developers get their apps discovered and to help users navigate through the thousands of available apps to find the ones they like,” says Thorren Koopmans, Director of Operations for AppBoy.

With more than 100,000 apps on the market, it’s difficult for app entrepreneurs to stand out. AppBoy gives app developers of multiple platforms (Android, iPhone, Palm and Blackberry) an opportunity to easily showcase their work and market their creations to mobile app lovers. Through personal developer profile pages created on the site, developers can share their ideas and even create their own app store. Apps sold through the social network also earn the developer a share of the profits.

AppBoy also has a lot to offer for those who aren’t building their own apps. Any user with ideas that are useful, smart or just plain entertaining can submit them to the website. Visitors to the social network have the ability to vote and comment on submissions. If the ideas generate enough votes, AppBoy rewards the user $250 and creates the app.

“We already have a great value proposition for both developers and end users, but we’re just getting started. There are big updates coming that are going to make AppBoy that much better.” Read the rest of this entry »