Village Gamer

Library and Archives Canada, the Canadian Urban Libraries Council, and the Canadian War Museum have officially announced a collaborative agreement for the delivery of Lest We Forget workshops across Canada. These workshops allow students to consult and research primary source documents by looking through the military service files of Canadian soldiers, doctors or nurses who served in the First World War or who were killed in action in the Second World War.

Under the terms of the collaboration, librarians and other trained individuals across Canada will be able to organize and deliver Lest We Forget workshops using the online tools provided by Library and Archives Canada.

The workshops will be held in four libraries across the country as well as at the Canadian War Museum. Current collaborating libraries include the Burlington Public Library, the Fraser Valley Regional Library, the Winnipeg Public Library, and the Toronto Public Library.

“We are delighted to see that our Lest We Forget project is being expanded,” said Dr. Daniel J. Caron, Librarian and Archivist of Canada. “This new collaboration with the Canadian Urban Libraries Council and the Canadian War Museum will allow students from across Canada to experience a Lest We Forget workshop with a trained facilitator.” Read the rest of this entry »

Seventy-three entries, seven judges, and over 62,000 online votes cast has produced a winner: Taryn Green, a 28-year-old freelance film editor from Sudbury, Ontario, has claimed first prize of $5000 in Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital’s filmpossible contest, which challenged entrants to create a video bringing visibility to disability.

Taryn’s winning video, The Triangle Girl Retold, is a touching retelling of a story she wrote at age six, in which the triangle represents her disability, Cerebral Palsy. She longs to be like everyone else, but in the end, she becomes more confident and proud and embraces her disability, or “inner triangle”.

“Filmpossible was a great learning experience for me, as well as a very humbling one,” said Taryn. “I was competing against so many amazing videos that really challenged my own perception of disability. Through filmpossible, Holland Bloorview initiated a great change toward the public perception of disability. We need to keep this dialogue alive long after this contest is over. It is important to keep watching all the videos and to keep telling our stories.” Read the rest of this entry »

Canada’s largest independent game development studio Artificial Mind & Movement (A2M) has walked through a hole in the fabric in time and re-launched itself with a new brand that is really its old studio name, Behaviour. The change is a return to the name the company was formerly known by when they were a small upstart developer of PlayStation® games in the 90’s. Today that company has grown to 375 talented employees in Montreal and Santiago, Chile and is a licensed developer for all of the major game consoles, handheld and online platforms.

While Behaviour has always been recognized as a premiere work-for-hire game studio, the company has renewed their focus on developing original IP on multiple platforms alongside its work-for-hire business with major publishers. With five specialized internal studios (gamer, portable, online, downloadable and family), Behaviour offers a development solution for any project.

“We are and will always strive to be the best and most trusted independent game development studio in the industry,” said Rémi Racine, CEO, Behaviour. “The change in name is not only a return to our previous name but also an indicator of the evolution of the company. We have developed a strong reputation as a high-quality work-for-hire studio as well as a creator of our own original content and will continue to pursue both sides of the business. The new name reflects the renaissance of the company.”

“Wet 2 (multi-platform), Naughty Bear 2 (multi-platform), Doritos Crash Course (XBLA) as well as Rango (multi-platform), which was announced by EA and Paramount Digital Entertainment on November 4th, are all currently in development at Behaviour,” added Jamie Leece, Senior Vice President of Business Development. “We have just completed Sims 3 (Wii), and are also working on several unannounced games for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Nintendo’s Wii and DS systems, Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network, next generation handhelds, a Facebook game to be launched in November and a Casual MMO to be launched early next year. The studio’s platform diversification strategy has been well received by our publishing partners, allowing cross platform executions while leveraging Behaviour’s established technologies.”

Inspired by an initial exhibition at Galerie Arludik in Paris, Ubisoft Montreal has announced that Assassin’s Creed: The Exhibition will be on display at Montreal’s Galerie d’art Yves Laroche from November 15th to 27th. The Montreal event will feature a brand new series of concepts arts depicting the world of Assassin’s Creed, Assassin’s Creed II, and Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood. Indeed, art fans and gamers will discover over twenty artworks created in Montreal by illustrators at the Ubisoft studio, where Assassin’s Creed games are produced and developed. These works will be seen around the world in months to come, Montreal being the first stop of this travelling exhibition.

“Assassin’s Creed: The Exhibition is a chance to honor our artists’ talent and to share the artistic brilliance of the world-renowned Assassin’s Creed franchise. This event is also in line with Ubisoft’s transmedia strategy, whose goal is to enlarge our brand experience on different platforms and to showcase our creativity”, Ubisoft Montreal CEO Yannis Mallat says.

From October 5 to 30, Parisian art gallery Arludik presented a first version of Assassin’s Creed: The Exhibition. Its featured artworks were sold at prices ranging from $800.00 to $2800.00, all within the first week of the exhibition, which attracted an average of 200 visitors each day.

Created in the initial stages of a game’s development, concept arts materialize a game’s artistic vision and inspire its world. Within a large production team, the work of Gilles Beloeil, Martin Deschambault, Patrick Desgreniers, Maxime Desmettre, Vincent Gaigneux, Vincent Gauthier, Raphael Lacoste, Patrick Lambert, Olivier Martin, Khai Nguyen, Namwoo Noh, and Donglu Yu guide the game’s artistic vision and is essential to its development.

With 19 million copies sold worldwide, Assassin’s Creed is without question one of Ubisoft’s – and the video game industry’s – most popular franchises. Assassin’s Creed and Assassin’s Creed II, released in 2007 and 2009, each sold over nine million copies.

On November 16, 2010, Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood, the franchise’s third title, will be released in over 55 countries. This game was crowned “Best Online Multiplayer” at the 2010 Electronic Entertainment Expo, and has shattered Ubisoft’s previous pre-sales records.

Ubisoft has also announced that those who purchase Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood for the PlayStation 3 will receive complimentary access to the system-exclusive Copernicus Conspiracy add-on pack. The Copernicus Conspiracy add-on will be available for download through the PlayStation Network on release day, and will feature the Renaissance-era astronomer who first advocated that the earth revolves around the sun. Ezio has been charged with defending Copernicus from those who wish to bury the scientist and his theories, which leads the player through exclusive missions that include courier, assassination, and protection assignments.

Bitcasters spin-off Social Game Universe, pioneers of the concept of inter-connected social games, has announced the launch of the Inter-Game API (IGAPI), a solution for game developers to drive traffic by letting users “play” through a cross-promotion bar.

IGAPI uses the power of the social graph to let players interact with their friends across games and apps without leaving the game they are currently playing. Rather than seeing a typical banner ad or cross promotion, players see IGAPI “Action Cards” that they can play on their friends in other apps. Action Cards can vary from the simple (e.g., “Give film to your friend Nathon to help him grow his studio in Hollywood Tycoon”) to the more zany and bizarre (e.g., “Release a horde of zombies on your friend Jen’s horror set!”). IGAPI’s actions are limited only by the imagination and creativity of the developers looking to attract attention to their games.

Originally developed for Social Game Universe’s own critically acclaimed Hollywood games, the IGAPI technology let players in the movie-mogul sim game Hollywood Tycoon hire actors from the fame and stardom game Avastar. Having seen the power of interconnecting the games, Social Game Universe turned IGAPI into a scalable, point-and-click tool that any third party developer can use. The result is greater player interaction, site engagement, and increased awareness of new apps.

“The IGAPI inter-game action system is very innovative, and I think it will improve the way games drive traffic, re-engagement, and revenue across the industry” said Hussein Fazal, CEO of AdParlor, a leading social application marketing business.

According to Eric Goldberg, Managing Director of Crossover Technologies, “IGAPI is a step forward in the cross-promotion of social games and a great tool for independent developers to reach new players”. Mr. Goldberg has now joined the advisory board of Social Game Universe, along with Manu Rekhi (Vice President of MySpace Games & Content) and Greg Bate (Co-founder of Neverblue).

Nathon Gunn, Founder and CEO of Social Game Universe, added “We knew we had something special going on between Avastar and Hollywood Tycoon, and we’re even more excited now that these innovations can be shared by other developers.”

On a side note, Social Game Universe is hiring. Check out their Jobs page for more details.