Village Gamer

Vancouver – The Game Developers Conference Canada® is the premier forum for Canadian developers to share best practices for creating games with long production cycles, large development teams, and multi-platform releases. Unique to GDC Canada, is its focus on production cycle improvements every game professional can make to build innovative and quality games. Collaborate with industry veterans from EA, Propaganda Games, Next Level Games, Radical Entertainment, Relic Entertainment and more.

GDC Canada Featured Sessions

Concept/Preproduction Track Featured Sessions

• Realism in Animation. Misnomer or Oxymoron? – Speaker: Owen Hurley (Relic Entertainment)
• The IP Toolkit: Making Ideas Real – Speaker: Eric Holmes (Radical Entertainment)

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Montreal – The developers of Far Cry 2 have thrown down the gauntlet –  Canadian players can win the chance to take on the development team in one of three matches on a special downloadable map. The Jungle Seizure Map is presented by Microsoft Visual Studio®. Players with Ubisoft accounts can enter the contest by answering three multiple choice questions. While the first drawing has already taken place, there are still two more challenge nights to go – one on March 12th and one on April 9th. Click here to read the contest rules – and good luck! Far Cry 2 is rated M (Mature) by the ESRB.

Alberta – The Banff World Television Festival (BANFF) announces the extension of the Program Competition submission final deadline for the Banff World Television Awards (“The Rockies”) to Friday, February 20, 2009. BANFF will take place at the Fairmont Banff Springs in Banff, Canada, June 7-10, 2009.

“Extending the final deadline for submissions is our way to ensure producers can participate in this opportunity to showcase their work on the international stage,” says Georges Leclere, Director of the Banff World Television Awards.

Recognized as one of the world’s most prestigious program competitions, “The Rockies” honor excellence in international television, covering 21 genres and 2 interactive categories. The 2008 competition attracted close to 1000 entries from 44 countries.
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The World’s Leading Experts and Authorities in Cloud Computing to Convene on April 20-24 at Cloud Slam ’09 to Analyze and Uncover Top Trends and Challenges

Toronto – Cloud Slam ’09, a virtual conference developed to promote collaborative analysis of the latest trends and challenges in the world of cloud computing, will commence on April 20. Organized by more than 30 leading experts and authorities in the field, this five-day conference will highlight research, developments and accomplishments by industry leaders whose contributions are helping to shape the future of cloud computing. Key topics will include the significant benefits of an open cloud, enterprise readiness of IaaS architectures, and the impact of cloud computing on application developers.

Cloud Slam ’09 gives industry leaders and professionals keen insights into published research, unique and evolving ideas and best practices, as well as an opportunity to network with leading experts in cloud computing. The conference is designed to be a career-enhancing experience for researchers, engineers, directors and IT professionals. It’s also an ideal opportunity for corporate leaders to glean information on the latest innovations in cloud computing, generate leads and develop ideas on how to capitalize on what’s estimated to eventually become a $100 billion dollar market.
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Tokyo – SEGA® Corporation today announced a worldwide agreement with International Sports Multimedia (ISM), exclusive licensee of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), to once again become the sole approved video game publisher of the 2010 Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver, Canada. After an extremely successful series of video games from the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, this exclusive license will allow SEGA to once more publish the only official interactive entertainment software titles of the world’s most famous sporting event.

Through this agreement, SEGA secures the sole rights to publish console, PC/Macintosh, handheld, arcade, and mobile games worldwide. Under this exclusive license, SEGA will publish a wide variety of games with winter sports and events including skiing, skating, and snowboard bearing the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games emblem.
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Korea – World Cyber Games (WCG), the premier international video game competition, has announced the first five Official Game Titles for the WCG 2009 season. The lineup includes Counter-Strike™ 1.6 (PC), Starcraft®: Brood War™ (PC), WarCraft® III: The Frozen Throne™ (PC), and Guitar Hero®: World Tour (Xbox 360), and Virtua Fighter® 5 (Xbox 360).

All five games have been a staple at past WCG competitions. Counter-Strike 1.6™ and Starcraft®: Brood War™ have been Official Tournament Games since 2001 while WarCraft® III: The Frozen Throne™ has been part of the WCG since 2003. Guitar Hero®, which marked WCG’s first foray into music games, and Virtua Fighter® 5 Online will be in their second consecutive year as Official Game Titles.

”As interest in WCG continues to grow around the world, we have become much more discerning in selecting the official games for this year,” said Hyeong Seok Kim, president and CEO of World Cyber Games, Inc., organizer of WCG. ”This year we decided to unveil the games in two separate announcements to pique the interest and anticipation for the official game lineup. These first five titles constitute the best and most popular games in a wide variety of genres including real-time strategy, first-person shooter, fighting, and music. In March, fans can look forward to another group of elite titles that will certainly satisfy every type of gamer around the world.”

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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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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Modern Princesses: Bringing Elika to Life in Prince of Persia

Vancouver – ACM SIGGRAPH Vancouver Chapter will be hosting an evening with Ubisoft Producer Ben Mattes and Team Leader Matthew Clark on Wednesday, February 11 at the VanCity Theatre in Vancouver. The evening’s topic will cover the design and development of Elika, the Prince of Persia’s new AI-controlled companion. As stated on the event’s information page, “The science of creating a relationship between the player and the controllable, main character is a well-documented one. (3Cs, etc.) The same can be said about the art of establishing relationships between characters themselves. Therefore, the challenge for Prince of Persia was to create a bond between the player and a character over which he has no control. The presentation will explore and expose the animation and programming techniques used to create such a bond.”

Tickets for this event are now on sale, please check the event site for more details. Admission is $20.00 for non-members, $10.00 for members.

Vancouver – The new Women In Games International (Vancouver) Chapter will be hosting a social networking evening during the upcoming Game Design Expo. Women In Games International will be presenting a panel discussion at Vancouver Film School’s Open House about – Women In Games – on Sunday, February 8th. There will also be an announcement from the group in regards to a new $30 000.00 scholarship fund for VFS’ Game Design Programme. Please note that both days of the 2009 Game Design Expo are sold out.

The mixer will be held at Digital Alchemy Entertainment’s studio in Gastown. Those who are interested in attending, please RSVP on WIGI-Vancouver’s FaceBook event page. There are sponsorship opportunities for this event; interested companies or individuals are asked to contact Maria [at] radical [dot] ca. There will be drinks and appetizers along with some music and good conversation.