Village Gamer

Sault Ste. Marie – Four Algoma University students have won the approval of critical judges and qualified for the Dare to be Digital video game design competition being held this June to August in the United Kingdom. Sunny Atwal, Eric Stock, Pedro Melendez, and Chris Iaconis from Algoma University and one student from the University of Abertay Dundee in Scotland have been accepted to take part as a team in the annual competition.

Dare to be Digital bills itself as the United Kingdom’s premier video game design competition for students. Now in its tenth year of operation, Dare to be Digital is an annual summer event that allots teams of students ten weeks to design and build a video game prototype. At the conclusion of the ten weeks, the teams are brought together at a showcase event where their games are evaluated by industry experts. The competition is open to all university students across the UK and also regularly attracts international competitors from nations such as China, India, Japan and Malaysia.
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Got a killer videogame idea? Skills strong enough for a spot on a game development team? Then get paid to build your game this summer in the 2009 GameGarage on beautiful PEI.

Charlettetown PEI – Canadian gamers who are graduating from or are recent graduates of interactive media programs are invited to compete for five spots on the 2009 GameGame Videogame Incubator Team where they will work with mentors from PEI’s gaming industry to build a functioning game prototype. And they get paid.

GameGarage is co-presented by Telefilm Canada and PEI Business Development Inc. and managed by the Interactive Media Alliance (IMA), a PEI-based interactive media industry association based out of the Atlantic Technology Centre, Charlottetown, PEI.

GameGarage gives participants the necessary studio space, hardware, software, salary and
mentorship required to make their game idea a reality.

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Edmonton – BioWare, makers of the highly anticipated video game Dragon Age: Origins, has created a powerful toolset that will allow gamers to easily create their own Dragon Age: Origins levels and adventure modules to share online with the world. Applications are now being accepted for this rare opportunity to test the Dragon Age toolset and help BioWare fine tune it before its release later this year.

To select beta testers, BioWare is seeking a wide range of computer systems, testing experience and technical expertise. It doesn’t matter if a gamer has never used a toolset before – BioWare is looking for testers with different levels of experience, as well as fans who are simply curious about building their own adventures for the first time.

Fans can register with the BioWare Community and apply for the Dragon Age Toolset Beta test online.

Background

The Dragon Age toolset follows the Neverwinter Nights Aurora Toolset that created one of the biggest and most successful communities in the gaming world with an enormous amount of stunning fan-created work. This next generation toolset takes user-created content to the next level by featuring more depth, more functionality and more ways to make the adventure you want to make.

BioWare has big plans for game, website and toolset integration to bring the talented Builders in the community together to plan, organize and team-up to create new worlds.

Vancouver – Ion Branding + Design, a Vancouver-based multidisciplinary graphic design studio, today announced the launch of their third annual One Good Idea™ contest. Doing good for the world is any organization’s badge of honour. Through their third annual One Good Idea™ contest, Ion Branding + Design is looking for a project that positively contributes to the well-being of our world. An organization’s project could be environmentally, socially or economically focused. The submission with the most merit will receive $25,000 worth of Ion’s creative services.

At its core, sustainability is an expression of the desire to find balance and harmony among the competing social, economic and environmental drivers of culture. It’s about trying to fashion a better society. While most would agree that we all want to make a difference, we would probably also agree that we feel overwhelmed about how to make it real. Our One Good Idea™ contest endeavors to remind people that even small steps can contribute to massive change. One Good Idea™ is all it takes.
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Ottawa/San Francisco – Unlimi-Tech Software, the pioneer in accelerated file transfers is pleased to announce the selection of FileCatalyst Workflow by SEGA® Corporation. The deployment of FileCatalyst Workflow allows SEGA to successfully manage and transfer game development files, including game-supporting multimedia files, raw and binary game code.

The FileCatalyst Workflow software application is a unique file-based workflow solution that offers comprehensive tracking and management of files as they are processed through a digital workflow. The uniqueness of the application is exemplified by its ability to accelerate file transfers as they move from one project node to the other. Advanced acceleration algorithms allow for improved bandwidth utilization and data reduction – leading to file transfer rates of 100x faster than traditional FTP.

SEGA employs a global network that spans around the world with headquarters in the US, Japan, and Europe. File transfers between these locations were slow until now, due to high network latency, and tracking/workflow was non-existent.
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Vancouver/San Francisco – The next generation of video games are wowing gamers with unprecedented high def graphics and gameplay that pushes the boundaries of what the new systems have to offer. An exciting new technology now promises to bring game audio to the next level as well. At this year’s Game Developers Conference, DTS Inc will educate developers on their cutting edge DTS Neural Surround Sound technology that enables games to present real-time, discrete 7.1 soundtracks on the Wii, Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and via PC.

“Our goal is to give developers the audio tools to help them create gaming experiences more immersive than ever before,” says Mark Tuffy, Director of Business Development, Interactive Media at DTS. “With our DTS Neural Surround technology, games will deliver true 360 degree gaming for the first time ever. The potential here for what sound does in a game is almost limitless.”

By using existing technology built into the systems, DTS Neural Surround is able to convert the 5.1 signal into a true 7.1 surround experience. Whether the signal is digital or analog, DTS Neural Surround is able to convert the sound into rich, fully immersive 7.1 channel surround sound. Now, when gamers hear something creeping up behind them, the sound will really be there.

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New SoundSeed module will generate wind and “swoosh” sounds

Montreal/San Francisco GDC – Today at the Game Developers Conference, Audiokinetic Inc., the leading audio solution provider for the video game industry, unveiled SoundSeed Air, the new module of the SoundSeed product family.

SoundSeed is a family of interactive sound generators for game audio. It uses innovative digital sound processing (DSP) technology to create varied, hence highly immersive, audio environments, while keeping runtime memory usage and recording costs at a minimum.

SoundSeed Air is the latest addition to the SoundSeed family. This new module involves two source plug-ins. The first one is called “Wind” and generates dynamic and never-repeating ambiances while the second one, “Swoosh” produces short air displacement effects such as sword slashing or dragon wings flaps.

As SoundSeed Air is a pure parametric synthesis technology it does not require wave files and it has the potential to produce hours of none-repeating ambiances using virtually no runtime memory.

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Vancouver – Yummy Interactive, Inc. has created a special offer for software game publishers in time for the 2009 Game Developers Conference (GDC) to be held in San Francisco March 23 to March 27, 2009. PC game creators and distributors will be able to evaluate GameShield™, Yummy’s Digital Rights Management software free of charge. Furthermore, game publishers and distributors can protect and sell their games without paying any royalties on the license and protection service for 60 days.

“What we have essentially done here is remove all the barriers to publishers,” says Christopher Hennebery, Director of Software Distribution at Yummy Interactive. “We understand that in this industry, game titles are measured on their playability and overall value. GameShield is no different in this respect.” Hennebery goes on to say, “We’re confident that if we can give publishers unhindered access to GameShield, they’ll see for themselves the incremental value that a flexible and powerful licensing product can deliver.”

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Montreal – Audiokinetic Inc., the leading audio solution provider for the video game industry, announced today that its audio pipeline solution, Wwise®, will be used in the development of EVE Online, the critically-acclaimed massively multiplayer online game (MMOG) developed by the award-winning virtual world developer CCP.

EVE Online is a science fiction-based MMOG in which over a quarter of a million players inhabit a vast, persistent world as starship pilots in pursuit of fame, wealth and glory. First launched in 2003, the latest free expansion, EVE Online: Apocrypha, was released on March 10, 2009. Noted for its fervent use of cutting edge technology, CCP’s server architecture makes large-scale fleet battles a reality, with upwards of one thousand participants engaged in epic conflicts for control of resources and strategic regions of space.

Sound plays an important role in the immersion factor for these intergalactic gladiators. There were numerous advantages to having Wwise tools available to the CCP Audio team during the development phase for Apocrypha as described by Audio Director Baldur Baldursson.

“Ease of use was one of the key factors in our decision to choose Audiokinetic over other middleware solutions we tested,” said Baldursson. “Audiokinetic seems very serious in creating powerful tools that actually work for sound designers and musicians. We were able to focus on designing the sounds themselves instead of having to worry about technology issues – and integrating the actual sounds was fun.”
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Burnaby – Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ:ERTS) announced today that tennis legend John McEnroe will headline a roster of some of the sport’s all-time greats to be featured in EA SPORTS™ Grand Slam® Tennis. An enigmatic personality both on and off the court, McEnroe will make his videogame debut in EA’s new tennis franchise. The game is being developed under the EA SPORTS brand by EA Canada in Vancouver, B.C. It will be available first for the Wii™ and ships to North American retailers on June 16th, 2009.

“It’s great that EA SPORTS has embraced tennis into its family of games. I think it’s a solid sign the sport is thriving and I hope it will continue to generate more interest and excitement in tennis,” said McEnroe. “Having Wimbledon exclusive to this game is huge because Wimbledon is such a special tournament, for the entire sport of tennis and for me personally.”

One of the greatest tennis players of all-time, McEnroe won seven Grand Slams, including three at Wimbledon, and amassed 77 singles titles. He stopped playing singles on the main ATP tour at the end of 1992 but has remained heavily involved in tennis, playing on seniors tours and providing television commentary for a number of networks at the Grand Slams. McEnroe was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1999. Off the court, he hosted his own talk show and written an autobiography, titled “You Cannot Be Serious”, a phrase he made famous through his on-court outbursts during his career.

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