Village Gamer

A $2.1-million investment by the governments of Canada and British Columbia, through the BC Innovation Council, will help Accelerate Okanagan increase the number of technology companies that start and grow in the region. The funding, which is spread over three years, was announced today at the official opening of Accelerate Okanagan, a technology-focused not-for-profit organization that is already benefiting more than 20 local firms through its start-up and growth strategy programs. Read the rest of this entry »

User experience agency Jet Cooper has launched Design in Residence (“DiR”), a program that provides design resources into technology accelerators across Canada. The program will be integrated into startups at Montreal’s FounderFuel, Waterloo’s VeloCity, and Toronto’s MaRS Commons in January 2012. Read the rest of this entry »

The Canadian Film Centre (CFC) is delighted to announce esteemed Academy Award-winning filmmaker Paul Haggis as Chair of the CFC Film Programs including the Cineplex Entertainment and Short Dramatic Film programs. Read the rest of this entry »

Toronto based SecureKey Technologies Inc. has been awarded a contract by the Government of Canada to provide an innovative Credential Broker Service (CBS) that will allow Canadians to use their bank authentication credentials to obtain access to online government services. To ensure privacy protection, users of the CBS will authenticate through their bank but neither their login credentials nor the identity of their bank will be shared with the Government of Canada.  Similarly, no information about the government service being accessed by the user will be shared with the user’s bank. Read the rest of this entry »

Allan Gotlieb, Chairman of the Donner Canadian Foundation, today announced that the winner of the Donner Book Prize, the award for best book on public policy by a Canadian, will now receive $50,000 (up from $35,000).  The other shortlisted titles will now take home $7,500 (up from $5,000).  Mr. Gotlieb also announced the official Call for Submissions and Jury for the fourteenth annual Donner Prize. Read the rest of this entry »

Over the weekend of September 30th, more than 400 college and university students competed in the Great Canadian Appathon2, creating  a mobile game in under 48 hours. At the KPMG- sponsored Grand Finale on November 2nd, the top three teams showed off their games before a panel of judges. Read the rest of this entry »

Canadian game devs received their well-deserved turn in the spotlight earlier this week, as the industry’s best were celebrated at the first annual Canadian Game Development Talent Awards in Montreal.

Supported by Alliance Numerique and the Canadian Interactive Alliance, the awards capped off the 8th annual Montreal International Game Summit.

Eidos Montreal received the most nominations — six for Deus Ex: Human Revolution — but were shut out of the awards. It was Capybara Games’ Kris Piotrowski and Craig d. Adams of Superbrothers, two of the minds behind Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP, who swept their noms, taking home the honours for Designer of the Year and Visual Artist of the Year, respectively.

The night kicked off with Richard Flanagan snagging the Emerging Talent trophy for his first-person puzzler Fract. Other winners’ work spanned the triple-A sector, with Casey Hudson winning Producer of the Year for BioWare’s Mass Effect 2, to the indies with Aaron Bouthillier picking up Animator of the Year for Klei Entertainment’s Shank.

Other winners included Frédérick Blais for Programmer of the Year, (Michael Jackson The Experience and Wwise’s Simon Ashby for Audio Professional of the Year.

The evening capped with Behaviour Interactive’s Remi Racine and Denis Dyack of Silicon Knights being the first inductees into the Canadian Gaming Hall of Fame.

For more information on the awards, head over to http://www.talentawards.ca/site/en

Witnessing a professional musician make attempts at rhythm games can be painful. Does Rush failing its own Tom Sawyer on Rock Band with an embarrassing 31% completion rate come to mind? That scenario won’t be repeated with Ubisoft’s latest title Rocksmith — at least that’s the hope, says producer Jason Schroeder.

No brightly coloured buttons here. Players can plug in any real guitar with a standard quarter-inch input jack and jam along to 50-song music library, including tunes from The Rolling Stones, The Black Keys and Nirvana, to name a few. (Full track list available here.) Read the rest of this entry »