Village Gamer

Big Blue Bubble, in conjunction with DIG 2011 Game and Web Developers Conference, has created a great game design competition for anyone with a game design idea. All you have to do is describe your game concept in less than 500 words, attach up to two relevant images or sound files, and submit your idea to the judges. Final day for entry is October 3rd, with the winner being announced on November 7th. The winner will get to work with a team of Big Blue Bubble programmers, artists and producers to create their very own game. There are a few conditions which apply, so please see the full competition guidelines below: Read the rest of this entry »

EA DICE and Virgin Gaming have announced the Battlefield 3 Worldwide Conquest Tournament to celebrate the launch of the highly anticipated first-person shooter on October. 25, 2011. The largest console videogame competition in gaming history , players from around the world will compete online in Battlefield 3 for a chance to win $1.6 million in cold hard cash. The online tournament begins in early 2012 and will culminate with a live grand finale where the players with the best Battlefield skills will walk away with a share of the $1.6 million prize pool.  Read the rest of this entry »

Merging Media 2011 has announced that Jennifer Newman Rutsky and Sean Elbe have each won a full pass to the October 27th & 28th conference after participating in a Twitter and Facebook promotion. Tickets for the conference, which will be taking place at The Woodwards Heritage Complex, are still available for purchase.

In other event news, the deadline for Pitch 360 and a chance to win this year’s $10,000 BC Film Development Award has been extended to October 5th in order to encourage more up and coming media producers and developers with innovative projects to participate.

Eight participants with innovative cross-media projects will be selected to battle it out a la ‘Dragon’s Den’ style for the grand prize at the Pitch 360 sessions on October 28th, hosted by new-dad-to-be Victor Lucas. The organizers are accepting early to late stage development projects for consideration, so get your submissions in today. If I had more confidence, a lot more knowledge about production, a team and a fully fleshed out plan, I’d enter the Pitch 360 program in a heartbeat. The BC Film Development Award would at least get the cross-media project idea I’ve been sitting on for a year off the ground.

Mobile game developer XMG Studio and the National Post are calling all Canadian college and university students to bring their game-ideas to life at Great Canadian Appathon². Over the weekend of September 30 “HUBS”, where students can gather, will be set up at over 20 participating colleges and universities, across the country, to give student game developers and designers the chance to work around the clock and compete for $50,000 in prize money.

Similar to the Great Canadian Appathon, the largest ‘hackathon’ to be held in Canada, GCA² guarantees participants 48 hours of intense fun, meeting new people, learning stuff, and building a game on top of the world’s leading mobile API’s. Some of the talented designers and developers from XMG will be on-site at the major universities’ “HUBS” to motivate and mentor the teams. All other coders can rely on a 48-hour support line for questions and advice on how to work with the latest interfaces. Read the rest of this entry »

Beginning on September 27, 2011, players who purchase their copy of EA Sports™ FIFA Soccer 12 at GameStop can register to compete in the GameStop FIFA Soccer 12 “Qualifier Cup” powered by Virgin Gaming.  Players will have just over a week to train once the game launches before taking the pitch on October 7 in an attempt to run through the competition and win a trip to London, England to play in the finals. Read the rest of this entry »

Corel today announced the winners of the 2011 CorelDRAW® International Design Contest. With categories representing a range of production and design disciplines, the contest celebrates the diversity of CorelDRAW talent from around the globe. A total of twenty-four winning designs were selected from the hundreds of entries submitted by CorelDRAW users worldwide. Joseph Diaz of Pontiac, Illinois was named the Grand Prize winner for his entry entitled Steampunk Stella’s. All of the winning designs can now be viewed on the  CorelDRAW web site. Read the rest of this entry »

Walmart Canada President and CEO David Cheesewright has launched the Walmart Green Student Challenge, inviting post-secondary students across Canada to develop proposals that are good for the environment and for business.

“Today’s students are tomorrow’s leaders,” said Cheesewright. “We are asking for their best, most innovative ideas to make business more environmentally sustainable in the future.”

The Green Student Challenge is designed to encourage the next generation of business leaders to create the next wave of sustainable business ideas.  It is the latest in a series of large-scale sustainability initiatives Walmart has launched in Canada and throughout the world over the past five years. Read the rest of this entry »

Know a young budding artist? TD Friends of the Environment Foundation (TD FEF) and Earth Day® Canada invite teachers and parents to kick off the school year on a green note with the TD FEF and Earth Day Canada Art Contest.  Elementary school students across the country can submit an original drawing of their favourite part of nature for the chance to have their artwork featured on a limited edition TD FEF reusable shopping bag and win a $7,500 environmental grant for their school. Read the rest of this entry »

The September 30th deadline for Trailer Trashed is fast approaching. Trailer Trashed is the environmental short film competition . . . with a twist. All entries must be in the form of a movie trailer and convey this year’s chosen waste reduction theme – The Unrecycled.

The Unrecycled refers to the more than 280 million beverage containers that went missing in 2010, tossed in the garbage and left to litter the environment.  You can use animation, live action, claymation, Lego, toy soldiers or sock puppets, in any genre you like such as drama, horror, comedy, sci-fi, action, romance, musical, parody, satire or wherever your creative energies take you. Read the rest of this entry »

First there were radio stars, then TV stars, now…. there are app stars! Australia’s Treasure Bound Books, creator of the interactive book app, “Treasure Kai and the Lost Gold of Shark Island,” is launching a treasure hunt of its own for three children aged 4-12 to feature as cartoons in the Treasure Kai app. The “Treasure Kai” book app was recently named a “Best of the Best, Top 25 Essential Children’s Book App” by Digital Storytime.

As part of the “Be an App Star” contest, award-winning illustrator of Treasure Kai, Vic Guiza, will draw the winners onto Main Street next to Kai’s treasure shop. To “audition” for the cameo roles, children from around the world are encouraged to illustrate their most creative treasure maps and place Kai somewhere on the map. Parents can submit their child’s creations to Treasure Bound Books via email or the web site. Submissions will be accepted throughout the month of September. Read the rest of this entry »