Village Gamer

Canada – First, a shout-out to our readers over at DFAIT – Happy Friday everyone! Also best wishes to Monika and Michael for a life full of adventure and happiness – make sure you come back to Vancouver every so often for a visit. Our other local adventurers, Brenda and Eli have reached Rankin Inlet in Nunavut, where you can apparently buy a Wii at the Rankin Inlet Co-op for only $799.00. Wow.

This weekend, Village Gamer will be at the Abbotsford Airshow. We’ll be at the VIP Chalet on Sunday, so if you’re on Chalet Row, stop in and say hi. We’ll also be visiting with our friends from the Canadian Armed Forces out on the static display field. Sadly, Captain Phil “Ritz” Smith and our friends from the US Air Force Strike Eagle demo team appear to be scheduled for a show in Ohio – but there is a flypast scheduled. Makes conversation difficult, though. Our favourites, though, will always be the Snowbirds.  Both Nintendo Wii and Microsoft 360 had a presence at last year’s airshow. We’ll be checking to see if they’ve returned to the static area as well.

The cavechild flew in one of Bud Granley’s Yak 11 planes yesterday – usually he flies with stunt pilot Ken Pietsch, but Ken was booked up with media types. Mike took video of the flight, but he hasn’t finished his editing yet so we can’t show you this year’s pre-show flight adventure. He was disappointed that they only hit a low G-force once or twice during the flight. Now he’s decided he wants his pilot’s license.

IUGO’s new game Spy Bot Chronicles has officially launched in the iTunes App Store with an introductory price of $0.99 usd. Toy Bot has been kidnapped by Thief Bot, and he needs you to rescue him. Play through four different zones to find the hidden levels and collect all of the rewards while experiencing the high quality of IUGO’s game design.

Ubisoft Montreal is asking for gamer input on some of the achievements for Assassin’s Creed 2. You can vote for one of these four achievements, as well as leave your comments. If you are a member of Ubi’s community, you can vote here; if you’re on Facebook, you can vote here.

The four achievements to vote on are:

The taste of revenge – Kill X Brutes (heavy guard)
Weapon Master – Use all weapons at least once
Victory lies in preparation – Get all available upgrades for Ezio
Mighty traveler – Travel X kilometers within the game

My choice was Mighty Traveler, because putting on lots of in-game miles means taking a look at the scenery and taking in all of the incredible artwork which has been done by the artists and level designers.

Vancouver’s indie developer Dingo Games has just announced its latest project, The Three Musketeers: The Game. Closely following the story of Alexander Dumas’ original masterpiece, The Three Musketeers: The Game is a unique action-adventure game for Mac and Windows.
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Vancouver – A new brand monitoring application will help companies mine Twitter for brand ‘buzz’, automatically scanning for positive or negative sentiment and transforming the constant stream of buzz into actionable business intelligence, software maker ResponseTek announced today.

ResponseTek’s Media Aggregator, launched this week as part of the Summer 09 release of ResponseTek:CEM, the company’s flagship customer experience management software platform, helps businesses benefit from the enormous output of consumer-generated content from social media phenomenon Twitter through a single, integrated software platform that combines media mining, reporting, analytics and action management.

“We know a lot of companies are struggling to wrap their heads around the sheer volume of information coming out of Twitter, blogs and non-traditional news media, but at the same time need to track and understand how their brands are being covered and discussed by media and consumers,” said Gord Elder, product group director at ResponseTek. “We extended our enterprise customer intelligence platform to the world of the web and social media; businesses can now stay on top of tweets, blog posts, news and other content that’s actually relevant in business.”
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Toronto – Giant Realm, Inc., the rapidly growing NYC online media company which delivers millions of 18 – 34 year old male first movers to advertisers via its publisher group of entertainment enthusiast communities, today announced that publisher Pure Pwnage’s (pronounced Pure Ownage) popular web series has been picked up by Canwest Broadcasting. Slated to begin production this fall, the half-hour comedy series will air on Showcase in 2010. Pure Pwnage, the digital generation’s Bob & Doug McKenzie, is among the first web series to graduate to Canadian broadcast TV.

Pure Pwnage, which is filmed in and around Toronto, appeals to fans of Curb Your Enthusiasm and Flight of the Conchords and those who have an appreciation for Internet and gaming culture. The mockumentary series follows Jeremy (Jarett Cale) a modern day, 26 year old gamer version of Larry David. His unfortunate lack of social experience constantly has him bumping up against reality. A child of the Internet, no matter how hard he tries, he just can’t relate to the ‘real world.’ After he is given an ultimatum from his mother to get a job or get out of the basement, Jeremy must leave the gaming world and join society again. Hilarity ensues as the series sees Jeremy start his own rock band, become a video game tutor and attempt to socialize with his co-workers at a grocery store.

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Scotland – Canada’s team from Sheridan Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning is getting ready for the final competition at Scotland’s Dare to be Digital event. Dare ProtoPlay, which is part of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe will be taking place August 14-16. You can preview the games and check out team blogs on the Dare to be Digital web site. Entry is free for the event which is open 10am – 6pm.

Dare ProtoPlay, presented by Abertay University and powered by Intel, has grown out of the world-leading Dare to be Digital competition and aims to celebrate young talent through a mini video-games festival. It is a unique cultural event for the games industry showcasing talent, IP, research, and much more, and serves as a battleground for creativity and culture in games development.

Fourteen brand new computer games, developed by teams during this year’s Dare to be Digital competition, will fight it out at Dare ProtoPlay to win the public vote and the endorsement of a panel of industry experts.

This year’s Dare ProtoPlay will also see digital toy factory Denki present the first opportunity to play a preview of Quarrel, their new Xbox Live Arcade game. Everyone is invited to play and give feedback that will directly affect how the game looks and works when it is released in 2010..

In addition, Dare ProtoPlay will also feature several other exciting new elements: a music workshop by Yann Seznec, who will use Wacom pen tablets to create music instruments; Abertay PhD research programmes based on video games technology; a Dare iPhone game preview in association with Digital Goldfish; a special Career Workshop in association with BAFTA targeted for teenagers and much more.
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