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  • Family Channel Orders The Music Room From The Next Step Creators Temple Street Productions

12th February 2015

Family Channel Orders The Music Room From The Next Step Creators Temple Street Productions

Family ChannelAfter experiencing record-breaking success with the reality tween drama The Next StepFamily Channel is teaming up with Temple Street Productions and creator Frank van Keeken on a new half-hour show, The Music Room. A tween drama featuring an entirely original soundtrack, the series follows a group of young performers who are members of an elite music program. Family has ordered 26 episodes with production slated to start this Spring.   Read the rest of this entry »

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4th February 2015

Miles From Tomorrowland Premieres February 21 On Disney Junior

Disney JuniorThis February, Disney Junior counts down to blast off with the premiere of animated adventure series Miles From Tomorrow. Debuting Saturday, February 21 at 6:55 p.m. ET, the intergalactic comedy incorporates unique space and science facts into storylines that chart the outer space missions of young adventurer Miles Callisto and his family as they help connect the galaxy on behalf of the Tomorrowland Transit Authority. Headlining a television event for the whole family, the Disney Pixar feature film Cars ushers in the series debut at 5 p.m. ET. Read the rest of this entry »

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4th February 2015

ESAC Announces Student Video Game Competition

ESACThe Entertainment Software Association of Canada is pleased to announce the 1st annual ESAC Student Video Game Competition. This competition will grant one winner currently enrolled in a Canadian post-secondary institution the opportunity showcase their game at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in Los Angeles this coming June as part of an all-expense paid trip. The competition is designed to encourage game development skills that are crucial to the future of the domestic video game industry.   Read the rest of this entry »

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2nd February 2015

ACM SIGGRAPH Selects Vancouver 2018 Conference Chair

siggraph 2014ACM SIGGRAPH has announced the selection of Roy C. Anthony, Research & Innovation with Christie, as the SIGGRAPH 2018 Conference Chair. Anthony, who chaired the Production Sessions at SIGGRAPH 2014 in Vancouver this past August, has been an active member and contributor to ACM SIGGRAPH for several years. Read the rest of this entry »

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2nd February 2015

Bad Taste On Steam Greenlight

steam greenlightCurrently on Steam Greenlight is a Canadian-developed game named Bad Taste. The developers state that Bad Taste is a smart, violent, scathing satire of the fast food industry in the form of a tasty videogame. Featuring Spencer “Spenny” Rice, star of the Canadian T.V. Show Kenny V.S. Spenny. An homage to trash cinema, the story focuses on police officer Chet as he tries to escape the city of Victoria BC before it’s nuked to eradicate a zombie epidemic caused by genetically modified fast food. Read the rest of this entry »

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2nd February 2015

Family Channel’s Hit Series The Next Step Returns For Third Season March 16th

Family ChannelAs the cast of The Next Step prepares to take the stage for the first stop of its sold out national tour, Family Channel is pleased to announce the fan-favourite Canadian original series and recipient of multiple Canadian Screen Award nominations will return for its third season on Monday, March 16 at 7:30 p.m. ET/PT. Leaping back on to the small screen with a special one-hour premiere episode, the compelling dance-drama produced by Temple Street Productions follows the highs and lows of an elite group of dancers as they balance the pressures of competition with the trials of growing up. Following the season premiere, new episodes of The Next Step will air every weekday (Monday – Friday) at 7:30 p.m. ET/PT leading up to the mid-season finale in April. Read the rest of this entry »

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2nd February 2015

Guidelines Available For Canada – São Paulo, Brazil Codevelopment Incentive

Canada Media FundThe Canada Media Fund (CMF) is pleased to announce that the program guidelines (PDF – 40KB) for the Canada – Brazil Codevelopment Incentive between the Canada Media Fund and SP Cine (São Paulo, BR) are now available on the CMF website. The incentive will open for applications on February 17, 2015. Read the rest of this entry »

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31st January 2015

AOL Canada Set To Launch In-House Video Production Studio

AOL CanadaAOL Canada has announced an extensive investment in video with the plans to launch a full-service in-house video studio. Pivoting off of AOL Canada’s success in video, which saw 53% growth year-over-year in total video views*, AOL continues to dominate as the leading online destination for premium video content**. The studio is the most recent initiative of a long list of significant investments in video by the media company. Read the rest of this entry »

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29th January 2015

Victoria’s KANO/APPS Discusses User Acquisition

KANO/APPS  is a Victoria BC mobile and social game developer that has been very successful with game distribution on Facebook and is on the verge of launching a new game for iOS distribution. Go2mobi interviews KANO/APPS CEO Tim Teh for Village Gamer.

Tell Us about KANO/APPS

KANO/APPS focusing on mid-core to hardcore RPGers, KANO/APPs develops free-to-play strategy games. Mob Wars: La Cosa Nostra is one of our more popular games.

Our smaller, niche audience provides more focused opportunities for in-game monetization. Since we’re free-to-play, about 95% of monetization occurs through in-app purchases, such as vanity items & power-ups.

We develop strategy games rather than “casual games.” Our users invest a lot of time into playing the games, and so, with the popularity of tablets and other screens, it makes sense to launch a mobile version of our game. Mobile gives us the opportunity to provide more engagement for our users.

We’re getting ready to launch a game called Free Rider HD on mobile for iOS.

Free Rider HD is the sequel to one of the most played online games of all time with over 500 million plays and +1 million player drawn tracks.

 

We are doing the development work, while Ira provides the intellectual property (IP). For game developers a great strategy is to partner with someone with established, compelling IP. Of course, for startups this can be risky depending on the IP partner because there may be revenue expectations, and it can be tough to determine how successful your game will be.

What has been the biggest change since you started making games?

In the past it was challenging and expensive to develop games for different platforms. The challenge at the time was we could not respond quickly to user needs in order to optimize acquisition and monetization.

However, now with better devices and utilizing HTML5, it’s easy to update quickly across multiple platforms.

How do you acquire new users?

For desktop we typically work with partners such an online games hosting websites that help us to publish our games and worry about distribution so that we can focus on game development.

We started out on desktop at the dawn of Facebook. We have experienced a ton of success working with several desktop portals including Kongregate and Armor Games.

What do you think is the key mobile advertising for game developers?

For user acquisition on mobile a tool that can identify users by demographic and by OS would be important. We’re looking for relatively affluent, English-speaking users on iOS. So a tool that provides that degree of precision would be important.

Tim Teh is CEO of KANO/APPS has launched a number of new titles in 2014, and will launch even more in 2014. Check out the amazing trailers for some of their games here.

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Mobile Advertising Insights for Game Developers

Mobile advertising provides an additional tool to drive user acquisition.

With mobile advertising, there are tactics and strategies that optimize and dramatically lower the cost of acquisition. An approach for a developer like KANO/APPS might look like the following:

  • Create initial modest test campaigns targeted at iOS users in their target countries.
  • Target one at related games and APPS likely to be played by folks who would like their new game.
  • Target another campaign targeted at people frequenting mobile sites with related content.
  • Run the campaigns for a short while, gathering enough data to provide insights.
  • Look at performance by iOS version, iOS device, region, app placements, site placements and other factors.
  • Taking the just the highest performing pockets from the targets noted above, create new campaigns targeting just those pockets. For instance, there may be specific iOS versions and devices that dramatically outperform others, or there may be specific targeted APPS that work very well.
  • Get to work on optimizing those campaigns and scaling them up further as performance dictates.

Go2mobi is a Mobile Audience Targeting Platform and used by many different kinds of performance based advertisers, brands, and agencies around the world. The company is based in Victoria, BC.

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28th January 2015

Xbox Live Games With Gold For February 2015

Xbox 360Looking for something new and shiny to get you through the dreary month of February? Microsoft invites you to check out the latest Xbox Games with Gold offering, giving Xbox Live members one game for Xbox One and two additional games for Xbox 360: Read the rest of this entry »

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