In today’s Georgia Straight is my look at the new Canadian Video Game Awards, which will be presented for the first time next Wednesday, May 5. Contributing music and entertainment for the event is Video Games Live, which will also stage a stand-alone event the following night.

When it comes to awards recognizing Canadian video-game developers, there’s a new player in town. The inaugural Canadian Video Game Awards will be handed out on Wednesday (May 5) in a ceremony at the Vancouver Convention Centre. “I don’t want it to be super-long, obtuse, [aspiring] to be some big, glitzy Hollywood bullshit show,” said Victor Lucas, cofounder of the CVAs.

Video game developers laid off in the past year are being offered a complimentary pass to attend Game Developers Conference Canada.

In a conference call, Izora De Lillard, event director for GDC Canada, told me that the decision to provide unemployed developers with a free, main conference pass was made to ensure that nobody was being left out.

Last year, organizers also decided to make free passes available to unemployed developers.

The convention, which will be held at the Vancouver Convention Centre, starts with Epic Games’ opening night party on May 5 and runs through the end of May 7.

Dan Irish, CEO of Threewave Software, and Tarrnie Williams, executive producer of EA Sports Active, are on the advisory board for the conference.

Irish said that the conference is an opportunity to learn from the best and to meet people face-to-face. “That’s why I’ve always encouraged my teams to pick the sessions where they will learn the most,” he said.

Williams agreed. “There is no better way to get connected to other people in the industry.”

De Lillard said that attendees at GDC Canada, which is considerably smaller than the main GDC convention in San Francisco every spring, benefit from the intimacy of the event. Last year, she said, speakers were still taking questions in the hallways long after their sessions were over. “Everyone is so willing to talk and to share,” she said.

Highlights of the conference include a keynote speech by Zynga’s Bill Mooney, who is general manager of FarmVille, the runaway hit game on Facebook. He’ll be speaking about the social gaming market, which he characterizes as “games at the speed of light”.

Glenn Entis, a veteran of DreamWorks Interactive and Electronic Arts, will be presenting a session – Funding for Game Developers: Do’s and Don’ts – intended to illuminate methods of funding a studio. Entis is a founding general partner with Vanedge Capital, a Vancouver-based venture capital firm.

Williams said that one of the great benefits of Vancouver’s video game sector is its huge talent base. “The big thing missing is the access to capital,” he said, adding that Entis’s ability to share some insights will benefit companies, new and established. “By putting the talent pool together with the money pool,” he said, “great things will come.”

Prospective attendees who want a complimentary pass to attend GDC Canada must have been laid off from a “Canadian video game or creative/digital arts company within the past 12 months”. After pre-registering, attendees need to show a record of employment at the registration desk on site to receive the free pass.

De Lillard also said that if there are others who don’t qualify for the pass and who want to attend but are limited financially, they should contact the conference organizers. “We’ll work with them,” she said. “We want them to come and have a good experience.”

Irish said that offering free passes is a good investment. People won’t always be unemployed, he said, “and that goodwill will pay off”.

Cross-posted at the Georgia Straight

This week in the Georgia Straight are my reviews of Final Fantasy XIII, Splinter Cell: Conviction, Battlefield: Bad Company 2, Just Cause 2, and WarioWare DIY.

You know what? They’re all worth playing. Find out why.

The latest NHL hockey season has come to an end, and while many – including my father – aren’t too happy that the Calgary Flames missed the playoffs, I’m certainly excited about the post-season.

And if the annual EA Sports simulation is to be believed, the Chicago Blackhawks will win the Stanley Cup after a seven-game series against the Pittsburgh Penguins.

For years, EA Sports has used the latest release of its video games – which are supported with real-life data and groundbreaking artificial intelligence – to predict the results of professional sports playoffs.

EA Sports representative Duke Indrasigamany told me that it took about 20 minutes – “give or take” – to run through the playoffs using NHL 10.

The simulation also predicted that the Vancouver Canucks will get past the Los Angeles Kings and the Detroit Red Wings, before losing to the Blackhawks in a seven game Western Conference final.

Sidney Crosby and Alexander Ovechkin face off in the Eastern Conference final, after the Philadelphia Flyers upset the New Jersey Devils in the first round.

For those of us who can’t always get to a television to watch a game, CBC announced today that the Hockey Night in Canada application, created for the iPhone and iPod Touch, will enable live streaming of every Stanley Cup playoff game broadcast by the CBC.

Single games will cost $2.99, Stanley Cup Final games will cost $4.99, or you can buy all the games broadcast by CBC for $14.99.

So you’ll be able to watch those games no matter where you are.

Cross-posted at the Georgia Straight: NHL 10 playoff prediction, CBC to live stream playoffs on iPhone

Apple’s line of portable computers is getting a boost. In an announcement today, Apple said all three sizes of MacBook Pro—13-, 15-, and 17-inch—will now ship with faster processors, next-generation NVIDIA graphics, and updated batteries that the company says can deliver up to 10 hours of power away from a socket.

The new configurations, which are available immediately, are priced between $1,249 and $2,349 for the base models.

Intel processors are still being used in the new MacBooks, with the 13-inch model sporting a Core 2 Duo processor, and the 15- and 17-inch equipped with the Core i5 or i7 processors also being used in the iMac desktop computers. Apple says the i5 and i7 processors make the new MacBook Pros up to 50 percent faster than the previous systems.

NVIDIA is providing the graphics processing solutions for the new notebooks. All 15- and 17-inch MacBook Pros include two NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M processors.

Customers can upgrade their notebooks with larger hard drives and solid-state drives (128,- 256-, and 512-gigabyte capacities are available). The 15-inch MacBook Pro can also be upgraded with a high resolution 1680 × 1050 display.

Cross-posted at the Georgia Straight