A new awards program is set to celebrate Canada’s video-game industry in Vancouver.

The inaugural Canadian Video Game and Digital Arts Awards will be held at the Vancouver Convention Centre on May 5, the evening before the second annual Game Developers Conference Canada.

Award categories include:

Video Game

• Best Visual Arts
• Best Writing
• Best Audio
• Best Game Design
• Best Technology
• Best Console
• Best Downloadable
• Best Handheld
• Game of the Year

VFX/Animation

• Best Animated Short
• Best Animated Feature Film
• Best Animated Television (series or one-off)
• Best Visual Effects Movie
• Best Visual Effects Television
• Best Visual Effects or Animation for Home Video
• Best In-Game Cinematic

Produced by Reboot Communications, Greedy Productions, and Seven Group, the CVAs are supported by an advisory committee of digital-entertainment developers from across Canada.

Video Games Live will provide the entertainment for the evening.

The CVAs will be open to the public, and tickets will go on sale in the coming weeks. The event will be broadcast on G4 Canada.

Cross-posted at the Georgia Straight

In last week’s Georgia Straight I ran a review round-up that looked at Army of Two: The 40th Day, Bayonetta, MAG, and Vancouver 2010.

The Winter Olympics are upon us, but take our word for it and skip the video-game version. Better to spend your time shooting angels or mercenaries, by yourself or with friends.

This week’s edition of Fast Forward Weekly includes my feature review of Mass Effect 2. Released a couple of weeks ago, the sequel to BioWare’s space opera is equal to the expectations placed upon it by critics and fans.

Mass Effect 2, the second instalment in a planned trilogy, takes place two years after Commander Shepard saved civilization from destruction by a horde of machines. This time, the fate of humanity lies in the balance, and the Commander is once again called upon to don the heroic mantle.

The B.C. government has finally decided to support the video-game industry with tax credits. It’s good news for Vancouver’s developers, even if the government still doesn’t appear to fully appreciate the video-game industry.

This afternoon, B.C. finance minister Colin Hansen and minster of tourism, culture, and the arts Kevin Krueger, who called the video-game industry “inspiring”, announced that the province will support game development with a new tax credit.

With the next provincial budget set to be announced on March 2, Hansen also announced an increase in the tax credit available to the film and television industry, as well as to the Digital Animation or Visual Effects (DAVE) tax credit bonus, from 15 to 17.5 percent. Those increases will take effect on March 1.

But the new B.C. Interactive Digital Media tax credit, for 17.5 percent of qualifying B.C. labour costs, won’t take effect until September 1. Hansen said this is because there was “implementation work” that needed to be done. It may be because the B.C. government still doesn’t understand the interactive industry.

In his comments during the briefing at Vancouver’s Rainmaker Entertainment, Hansen kept talking about the importance of film, television, animation, and visual effects companies. “Film and video and digital production and animation are becoming increasingly intertwined,” he said. “There is a growing convergence of technologies.”

True. And you can add video games to that list. But in his remarks, Hansen consistently mentioned video games last, when he mentioned them at all. That may not seem important, but it indicates that video games are not at the forefront of the finance minister’s mind.

The Straight asked Hansen why the government had waited so long to introduce financial support for the video-game industry. “It’s only now that we’re really starting to see that convergence,” he said, “and the inter-relationship between the video-game industry and the film and motion picture industry and the animation sector.”

Which suggests that the video-game industry on its own is not deserving of support. When the Straight put that to Hansen, he simply said that “there has been a lot done for competitiveness and job creation in British Columbia. This is one additional measure.”

Not much of an answer.

Hansen also suggested that B.C. game developers will have to choose between the new tax credit and the existing Scientific Research & Experimental Development (SR&ED, commonly pronounced “shred”) incentive program that is administered by the federal government. He said that the new B.C. Interactive Digital Media tax credit does not replace SR&ED, “but companies can determine which of the two programs actually best meet their needs”.

While Vancouver is a hub in the video-game-development industry, studios have had a rough time in the past couple of years.

Leaving aside the impact of the economic slowdown, provinces such as Quebec and Ontario have been ratcheting up the tax breaks being offered to developers—Quebec’s labour tax credit is 37.5 percent and Ontario’s is 35 percent—and foreign markets such as China have a wealth of skilled and cheap labour.

Vancouver’s development community, led by larger studios Electronic Arts Canada, Propaganda Games (a division of Disney Interactive), Radical Entertainment, and Relic Entertainment, have been actively lobbying for government support that is required, they’ve argued, to put the Vancouver and B.C. scene on equal footing with competing regions.

Without success. Until today.

Howard Donaldson, vice president of studio operations for Disney Interactive Studios and head of Vancouver’s Propaganda Games, is also the chair of the B.C. Interactive Task Force. In his remarks during the briefing, Donaldson said the new tax credit was an “important first step to creating the next-gen digital media hub” in B.C.

Speaking with the Straight afterwards, Donaldson admitted that the 17.5-percent credit was more than the B.C. video-game industry expected when the task force was created late last summer. “Now that the task force has been established,” he said, “we will continue to work to grow the industry.”

In the past two years, studios that were considered for Vancouver have instead opened in Quebec or Ontario. Being compensated for a third of employees’ wages and salaries is a big incentive.

Donaldson said he hopes the new B.C. Interactive Digital Media tax credit will encourage companies to look at Vancouver more seriously. “B.C. has some definite advantages,” he said, invoking the province’s geographical location and the highly educated and skilled employees that are so interchangeable with the film, television, and animation industries.

So while the tax credit may seem small in comparison to other jurisdictions, B.C.’s video-game developers are not about to look a gift horse in the mouth. And the new tax credit could be just the shot in the arm that the sector needs to return to the levels of success and prominence it was celebrated for only a few years ago.

Hansen said he hopes the new incentives will lead to “continued growth” in the various industries. The appeal internationally, he said, will be that B.C. has strengths in all those sectors. “If you’re developing a new production…Vancouver and British Columbia will be one-stop shopping.”

Cross-posted at the Georgia Straight

Apple CEO Steve Jobs today unveiled the highly anticipated iPad, his company’s latest consumer-electronics gadget. Priced starting at only US$499 — some analysts were expecting a price tag of $999 — the touchscreen tablets will be available worldwide in late March.

Jobs took to the stage at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center saying, “We want to kick off 2010 by introducing a truly magical and revolutionary new product.”

After talking about Apple’s success in the mobile space — the company has sold 250 million iPods since that device was first introduced in 2001 — Jobs said, “Everyone uses a laptop and/or a smartphone. The question has arisen lately: is there room for a third-category device in the middle?”

The iPad, he said, is “so much more intimate than a laptop, and it’s so much more capable than a smartphone”.

Weighing only 1.5 pounds, the iPad is very thin, coming in at half an inch. It looks like an enlarged iPhone, with a black rim around the 9.7-inch IPS (in-plane switching) screen and an aluminum unibody case, much like the newer MacBooks.

There is a single “home” button at the bottom of the device, which is all the iPad needs, because it uses the precise Multi-Touch technology used in the iPhone and iPod Touch. The gestural interaction popularized by those devices — swiping, pinching, and flicking — are how you’ll navigate the iPad applications, and as with those gadgets, when you rotate the iPad, the screen automatically orients to its new position. Up is always up, down is always down. When the iPad is in landscape, the on-screen keyboard is large enough for two-handed typing.

Apple designed its own chip for the iPad. Called the A4, it is a 1-GHz processor. Battery life maxes out at 10 hours, and the devices come with Bluetooth 2.1 and 802.11n Wi-Fi standard. Some models also include 3G cellular connectivity. It comes with 16 GB, 32 GB, or 64 GB of solid-state storage.

That makes for six iPad configurations: Wi-Fi 16 GB ($499), Wi-Fi 32 GB ($599), Wi-Fi 64 GB ($699), Wi-Fi + 3G 16 GB ($629), Wi-Fi + 3G 32 GB ($729), Wi-Fi + 3G 64 GB ($829).

However, only the non-3G models will be available worldwide at launch. In the U.S., Apple has arranged for two no-contract, prepaid data plans with AT&T: $14.99 per month for up to 250 MB, or $29.99 for an unlimited plan.

The 3G iPads will be made available in other countries as carrier deals are put in place. Jobs said he hoped those would be ready to announce this summer. The 3G models are all unlocked, and because they use GSM micro SIM cards, Jobs said, “If your carrier uses micro SIMs, there’s a very high likelihood it’ll just work.”

The iPad syncs over USB like iPhones and iPods, and was built to be able to run software already available in the App Store. If you’re an iPhone or iPod Touch user, you’ll be able to sync most of those applications with an iPad.

Apple has also released a new iPad SDK (software development kit) to allow developers to take advantage of the iPad’s larger display.

Showing off iPad applications during the media event were Gameloft, showing an iPad version of the game Nova; the New York Times, presenting in-line video within articles; Brushes, demonstrating painting on the iPad; Electronic Arts, with a version of Need for Speed: Shift; and MLB.com, with a “whole new experience” including replay video, live-updating box scores and statistics, and even digital baseball cards.

Software incorporated into the iPad includes similar maps functionality as the iPhone, Apple’s Mail, and the Safari Web browser. Photos are able to leverage the “events, places, and faces” sorting features from iPhoto. And the iPad features complete integration with iTunes for sampling and purchasing audio and video content.

Apple also revamped iWork — its suite of business applications including Pages (word processing), Numbers (spreadsheet), and Keynote (presentation) — for the iPad by rethinking how users would interface with the software. The iPad versions of those programs are compatible with their Mac counterparts, and are priced at only US$9.99.

But it is Apple’s new iBookstore that could be the game changer. The significance of the iPad — coming from the company that revolutionized the music business with the iPod and iTunes — is as much about content and distribution as it is about the gadget itself.

In introducing iBooks, the e-book reader software available on the iPad, Jobs said, “Amazon’s done a great job of pioneering this functionality with the Kindle. We’re going to stand on their shoulders and go a little further.”

Apple’s decision to support the ePub open book format is the biggest threat to Amazon, as its Kindle uses a proprietary, DRM-restricted format. What is unclear is what the experience of reading text on the iPad’s LED-backlit display will be like. The Kindle uses E Ink for its display, which more closely resembles ink on paper.

Presented as a bookshelf, iBooks permits the purchase and download of e-books directly to the iPad from the iBookstore. Titles purchased appear on your own digital bookshelf.

The iBookstore will only be available in the U.S. to begin with, and participating publishers include Penguin, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Macmillan, and Hachette. Separate deals to license books for various territories are being made.

Apple has also designed some accessories for the iPad, including a dock, a keyboard dock, and a case that makes the iPad into what looks like a digital photo frame.

What’s missing? There’s no camera, either for photography or video-conferencing, and it appears that the iPad is not able to multi-task, so you can’t run multiple programs at the same time.

In closing the press briefing, Jobs said the iPad is “our most advanced technology in a magical and revolutionary device at an unbelievable price….The reason we’ve been able to create products like this is because we’ve tried to be at the intersection of technology and liberal arts.”

Rhetoric aside, there’s no doubt that the iPad is nicely designed and extremely functional. The question is whether it’s different enough from the alternatives — smartphones and laptops — to make a difference.

Cross-posted at the Georgia Straight