Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson Vows to Keep Vancouver Geeky

The Nerd Lobby of BC has scored its first victory today as Mayor Gregor Robertson filed a motion to promote the plight of Technology and New Media companies to the provincial government. The motion recognizes the nearly 20% difference in provincial tax credits between Ontario and BC (37% tax cut vs 17%). It’s unclear whether this will lead to any action on the part of the legislature, especially since the City and the Province are on opposite ends of the political spectrum. Still, the road back to #1 has to start somewhere, and for now it starts at the Mayor’s office.

Source: Mayor of Vancouver

J-Fest Returns This Weekend

Anime Evolution is resurrecting J-fest, the Vancouver anime get-together from the Dark Days of VHS this Saturday at Douglas College. Admission is $10, and children 6 and under are free with a paying adult. There will be Cosplay an Artist’s Alley, and of course, lots of Anime! The weather couldn’t be better, so head down already!

Rockstar Vancouver, The Development Team Behind Max Payne 3, Closes Down | RipTen Videogame Blog

Max payne 3Hot on the heels of Radical Entertainment’s closure, Rockstar Vancouver has now closed its doors and will be moving any and all operations to Toronto. The 35-person studio started life as Barking Dog Studios. They were responsible for such classics as Global Operations and Homeworld: Cataclysm (When are we seeing an HD version of that game? Honestly.) Their last game, Max Payne 3, sold over 3 million copies in its first week, but even that was not enough to keep the studio’s doors open. Vancouver needs to drop the AAA branch plant mentality pretty damn quick. We’re running out of studios to close and game designers to lay off.

Source: RipTen Videogame Blog

Matt Toner to seek NDP Nomination after Radical Entertainment’s collapse

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The closure of Radical Entertainment was a shock to many, but for Matt Toner, it was the last straw. Matt will be seeking the New Democrat Party MLA nomination for Vancouver False Creek in the next provincial election to see if he can reverse the tide of companies fleeing Van City.

“Specifically, I would like the government of British Columbia to outline the actions they took—or didnʼt take—in the run-up to the de facto shutdown of Radical Entertainment,” Toner says. “The question is simple: have they been good stewards of the innovation industry here in Vancouver or not? If they didnʼt have so much as a cup of coffee with Activision executives in the past year, then that is a failure.”

Matt has has a lot of experience with tech and new media companies. His latest venture, Zeroes to Heroes Media, is involved in everything from comic books to location-based video games. The riding is currently held by Mary McNeil, a BC Liberal. If Toner gets the nomination, he could be BC’s first pure nerd candidate.

If you want to see the tech sector get better treatment from the BC government, head on over to http://can-we-do-it.com/ and sign up!

 

Source: Techvibes.com

Art History Featuring the Ladies of Battlestar Galactica

BoomerklimtSixlicht

Megan Lara has drawn up Starbuck, Laura Roslin, Six, and Boomer in the style of Modern Painters such as Klimt and Lichtenstein. If Ferris Bueller’s Day Off taught us anything, is that you can only understand paintings like these through intense, neurotic staring contests. That’s why they are available for sale as a series from Quantum Mechanix. Unfortunately, the Lichtenstein Six is only available as a San Diego Comic-con exclusive!

Source: io9

UBC to host MiniComi 2 on July 7

UBC will be hosting the second annual MiniComi Festival at the Student Union Building (SUB) this Saturday from 10am to 7pm. The festival bills itself as a spiritual successor to Comiket, featuring work from local artists, doujinshi, and Cosplay. Of course, if you send us your pictures from the event, we’ll be sure to post them here!

 

Source: MiniComi 2.

RainGeek Rant: Thoughts on Radical’s Closure

As many of you know, Radical Entertainment, one of Vancouver’s oldest video game companies, laid off 89 staff at the behest of their publisher, Activision Blizzard. Being laid off sucks in the first place, it only gets worse when you’re in a large game company. All the intellectual property involved makes the affair a SNAFU of lawyers, exit interviews, and paperwork. 20 years in the industry apparently doesn’t mean much when you’re trying to pretty up your numbers for the next quarterly shareholder’s report.

The end of Radical is not a comment on the company itself. The staff is hard working, and their games have garnered a loyal fan following. This is a symptom of a greater trend in the Video Games industry: The death of the AAA-video game business model.

Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo are all bleeding money. It’s not just because of the economy. Video games are ubiquitous now, and innovations in digital distribution and Free-to-play are just multiplying consumer options. This is not to say that there won’t be a market for AAA games, but many larger publishers won’t survive. They’ve coasted for too long on the notion that video games are a novelty, and many of these games hold to the leadership style of “shut the hell up, you’re working in video games, now give me another 70-hour week”.

The only video game I hear 12-year-olds playing these days is Minecraft. Mojang is an example of a company doing it right. They have a great relationship with their customers and employees, they love the art of making video games, and they aren’t beholden to retailers or Wall Street. Video games are going to become a lower percentage industry. The variety of free tools and middleware out there are just going to explode the competition. Thankfully, the companies left standing are going to be part of gamer culture, and not just looking to profit off it.

More Percy Jackson Pics from Yvrshoots (Featuring Nathan Fillion)

Susan Gittins over at YVRshoots has uncovered more shots of Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters. If you look real hard you find Nathan Fillion hiding in the background.

See? There he is! Check out the rest of the pics here.

Source:YVRshoots

Anime Revolution Welcomes Jouji Nakata

Anime Revolution has landed its first Japanese guest of honour, anime voice artist Jouji Nakata!

He is a highly prolific voice actor with a remarkable repertoire of roles. Notable roles include Alucard (HELLSING), Corporal Giroro (Sgt. Frog), Kirei Kotomine (Fate/stay night and Fate/Zero), The Count of Monte Cristo (Gankutsuou: The Count of Monte Cristo), Hody Jones (ONE PIECE), Tetsuji Chuma (SKET DANCE), Innocentius (Horizon on the Middle of Nowhere), Diethard Reid (Code Geass), Roy Revant (Solty Rei), Hyogo Otoo (Working!! / Wagnaria!!) and many more. He will also be starring in some of the upcoming new anime series – as Kamo Serizawa in Hakuouki Reimeiroku, which starts this July, and as Dr. Crodo in Chousoku Henkei Gyrozetter, which starts this October.

This will be Mr. Nakata’s first appearance at a Canadian convention, and he is very excited to join Anime Revolution.

 

Anime revolution will be taking place August 17-19 at the Vancouver convention center. Early bird pricing ends on June 30th, so order your tickets today!

 

Source: Anime Revolution.

Former ‘Smallville’ and ‘Secret Circle’ Showrunners to Helm ‘Beauty and the Beast’ Reboot

Brian Peterson and Kelly Souders, known for their work on the final seasons of Smallville and as consulting producers on The Secret Circle have been hired to run the Kristen Kreuk-starring reboot of Beauty and the Beast. Admittedly, this is the first time I’ve seen a still from the show, and it appears that we have gone from Ron Perlman’s brooding and mysterious prosthetics to…a scar. A single scar. Does the Beauty and the Beast thing even work if the Beast is gorgeous? What about the themes of inner beauty, looking beyond appearances, and… Look why don’t we just start making the logical endgame for this? Gender-swapped version of I Dream of Genie, Thursdays at 8! And that folks, is why they pay me the big bucks.

Source:ScreenCrush