Awards prove Canuck talent is everywhere

At the gala opening of VidFest–the Vancouver International Digital Festival–on September 22, the winner of the first Great Canadian Video Game Competition was announced. Wayne Clarkson, executive director of Telefilm, the agency that initiated the game-design contest, was on hand to present the winner, Montreal's MindHabits, with a cheque for $500,000. The competition started with 69 entrants, which were narrowed to 10 finalists, and then four.

Citing figures from PricewaterhouseCoopers, Clarkson said in his podium remarks that revenues from video games would reach $65 billion by 2009, and that "Canada is at the heart of it."

This year Telefilm celebrates its 40th anniversary, and Clarkson said that the principles on which the publicly funded agency was founded are still relevant today: "Canadian talent creating Canadian content that engages Canadian audiences and the world".

Speaking with the Straight after the presentation, Clarkson said that Telefilm's job is to support Canadian talent, and that talking to the finalists he realized that the mentorship component that was built into the competition has ended up being the most valuable aspect of the initiative. "It's not always about the money," he said.

Radical Entertainment's Kelly Zmak was one of the four jury members who selected the winner, along with Rory Armes and Ron Moravek, both from Electronic Arts, and Ubisoft's Yannis Mallat.

"The problem was that we had to pick one," Zmak told the Straight at the gala. Regardless of their decision, though, he said that all four finalists' games are commercially viable. "They all have market potential," he said.

Representing MindHabits at the award presentation were CEO Matthew Mather and president Mark Baldwin. Baldwin said he was "proud and grateful to the judges and the industry mentors", and that their industry insider helped them to avoid pitfalls and reinforced some of the decisions they made on the way.

Mather said their winning game, MindHabits Trainer, is being released on October 15 through www.mindhabits.com/. Winning the competition, he added, meant that they could keep on building and investing in the game.

Baldwin described MindHabits Trainer as a game that "helps people to train to focus on finding warmth and support in their lives, therefore boosting self-confidence and reducing stress". The idea for the game came from Baldwin's own research into social psychology, and "what helps people feel comfortable and what helps them deal with stress".

­ ­ ­Picking up the people's choice award on the same evening was SWARM!, from Vancouver's Hothead Games. "We always knew that the Swarm character had a lot of appeal," said joint CEO Steve Bocska. "We were happy that the game design was just as appealing. It tells us we're on track."

Even though their game didn't win the $500,000, Bocska told the Straight that Hothead is continuing with development. "Our plan was always to build a prototype, prove the game play, and then move into full production. That plan has not changed." Hothead will be publishing and distributing SWARM! as an episodic game, with the first five-hour component to be released in 2008.

Like MindHabits Trainer, SWARM! owes its existence to academic research. Vlad Ceraldi, president and joint CEO of Hothead, said that the emergent game play of SWARM! could not have been created had it not been for Michael Hayward, a cognitive scientist who specializes in "artificial life". Hayward–and others–had envisioned the idea before, but technological limitations meant that it "couldn't have been done three or four years ago," said Ceraldi.

"You literally hand-train a herd of swarmites," Bocska explained, "as you try to restore a desperately polluted planet and bring down the evil corporation behind it."

Bocska and Ceraldi described the artificial intelligence in SWARM! as a "learning AI" that makes use of "mass mimicry". "You teach one swarm to jump, and they all jump," said Bocska. In trying out the game play, "We were discovering that the swarms could do things we didn't know they could do."

Normally, explained Ceraldi, such discoveries only happen in video games because of bugs in the programming, but with SWARM! it was because of the way the AI was learning. "It's cool that academic technologies are being used in the gaming space," he said.

Despite the obvious success of the Great Canadian Video Game Competition for both the developers and the agency, Clarkson isn't sure that repeating the program is the best way for Telefilm to support video-game development. What he is considering instead is a way to make mentorship a more permanent fixture in the Canadian industry.

"Telefilm can only be a catalyst," said Clarkson. "The marketplace–in the true sense of the word–will drive it [the industry]. We can stimulate, advocate, initiate. And always give priority to Canadian talent.

"The new world order is the digital world order."