By Paul HunterO Canada. Such wonderful video games you make. To honour our great industry leaders across the land, the Canadian Videogame Awards are held annually in Vancouver, produced by Reboot Communications and Greedy Productions. The 3rd Annual Canadian Videogame Awards will be taking place on April 21st in conjunction with the very first Fan Expo Vancouver, the city's first major comicon.
Held in the Vancouver Convention Centre, the awards show will bring together talent from the best video game studios in the country. Recognition will be given to the top industry leaders in categories that span multiple platforms and many aspects of game development. The 2012 awards categories, as selected by a committee of industry veterans from across Canada, are:
* Game of the Year
* Best Console
* Best Game on the Go
* Best Downloadable Game
* Best Audio
* Best Social/Casual Game
* Best Game Design
* Best Technology
* Best Visual Arts
* Best Writing
* Innovation Award
The three new categories for 2012 are:
* Best Original Music
* Best New Character
* Best Indie Game
To provide perspective on just how important the Canadian games industry is, presently it's the third largest in the world by employment, behind the US and Japan. With over 16,000 people across Canada directly employed in the games industry, the economic impact to the Canadian economy is estimated at $1.7 billion. That's a huge revenue figure, and as we read in the news recently, video games have become one of the key drivers of national retail sales.
One of the endorsers of the awards show is the Entertainment Software Association of Canada, an organization that advocates on behalf of its members, which include Activision, EA, Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, Ubisoft, THQ and more. The ESA Canada produced a great video last year highlighting some of the reasons why Canada is recognized around the world as a tier one producer of video games, check it out:
In order to be recognized for an award, the games must have been developed within the borders of Canada. Some of the winners from past Canadian Videogame Awards shows include Mass Effect 2, Dragon Age Origins, Assassin's Creed II, Critter Crunch, DeathSpank, Prototype, ModNation Racers, Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood and Microsoft's Kinect technology.
For more information on the Canadian Videogame Awards, be sure to check out the website: www.canadianvideogameawards.com