E3 is dead!

This is tragic news. The Electronic Entertainment Expo is no more. No more flashing lights and heavy metal music. No more crowds of sweaty geeks. No more booth babes!


The suits have taken over the asylum. R.I.P. E3, you will be sorely missed :(

Here's the full press release from the ESA:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Entertainment Software Association Announces Evolution of E3Expo for 2007

Washington, DC (July 31, 2006) – To better address the needs of today’s global computer and video game industry, the 2007 Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3Expo) is evolving into a more intimate event focused on targeted, personalized meetings and activities, the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) announced today.

“The world of interactive entertainment has changed since E3Expo was created 12 years ago. At that time we were focused on establishing the industry and securing orders for the holiday season,” said Douglas Lowenstein, President of the ESA, the trade association representing U.S. computer and video game publishers and the owner of E3Expo. “Over the years, it has become clear that we need a more intimate program, including higher quality, more personal dialogue with the worldwide media, developers, retailers and other key industry audiences.”

The new E3Expo will take shape over the next several months. As currently envisioned, it will still take place in Los Angeles, described by ESA as a “great and supportive partner helping to build E3.” It will focus on press events and small meetings with media, retail, development, and other key sectors. While there will be opportunities for game demonstrations, E3Expo 2007 will not feature the large trade show environment of previous years.

“E3Expo remains an important event for the industry and we want to keep that sense of excitement and interest, ensuring that the human and financial resources crucial to its success can be deployed productively to create an exciting new format to meet the needs of the industry. The new event ensures that there will be an effective and more efficient way for companies to get information to media, consumers, and others,” said Lowenstein.

Additionally, the evolution of the video game industry into a vibrant and expanding global market has led to the creation of major events in different regions, such as the Games Convention in Leipzig, the Tokyo Game Show, and company-specific events held by Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft, and others around the world. As a result, Lowenstein said, “It is no longer necessary or efficient to have a single industry ‘mega-show’. By refocusing on a highly-targeted event, we think we can do a better job serving our members and the industry as a whole, and our members are energized about creating this new E3.”

Additional details about the new E3Expo event will be forthcoming in the next few
months.

The ESA is the U.S. association dedicated to serving the business and public affairs needs of the companies publishing interactive games for video game consoles, handheld devices, personal computers, and the Internet. ESA members collectively account for more than 90 percent of the $7 billion in entertainment software sales in the U.S. in 2005, and billions more in export sales of entertainment software. For more information about the ESA, please visit www.theESA.com.

Everyone's a critic...

... and now, so am I! I wrote my first restaurant review for dinehere.ca, which is a favourite website of mine for checking out local restaurants. The review is for a place called Guu with Garlic that Steph and I visited on Monday evening. Check out the gastronomic musings of jamesb here.

Scarface previews

Scarface is the first game I have been involved in since I started at Radical in October 2005. It's similar to the GTA games but with a stronger main character and much more sophisticated meta-game mechanics. I've been working on collision and physics for the game for the last few months. I think it's going to be a great game and hope that it sells well, but don't take my word for it - check out these previews of the game at IGN and GameSpot. And then buy it when it comes out later this year :)

Bravo Italia

Well done to Italy for winning the World Cup Final yesterday! Steph and I got up early and met up with some friends on Commercial Drive to watch the match. The area is known as Little Italy, and the Italians were certainly out in force. They were queuing outside cafes and bars at 9am, even though the match didn't start till 11. We ended up in a very crowded sports bar for the game which soon became disgustingly hot. Still, the atmosphere was good. I thought it was a very even match, but that on balance Italy deserved to win. France's goal from a penalty kick didn't seem like much of an achievement, and they played a pretty dirty match - lots of diving and theatrics. The police closed the street during the match and for some time after, and everyone went crazy when Italy finally won. The atmosphere turned into some kind of crazy, flag-waving mardi-gras. It was quite a sight to behold. They were still cheering and driving up and down with horns blaring at 6pm when we finally left the area. I expect it probably continued into the evening :)

Pemberton photos

Here are the photos from our trip to Pemberton last weekend. They are split into two parts again - find part 1 here and part 2 here. We hope you enjoy the gorgeous scenery too :)

Trip to Pemberton

We just got back from a weekend away in Pemberton. Sarah (Steph's friend who is staying with us) still has her rental car, so we wanted to make use of it on the last weekend that Sarah and Hazel are here - they leave on Sunday.

We left from work on the Friday evening and drove up to Pemberton, which is a tiny town about 30km North of Whistler. The journey is about 150km in total from Vancouver and took us about 2 1/2 hours. Pemberton sits in a valley surrounded by mountains on every side - it's a beautiful location. We stayed for the two nights in a fantastic B&B called La Hacienda, which is actually more of a self-contained apartment within someone's house. It was modern and freshly decorated, and had every possible comfort, including a hot tub that we took advantage of. I can't recommend this place enough, and Steph and I would love to go back there.

On Saturday we did a lot of walking. We went first to Nairn Falls Provincial Park and walked to the waterfall. The water levels are very high at this time of year and the falls were pretty spectacular. After that we took a fairly easy walk around One Mile Like just outside Pemberton where we had some lunch. In the afternoon we drove a little further afield to BirkenHead Lake Provincial Park, which included a 17km drive along a rough gravel road - slow going in our little hire car. From the parking lot we did a 1.5km hike to the campgrounds and back. This one was the toughest of the day, and in places the trail was almost blocked by rocks that had been swept there by previous flooding. There were a few times on the way to the campgrounds that we almost turned back, and the presence of a bear in the area put us slightly on edge I think, but we made it all the same. That pretty much tired us out, so then it was back home for food and hot tub.

On Sunday we decided to drive the rest of the Coast Mountain Circle Route, since we had already done the first part of it. I am very glad that we did - the first section from Pemberton to Lillooet was the best scenery I have seen in Canada so far bar none - stunning. We stopped for a very short walk at Joffre Lake Provincial Park, but Sunday was mostly driving. We had some lunch at Lillooet (and Steph got stung by an evil wasp), and then headed South down through the Fraser Valley, following the course of the river via Lytton to Hope. At around 4pm we stopped at a place called Hell's Gate where they have built a cable car that carries you across the river at its most narrow and turbulent point. Apparently when they were blasting a tunnel for the railway at the turn of the century they accidentally caused a huge landslide and blocked half of the river, so that the remaining part now flows much more strongly. Oops. At the same time, the change in river flow prevented salmon from making it upstream to their spawning grounds. So about 50 years later (in the 1950s) they built some concrete fishways that contain a bunch of chambers that slow the water flow, which the salmon can swim through to make it through this tough section of river - very clever. Anyway, the cable car had some great views.

After that we finished the circle, driving to Hope and then back to Vancouver. The entire circle is 568km, so it was a long trip but well worth it. We'd love to go back to Pemberton again some time too.

We have tons of photos of the trip which I'll try to sort out this week.

Tofino photos at last!

No thanks to my bloody iBook, which decided to hang published the first lot. There's some really nice photos amongst this bunch though, taken from two different cameras. The photo publishing straight out of iPhoto is a bit crap and has a limit of 48 photos per page, so they are split into part 1 and part 2. Enjoy!

Life is like a video game

Here are a few amusing links I have come across, loosely connected by the theme of video games:

• A live-action re-enactment of Super Mario Bros for a high school talent show - here.
• "What if... the world were a video game" - part of a Futurama episode - here.
• Pirate Baby's Cabana Battle Street Fight 2006 - here.

Photos of Sarah and Hazel's visit

Here are some photos we took with Sarah and Hazel over the past couple of weeks. They are currently away travelling in the Rockies, but they will be back in a week or so for another week with us before returning to the UK. There will probably be more photos to come. And Vancouver Island photos are on their way - be patient!

Weekend in Tofino

Steph's friend Sarah and her little girl Hazel have been staying with us for a few weeks. Sarah is renting a car for a whole month to do some travelling, and we decided to take a trip to Tofino on Vancouver Island last weekend.

We took a ferry over on the Friday evening and stayed the night in Nanaimo in a very nice B&B called The Painted Turtle. Highly recommended!

On the Saturday we drove across the island to Tofino, arriving late afternoon. We drove via Port Alberni, and then tried to take the back roads around Sproat Lake but ended up going in a circle and ended up back where we started. So we stopped messing about and got on with the driving at that point.

Sunday was a day of exploring, and we took a trip to Wickanninish Beach. We were going to take a scenic walk from there, but apparently there was a female bear with a cub in the area so we shelved that idea :) Instead we went to to Ucluelet which is a lovely little town at the opposite end of the peninsula to Tofino and did some walking there. It was only when we finished that walk that we saw another sign, this time about a young bear in the area. Oops. On the way back to Tofino we had another crack at some back road driving, but the back roads turned out to be rough logging trails so we quit that, and went to Grice Bay instead where there way a beautiful lake view. Final stop of the day was Radar Hill, and a viewpoint over Clayoquot Sound which was cool.

We took the day off on Monday to have more time, and we got up early that morning to check out of our hostel in Tofino and to catch an early whale-watching trip. It was lousy weather that morning and raining, so visibility was crap when we started out. Fortunately the weather cleared up after an hour or so. We were also lucky with the whales. We ran into several gray whales at our first stop, some of which passed our boat so close that we could almost touch them. It was amazing! Later on we saw a humpback too, but only from the distance - it proved elusive. We also saw some bald eagles and sea lions on the way back. All in all, a fantastic trip and well worth it. In the afternoon we drove back to Nanaimo and caught the 7pm ferry back to Vancouver, and along the way spotted our first bear in the wild - a little cub at the roadside. Sadly I couldn't stop at that point to take some pictures - probably for the best as I am sure mummy bear would have been around somewhere!

Vancouver Island is beautiful, and we hope to go back when we can. Stay tuned for some photos :)