News release

Arcade night brings indie games to Quartier Concordia

President’s Conference Series teams Concordia game designers and the Mount Royal Game Society in: Experiencing the Media Mix: Anime, Manga, Video Games

Montreal, January 23, 2012 – Ready. Set. Play! Enter a realm of innovation and daring at Concordia University’s Mixcade event on Sunday, February 5, beginning at 4 p.m. in the lobby of the Engineering, Computer Science and Visual Arts Integrated Complex (EV) building,1515 Ste-Catherine St. West (corner Guy St.).

This celebration of independent gaming is part of the upcoming President's Conference Series (PCS), Experiencing the Media Mix: Anime, Manga, Video Games, unfolding

February 4 through 6. The three-day program will focus on popular Japanese culture through a series of free public events as well as a scholarly symposium and master class involving academics from Canada, the United States and Japan.

Many of the top game designers from Montreal’s independent gaming community will be on hand at the Mixcade, inviting Montrealers to play their latest creations. This new-style arcade will also provide visitors with the opportunity to try out some of the most original indie games from around the world.

The various soundtracks of the games themselves will provide the evening’s ambiance as gamers and neophytes alike try out full-body games, the group play of the Arcade Royale cabinet and games where the dazzling visual elements will be projected on huge screens that can be viewed from outside the building.

Concordia’s research centre in Technoculture, Art and Games (TAG) is collaborating with the indie gaming group the Mount Royal Game Society to bring Montrealers a roundup of the most original experimental creations that exist purely for the love of making games.

At A Distance by Terry Cavanagh accommodates two players simultaneously, side-by-side, communicating and sharing screens in order to solve puzzles.
J.S.Joust by Die Gute Fabrik is a game for up to 7 players using motion controllers. Players move in time to J.S. Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos and attempt to jostle opponents’ controllers while protecting their own.
The Arcade Royale machine is a custom-built large-scale creation that will support up to four people at once playing one of four games made by Montreal developers in the last year.

More games to be announced shortly.

WHAT: Mixcade Games Arcade
WHEN: Sunday, February 5, 4 p.m. - 9 p.m.
WHERE: Concordia University – Engineering, Computer Science and Visual Arts
Integrated Complex (EV) building - Lobby
1515 Ste-Catherine St. West (corner Guy St.)

The following PCS events are also open to the public and free of charge:

Keynote address by Eiji Otsuka - in Partnership with the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec (BAnQ)

“The Unholy Alliance of Disney and Eisenstein: The Wartime Origins of Manga, Animation and Otaku Culture”

A leading Japanese cultural figure and critic, Eiji Otsuka is the author of more than two dozen books, including novels and the acclaimed manga series The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service. Otsuka is also the creator of the anime Mah? no Rouge and is a professor of Media Arts at Kobe Design University. Otsuka will discuss the roots of anime and manga forged during Japan’s Pacific War as an amalgamation of Eisenstein’s style of montage and Disney’s character aesthetic.

In Japanese with English/French simultaneous translation

WHEN: Saturday, February 4, at 5 p.m.
WHERE: Grande Bibliothèque - Auditorium
475 De Maisonneuve Blvd. East

Free admission – tickets by reservation at banq.qc.ca

Symposium
Scholars from Canada, the United States and Japan will join the university’s own experts to look at the current synergy between films, video games, comic books, novels and soundtracks.

Topics include: Transnational Storytelling, Unintended Travel: ROM Hackers and Fan Translations of Japanese Videogame; Media Mixed Histories: Kyara versus Context, Media Mix as Experience; Miku: Virtual Idol as Media Platform; The Autonomy of Gaming (and the Dark Value of Guns); Nausicaa Now More Than Ever; Between Wolf and Dog: On Oshii Mamoru and Tezuka Osamu.
(more details to follow)

WHEN: Sunday, February 5, 9:30 a.m. – 5:30 p.m.
WHERE: Concordia University - J.W. McConnell Building –
Cinema J.A. De Sève
1400 De Maisonneuve Blvd. West

On Monday, February 6, graduate students from Japan, the U.S. and Canada will attend a series of master classes to deepen their understanding of the phenomenon of the Japanese media mix and its implications on a wide range of academic fields from history and sociology through film and communication studies to literature.
The Master Class is not open to the public or members of the media.

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