Hi everyone, Alex Ryan from the San Francisco High Road office here at the X’10 Canada Holiday Preview event being held at one of Toronto’s premiere venues, The Fifth. Having spent years attending gaming events in the Los Angeles and San Francisco areas, I was certainly looking forward to how the home office and our Canadian counterparts “put on the ritz” with their gaming events and have spent the day checking it out.

First of all, let me say that The Fifth is an amazing venue to hold an event. Located in Toronto’s entertainment district, The Fifth is separated into two different floors, the first floor and the fifth (duh!), with X’10 covering every inch of these floors with gaming goodness. With X’10 beginning at 10am and going all the way to 10pm, media were treated, not only to the delicious  paninis and open bar, but eight screen local multiplayer action with Halo Reach. Rock Band 3 represented big time with their keyboards and Pro Mode in effect making the gaming press step it up a notch to rock, and turntablists mixing it up on DJ Hero 2 (Lady GaGa FTW!). Sega, Activision, EA, Bethesda Software and UbiSoft were all in the house with everything from Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, Dead Space 2 (my personal fave!) to the retro awesome that is Sonic 4. On top of that, the Lionhead developer for Fable came here from the UK to get in on the action. And let’s not forget Kinect…

The Fifth’s fifth floor was all about Kinect. In what is usually the venue’s nighttime restaurant area, Kinect stations were aplenty giving not just the core gaming media a turn at the new a peripheral, but local and casual media along with Mommy Bloggers coming through to try their hand at the new controller-less Microsoft innovation. Dance Central anyone? Yes, please! Check out So You Think You Can Dance Canada’s Blake McGrath busting a move.

So needless to say, it was wall to wall to wall games here at X’10 Canada and I can certainly say that my Canadian counterparts have done me proud with the venue, the amount of gaming companies coming together with their holiday lineups, and the multiple types of media brought together in one place. With the all day event across two floors and everyone having time to relax, play and just enjoy gaming as it should be enjoyed, I’ll definitely be here for X’11 Canada!

Thousands of game developers have invaded San Francisco this week for the annual Game Developers Conference, the biggest industry event of its kind. (Let’s say there are worse assignments than to leave Montreal in a chilly -35ºC to head to sunny California ) This year, the event has attracted over 12,000 attendees, a sharp increase from previous years. This can in part be explained by the cancellation of E3 as we knew it, many wanting to take this opportunity to network and conduct business. Interestingly, media attendance also seems to have increased for the same reason.

Gaming has really entered the mainstream world (one only has to look at the ever rising popularity of the Nintendi Wii, attracting gamers as much as people who have never picked up a controller before in their lives) and is now very much part of our entertainment environment, it’s fascinating to get to see the underside of this industry. E3 was very product-centric, (where everything was oversized) but this show is about the people, the technology and the skills.

Go check www.gamasutra.com, they are covering the show live with a great overview of what is happening. Jill Duffy reported on the conference given by Warren Spector (of Deus Ex’s fame) on storytelling. As always, this great visionary has given food for thought to his peers. Last time I had the pleasure to hear him speak was at the Montreal International Game Summit (MIGS) in 2005, where he gave a much publicized keynote discussing violence in games. It created waves for weeks!

Big surprise factor for me was the Quebec presence. While Montreal is now known worldwide as a major development hub, it was still quite a shock to realize how strong the Quebec presence is at GDC: everywhere I walk, I pick up the easily identifiable Quebecois accent from groups of people I walk past. That’s not to mention the acquaintances I’ve been running into since the show started! From the MIGS team to Ubisoft Montreal employees, to High Road’s very own clients, the Quebec representation is quite remarkable. I had the pleasure of walking around the show with Electric Playground’s host Victor Lucas, showing him some of Montreal?s greatest technologies.

Of course, a tradeshow isn’t complete without an array of parties and events. Last night was the show’s Awards ceremony, where Xbox 360′s big hit Gears of War won the top honors. I selected to celebrate the evening with Montreal’s A.I. Implant who was throwing a little cocktail party and celebrating their latest customer adoption (a “small” studio called Bioware!).

Now back to the show for Day 2, and hoping to enjoy some nice warm weather before heading back tomorrow to chilly Montreal