Its the third largest sector in the global entertainment industry (Yes movies and music come on top)…and has a massive double digit growth beating other giants in the industry, recording a revenue of $41 billion for 2008. A multi-discipline realm of professionals including biologists, physicians, artists, musicians and programmers, 25000+ people all over the world, making other people’s imaginations a reality. Yes it is The Interactive Entertainment Industry or most popularly known as Video Gaming.
Sri Lanka has a youth gaming community sizing over 10000 specially in cities like Colombo, Kandy and Kurunegala as hardcore gamers and thousands more all over the island as fans and followers of PC, mobile and console gaming. Annually they get to meet each other and compete to the heart’s content at events like “Srilankan Cyber Games”. But until now Sri Lanka never had a gaming magazine. Print or electronic media never considered it as a serious form of entertainment. The popularity of gaming among kids, youth and young-at-heart urged for a voice…. until now.
Bunch of friends got together to create the Sri Lanka’s first ever gaming magazine, The Gamer. And its the second of its kind in South Asia. With strategy guides, reviews, gaming events,competitions and new releases it will cater to the gaming community of Sri Lanka and beyond. The first issue was out in September and it was available in all leading book stores such as Vijitha Yapa, MD Gunasena, Sarasavi, etc. and in popular gaming cafes and DVD stores as well. And if you are lucky enough, you will still be able to grab your self a copy left. This inaugural issue of ‘The Gamer’ features newly released NFS: Shift and many more hot titles including Majesty 2, Colin McRae Rally: Dirt 2, Resident Evil 5. A special strategy guide on FIFA 09, Reviews on The Sims 3, World of Goo etc is also included. Since The Gamer’s intention is to bring forth & expose the gaming community to the general public as well to increase the awareness of the Sri Lankan enthusiasts regarding the latest developments in the international gaming arena, this issue covers the news on World Cyber Games – Sri Lankan Preliminaries too.
Ahhh… and I almost forgot to mention I write about FOSS (and specially Linux) games for ‘The Gamer’. 
These days we are getting ready to publish the second issue of ‘The Gamer’ – the follow-up to a great success seeing almost all 1500 copies sold. If you like to contribute to the magazine’s future issues with articles please drop a mail to edit.gamer@gmail.com
If you wish to contribute in any other way or to find out more about advertising opportunities in ‘The Gamer’ contact mkt.gamer@gmail.com
You can follow ‘The Gamer’ on twitter at http://twitter.com/TheGamer_SL or be a fan on facebook at http://bit.ly/48AvpW
I came across this interesting talk titled ‘How the Net aids dictatorships’ by Evgeny Morozov from Former Soviet Republic of Belarus, while going through the daily dose of vodcasts and thought of sharing it because we as a developing nation has to have an clear idea where all these technical advancements will lead our society amidst the heated arguments about human rights, media freedom and censorship. While we all think of web 2.0 and new media as a tool for empowering the societies and widen citizen’s view points, do they really take people out of repression and pave the way to a democratic nation?
He tells that giving them more connectivity and devices doesn’t mean democracy will eventually follow. Rather than fuelling cyber-activism, technologies like internet, television and other media are shifting the youth to cyber-hedonism. Some cool imageries, comparisons and wordings. Most importantly the insight he gives us in the end, its all about empowering the intellectuals,dissidents and members of the civil society, not about the number of ipods,cellphones or laptops per head…
‘What might be my last long holiday ends in few more days’ said Pathfinder in his last post and kept me thinking for a while. ‘Oh yes few more hours left and what did I do?’. I wanted to answer… in one big sentence… and found out so many snapshots, animations, quotations (and imaginations of course) hovering all over my mind, trying to sum up the whole experience.
So.. I thought of writing a blog post.
Among the crazy trips, movies, talks and meet ups there were some significant events… highlights. TEDx Colombo was cool. 
I had been watching TED talks via miro for a while and it was so nice to see TED fans of Colombo getting together, watching TED talks, sharing ideas and building connections. Though it was not a grand event like TED conference itself, I think it accomplished what it was meant to be.. A TEDx event in Colombo. And another good thing is I got to meet some bloggers including Dinidu, St.fallen, jester100 and indi. And the evening ended quite nicely, coffee with Suchetha, who also happened to be at the event.
Then came the 10-day short film workshop for children, where we volunteered and had a great time. Constance Tillotson from US with famous Sri Lankan filmmakers Anoma Rajakaruna and Kasinathar Gnanadas did the coaching. There were kids selected from all over the island, to learn film making in a fun-filled way. We helped out everyone with translations etc. and the kids made 8 lovely short films in the end. Evenings were spent playing cricket, rugby, handball and a mixture of everything near the Bolgoda Lake. The 10 days were full of little little incidents that fills up my memory. Young kids who were good in English helping their friends to overcome language barriers. I felt they were unknowingly repairing the bridges which were forgotten for generations. One night while having dinner, I remember, a little Tamil boy comes to my friend to ask what is the Sinhala translation of ‘Are you angry with me?’
It was a memorable experience for all the volunteers too who had passions varying in fields of Engineering, Music, Performing arts etc, not to mention the other-worldly discussions we had at free times, ranging from Osho, la vie en rose to web 2.0 .
We came back to Colombo to involve in another range of events at the university which included the Annual programming competition, Award Ceremony and Indifferenz 2009. Here are some of the videos created for the events. With all these cool stuff happening, I missed out some (including this,that and the other) where I really wanted to be too. But hopefully, most of those have plans to be held next year too.
So this marks the end of a long, eventful vacation. (Most probably the longest I’ll get for few decades) New subjects have been released for enrollment for the new semester. Many (including Intelligent Systems, Image Processing, Embedded Systems, Communications and Numerical Analysis) sound cool enough to keep us busy for the coming months, (meaning less of twitter, facebook and gReader). But as always, every second will lived, will tell us a story as they sing… “All you touch and all you see is all your life will ever be.”
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