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News and notes from Google Canada
Q&A with Sébastien Puel, general manager of Stadia's studio in Montréal
Friday, November 29, 2019
Note from the editor: Sébastien Puel was recently named General Manager of Google’s Stadia Games and Entertainment studio in Montréal. We sat down with him for a short Q&A to gain insight into the vision he has for the studio and the gaming ecosystem as a whole.
Q. What drew you to Stadia?
I believe in Cloud gaming and the benefits it can bring to gamers. The ability to play on any screen, without any hardware barriers, will radically change the industry in the coming years. Stadia will not only open gaming to new demographics, it will also make new types of experiences and designs possible. Stadia represents a gaming revolution and I wanted to be a part of it.
Q. Why did Google choose Montréal as a location for its first AAA studio?
Montréal is a special place, full of creativity and originality. There is incredible passion for gaming in this city, and I’ve been fortunate to see it grow and mature. Over the years, this city produced some of the best talents and greatest games in the world. With 13,000 developers, major studios, a dense network of indys, Montréal is an industry hub. And now, for the first time, a first party studio opens. It says a lot about the ecosystem that has been built here over the years!
Q. Your first order of business as the studio’s GM is to build a team - what has been the response so far?
The response has been truly exciting! As it appears, I’m not the only one drawn to Stadia’s mission. In just a few months, we’ve received thousands of applications for a limited number of job openings. We’ve conducted hundreds of interviews. Internally, Googlers have been coming forward to work on Stadia. We’re attracting great talent not only from Montréal, but also from around the world. We’re building a world-class team.
Q. What excites you about your role at Stadia?
What excited me when I started my career a decade ago still holds true today - it's the opportunity to create not just games, but games that gamers will love. And as someone who has strived to do that my whole career, the journey to creating those games starts with building great culture, process and teamwork. In the end, it comes down to one thing: empowering teams. Bringing the best talents together and designing with them the best environment for creativity and success. Of course, the end result is crucial. We all want to make great games that change the world. But first and foremost, it is about ‘how’ you achieve this: the culture, the processes, the team work. A video game team is a strange beast. It is not about technology alone. And it is not all about art and design. It’s about the merging of both -- the left and right brain hemispheres working in tandem and in equal proportion. This is what is unique in the gaming industry and I am not sure I could find it anywhere else.
Q. How will you measure success?
Games have changed a lot in the past 20 years. Success was often measured by sales and positive reviews. Now success boils down to how much of a community rallies around the content. It is about building mutual respect between the creators and a community who share the same passion for the content and gaming experiences. Our ambition is to build games that will continue to evolve and that people will keep playing in 10, 15, 20 years to come! This is the kind of success we strive for.
Q. Game creation requires creativity. How do you define creativity and how do you intend to foster it?
I have been part of teams that have created some of the industry’s most memorable games. Creativity thrives in environments that allow new ideas to bloom and thrive: with clear goals, a lot of team ownership and a great sense of safety. This last point is very important to me. Safety allows people to speak their mind, share ideas even if they are unorthodox, voice their concerns. Safety is created by a team’s culture: how it embraces diversity, how it creates trust between its members, how failures are fully accepted as part of the creative process. With that in mind, Google is a great place to create games, as these values are part of its operating system.
Q. There’s clearly a lot of exciting work to be done. How do you make sure your team has a good work-life balance?
I am a father of 3 kids, I am involved in my community, I love cycling, running, boxing, cross country skiing. You can do all that and be a game developer! There has been incredible progress done about work-life balance in studios since their inception 20+ years ago, and I think it is especially true in the big studios in Montréal. Processes and cultures have matured. Work life balance is a critical part of Google - and now Stadia’s - culture.
Can anyone match Freddie Mercury’s legendary voice? Queen and YouTube Music are challenging fans to find out!
Thursday, November 14, 2019
New Google built AI-powered singing challenge -
FreddieMeter
- rates how closely fans can mimic Freddie Mercury’s voice
Take on the #FreddieChallenge now in support of the Mercury Phoenix Trust
“
Bohemian Rhapsody
” is considered one of the greatest rock songs of all time, so it’s no wonder the music video recently
hit 1 billion views on YouTube
. For decades, fans have belted out the song’s iconic lyrics alongside Freddie Mercury’s one-of-a-kind vocals, but how many can really sing it just like Freddie? YouTube, Google Creative Lab, and Google Research, working in partnership with Queen, Universal Music Group and Hollywood Records, have built a new AI experiment called
FreddieMeter
to find out!
Released in support of
Mercury Phoenix Trust
, a charity founded by Brian May, Roger Taylor and Jim Beach to raise awareness and funds for the fight against HIV/AIDS, and in honour of the 44th anniversary of the band’s first-ever live performance of “Bohemian Rhapsody,” at the Empire Theater, Liverpool, U.K in November 1975; FreddieMeter was created to let fans around the world determine how closely their singing matches the voice of Queen’s legendary frontman, Freddie Mercury.
FreddieMeter
shows users how closely their voice matches Freddie Mercury’s legendary range by analyzing the singer’s pitch, timbre, and melody to assign them a score of 0 to 100. Queen fans, killer impressionists, and anyone who enjoys a little karaoke and are ready to step up to the challenge can get started by doing the following:
SING: Pick one of four QUEEN songs on the
microsite
(Bohemian Rhapsody, Don’t Stop Me Now, Somebody to Love or We Are the Champions) and sing your heart out!
SHARE: Get your score and share! Download the custom scorecard asset directly to your device, then share it on YouTube and other social media.
CHALLENGE: Using the hashtag #FreddieChallenge on social channels, challenge three friends to see how they measure up.
DONATE: Encourage a charitable donation to Mercury Phoenix Trust in your post →
http://www.mercuryphoenixtrust.com/donate
Google Creative Lab and Google Research created FreddieMeter using
new on-device machine learning models
, and it’s been trained on Freddie’s isolated vocals as well as samples of people trying to sing like Freddie. FreddieMeter is trained on and optimized for individual singers and works on desktop, Android and iPhone devices and the audio doesn’t get uploaded to any servers to be analyzed, so all vocals stay totally private unless shared by the user.
FreddieMeter continues YouTube’s celebration of Queen’s music and “Bohemian Rhapsody’s” 1 billion views milestone, which coincided with the release of a newly remastered
HD version of the video
. The achievement made history with the anthem being the first pre-1990s video to reach one billion views on the platform.
In partnership with Universal Music Group and Hollywood Records, YouTube also recently launched ‘
You Are The Champions
,’ a unique campaign that gave fans an exclusive chance to become a part of Queen history with a starring role in brand-new, user-generated videos for three of the band’s most celebrated tracks - “
A Kind of Magic
,” “
Don’t Stop Me Now
” and the iconic “
Bohemian Rhapsody
.” The results were pulled from more than 10,000 submissions from more than 120 countries around the world, showing the depth and love for Queen and Freddie amongst their loyal global fanbase.
To take on the #FreddieChallenge now or find out more about FreddieMeter, visit
freddiemeter.withyoutube.com
.
A new way to discover Google tools to grow your small business
Friday, November 8, 2019
Today hundreds of entrepreneurs will descend on the Manitoba Museum to participate in a
Grow with Google
workshop. They will be joined by Google volunteers for a day of training and one-on-one mentorship sessions with the goal of helping Winnipeg businesses take advantage of the scale and reach of the open web. Winnipeg marks our ninth Grow with Google stop in Canada, and the tenacity of Canadian entrepreneurs and small businesses to upskill and grow never ceases to amaze me.
Small businesses are the backbone of our communities and economy. They create jobs, they shape our culture, and often define what makes a city like Winnipeg unique. Google understands the important role small businesses play in Canada, but we also know the challenges these enterprises face when it comes to adapting to the digital economy.
When I talk to Canadian business owners about their priorities, they tell me they want to grow their brand and find new customers, sometimes in Canada and sometimes in countries across the globe. But I also hear about the lack of time and resources to adapt to the rapidly evolving digital economy. The Internet presents incredible opportunities, but it can be hard to know the right place to start.
That’s why I’m so pleased to announce the launch of
Google for Small Business
, a new Grow with Google initiative to help businesses across Canada find the right Google tools and services to achieve their goals. The online program is super simple: go to the website (
google.com/smallbusiness
), share a business name, answer a few questions about the business, and select a goal. The business then receives a step-by-step plan to help them stand out online, reach more customers and work more efficiently. The recommendations will include products to help with all three, but with a particular focus on the goal that’s most important for that business.
This is an easy, streamlined way for small businesses to find tailored solutions with a personalized plan to optimize efficiency and stand out online. Growth for small businesses isn’t always about more, it’s about getting things done in less time, with less complication, and less worry.
This is why we created Google for Small Business - to help small businesses thrive by providing tools and support to connect with more customers and achieve lasting success.
It’s never too early - or too late - for small businesses to learn the skills that can help them get ahead.
Get started at
google.com/smallbusiness
today.
Posted by Sabrina Geremia, VP Google Canada
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