Round Up: NFL Poker, Consulting Evolve, //ADAPT

Today's round-up includes news of the latest ‘Game with Fame’ event featuring the Kansas City Chiefs’ Larry Johnson, a partnership between Evolve PR and VideoGameConsulting.com, and additions to the upcoming //ADAPT conference in Montreal, as well as the latest Game Career Guide updates, Serious Games Source posts, GameSetWatch posts and Gamasutra job postings. - Following the North American debut of the Xbox Live Vison camera for the Xbox 360, which allows users to broadcast video using certain games over Xbox Live, Microsoft has announced that Kansas City Chiefs’ Running Back Larry Johnson will compete online with fans in Activision’s World Series of Poker: Tournament of Champions. The event will serve as the latest in Microsoft's ongoing ‘Game with Fame’ series. Those interested in taking part in the event and playing against Johnson should look for the Gamertag LJ27GWF on Friday, September 22 between 1:30 p.m. and 2:30 p.m. PST/ 4:30 – 5:30 p.m. EST to challenge him in the poker game. - Public relations studio Evolve PR, which represents such game companies as Stardock, 2K, and Irrational Games, today announced a partnership with video game consultancy firm VideoGameConsulting.com in order to provide a single client base with consultancy/scriptwriting and PR services. Evolve PR will use VideoGameConsulting.com as a primary point of call for any of its clients’ consultancy and evaluation needs, while VideoGameConsulting.com will leverage off of Evolve PR’s experience of international public relations. “We’re delighted to be teaming up with Evolve, a PR agency with a genuine international reputation and outlook,” commented Martin Korda, Managing Director of VideoGameConsulting.com. “In conjunction with our own evaluation and assessment services, Evolve’s expertise will enable us to provide our clients with an even greater range of services to help their products make a genuine impact on a crowded marketplace.” - Digital 04 Studios announced that it has added Blue Sky Studios, Softimage, and Toon Boom Animation to the lineup of companies to be represented at its recently announced Advanced Digital Art Production Techniques (//ADAPT) conference. Scheduled to take place on September 23rd and 24th, 2006, at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Montreal, Canada, the event, which is geared towards the digital arts industry, will play host to over 20 digital art masters, numerous film and video game studios, and hundreds of experienced and aspiring artists. In addition, representatives noted that CG Channel studio, an online magazine dedicated to computer graphics and visual effects, will host a string of live interviews with digital artists, recruiters and attendees present at the event. The interviews will be made available online in streaming format in the days following the conference. For more information about the show in general, interested parties can visit the official //ADAPT website. - The latest updates on Gamasutra sister alt.gaming weblog GameSetWatch include more images from Tokyo's arcade scene, a reprinted interview with Tetsuya Mizuguchi, and and a look back at 2005's Nintendo DS adventure game Trace Memory. - The latest updates on Gamasutra's sister site Serious Games Source include a new 'newsgame' from Persuasive Games covering bloated security lines at airports. - News on Gamasutra's game education sister site Game Career Guide includes a new feature covering a master's thesis titled "Beyond Point A: Game Environments as Psycho-Symbolic Allegory." - Also updated today: the latest Gamasutra job postings, including openings from Auran Games, Disney Buena Vista Games, High Moon Studios, LucasArts, Lucasfilm Singapore, Pandemic Studios Australia, Rockstar Toronto, Stray Bullet Games, The Art Institute of California, and Walt Disney Internet Group.