This story starts with a game, and ends with a chocolate bar and an adventure.

First off, the game:

Empire Avenue is a strange and addictive phenomenon. A thousand people and organizations have flocked to the site to start buying and selling shares in each other, and it's still just in beta.

Empire is an interesting blend of social media promotion and game. Essentially you log into the game and set yourself up as either a person or a site. Then you connect Empire to your social media sites and blogs and start promoting the heck out of yourself. The goal? To have other people invest in you.

I have seen other sites that allow you to invest in people and companies in a simulated stock market, that idea isn't new, but Empire puts a unique twist on the idea: your value is based on your online influence. What this means is that every time you get a new follower on Twitter, or someone reposts something that you put online, your value goes up.

This has had two effects on me. First, I find myself wanting to promote myself more. Not just in Empire Avenue, but in other places online. This blog being one of the places that is getting some love.

Secondly, the adventure:

When I signed up to Empire Avenue, I signed up as Knaves Online, the Facebook game I have been slaving away at. I felt this allowed me to promote the game in a way that was fun for me while connecting with other Edmontonians.

One of the things I decided to do was run an ad that said, If you work in downtown Edmonton and buy 50+ shares in Knaves I will buy you a candy bar and deliver it to your office. I didn't really think anyone would take me up on it, but I was committed to the idea of following through if someone did.

And of course, someone did.

The person who took me up on it was Owen Brierley, executive director of Guru Digital Arts College. I asked him what type of candy bar he would like and set off for his office with a Milkyway bar in hand.

When I got there I found out that Guru is now offering an interaction design and game development course. I also started to get a feel for the community that is starting to grow in Edmonton around game development.

For years I have plodded along in obscurity, thinking that Bioware was pretty much the only game in town. This is no longer true. Edmonton now has social events for game developers like GameCamp Edmonton and the community is growing every day. And well it should, Edmonton is filled with talented coders and artists, many of whom are trapped indoors for 3/4 of the year. We SHOULD be making the best games on the planet, when you think about it.

Now that I've seen Empire Avenue, I guess we are.