Attention gamers: Toronto-based Intel Canada has just launched gamefaces.ca, where gaming enthusiasts can create personalized visual ‘game face’ tags that they can embed on other sites like blogs, chat forums, MySpace and even in their email signatures. The site will also host a database of the faces, enabling curious competitors to search for their rivals’ ‘faces’ to see what they look like.

‘It’s an opportunity to create a stronger relationship with our target,’ explains Elaine Mah, marketing manager at Intel Canada, adding that the site’s target is 18-34, skewing male. ‘This is very much a Canadian initiative.’

Intel launched the site on August 24, coinciding with its sponsorship of the World Series of Video Games at Fan Expo Canada in Toronto, a three-day convention for gaming, comic, sci-fi, anime and horror enthusiasts that attracts over 45,000 people.

The ‘Intel Gaming Zone’ covered 25,000 square feet of the convention’s floor space, and included an area where convention attendees could test-drive PCs equipped with IntelCore2 Extreme processors, as well as race each other in replica F1 racing simulators and even insert themselves instantly into Intel ads. Intel also sponsors Team Evil Genius, Canada’s top-performing team in World Cyber Game tournaments.

Intel did what Mah describes as a ‘very concentrated burst’ of wild postings, online and radio efforts for just over two weeks leading up to the convention, with Toronto-based Sharpe Blackmore Euro RSCG. The website will be promoted through a viral effort with Toronto-based PR firm Hill & Knowlton that will roll out in the very near future.