Postive Study Results for an Education Game I Helped Make

About a year ago now I helped create some art for DimensionM, an educational game produced by Tabula Digita. DimensionM initially began its concept as a game called Dimensia (a game I also worked on), a single player game in which the player was trapped on a reserach island where experiments had gone crazy and strange creatures had evolved. In both of these games you needed to utilize math skills, and not l33t deathmatch/killing skills, from around the grades 4 thru 6 range to complete the puzzles.

Throughout the development of DimensionM, Tabula would tell us how the kids really liked the concept of the game and couldn't get enough of it and would in fact stay late after school to continue to play it. Well now there is some scientific proof that shows that these types of serious/educational games really do benefit children (as someone who played educational games back on the Atari XE computer I can attest to this already, but I guess some people need reearch proof that it really works).

I think its pretty cool to see work that you have done become very well recieved by the target audience, and even more so to see that it has helped benefit them. Even better is the fact that our team (Maxgaming and 21-6) was able to do this on time and on budget and while completing all the goals we had set out on top of the fact that we had to help bail out the team that was involved in this project as well. So this was a real double-win IMHO and has put a nice positive spin on my day.

My Response to Bill C-61 to Ministers Prentice and Verner

The following is an email response I have sent to Canadian Ministers Prentice and Verner, authors of this latest "attempt" at copyright reform here in Canada (better known as Bill C-61):

I applaud you for attempting to get a first salvo in to sway the public opinion towards your side, but unfortunately the word is out about Bill C-61.

I am dismayed at your vein attempt to masquerade the fact that Bill C-61 is anything more than an attempt to rob Canadians of their rights for fair use for content that they legitamitely own or have access too and in turn give far too much in the way of rights and guarentees to large multi-national corporations. In effect treating honest Canadians like criminals for doing non-criminal acts.

Do not get me wrong, I am a creator of digital media content myself and understand that piracy is an issue and that copyright does need to be updated and refined as your culture and society advance. But it must be done so in a careful balance that protects both the rights of the all consumer and producers, not a small select set of corporations that are too draconian to make the necessary business changes to meet the demands of todays economy and market, not a small, select set of corporations who are using laws and lobbyists to push their agendas while appearing as though they are the weak and undefended victim in all this, which they are most certainly not.

I have already written my MP (Mike Lake, P.C.) and asked that he not support Bill C-61 and it is my hope that both Mr Prentice and Verner will withdraw their bill as they will see that the vast majority of Canadians will never support a Bill such as this which takes away their legitmate rights towards materials they have legally purchased or have access to.

Lastly I feel that I should remind you that as an MP your job first and foremost is to protect the rights of Canada, its citizens and most importantly the constituents that you represent, and in my honest opinion, your Bill C-61 fails on all of those.


Logan Foster

Once again I ask that each and every citizen of Canada write their MP and inform them not to support Bill C-61.

The Canadian Government... Looking to Fuck over the rights of Canadians Apparently

Those of you in Canada might know that today the ruling party of our government has tabled some legislation today which attempts to reform Canadian copyrights... unfortunately this reform is for the benefit of large multi-national media comglomerates who are looking to fuck us all over for an extra buck.

What is interesting, is that this bill was tabled by two new ministers who are happy to sell out to these companies, Prentice and Verner and not Bev Oda (who previously tried to sell us all down the river with her attempts at copyright reform in Bill C-60, which was thankfully withdrawn after some large protests).

Ministers Prentice and Verner made a first salvo attempt to deflect damage by sending out a mass email to those who had concerns with Bill C-60 earlier this year by explaining that this was a wonderful change for all Canadian. What they did not explain was also how it screws everyone over.

For a better explaination of what's going on one simply needs to read Michael Giest's blog. For the record, Mr Giest is a copyright lawyer and law professor at the University of Ottawa, so you can trust that he knows what he is talking about.

Here are some interesting points that he brings up:

"The effect of the digital lock provisions is to render these rights virtually meaningless in the digital environment because anything that is locked down (ie. copy-controlled CD, no-copy mandate on a digital television broadcast) cannot be copied. As for every day activities like transferring a DVD to your iPod - those are infringing too. Indeed, the law makes it an infringement to circumvent the locks for these purposes."

"The digital lock provisions are worse than the DMCA. Yes - worse. The law creates a blanket prohibition on circumvention with very limited exceptions and creates a ban against distributing the tools that can be used to circumvent."

So it looks like its time to call up your local MP and point out to them that you do not support this bill and that they as your representative should not either.

Mental Ray Materials Site

I found out about this very cool website called Mental Ray Materials (or MR Materials as its known as) that has been setup by Jeff Patton and some associates. The site offers a bunch of tips, tricks, Mental Ray shaders (for various 3D apps that support the rendering app) and materials to make your Mental Ray renders shine.

Being a bit of a novide with Mental Ray (developing games will do that to you) I have found the site to be a pretty cool resource and well worth recommending for others to check out.