I suppose the tale was supposed to go something like this – “I never thought I needed math, boys and girls, but whaddya know – I use it EVERY SINGLE DAY in my COOL, COOL JOB! And if you want a cool job like me, boys and girls, you’d better study up on your geometry!”
Well. The talk went well enough, at least I thought so. I showed them some movies and my 3D software and talked a little bit about how I was no good at math, but I sort of understood geometry and now I use it in my job. I showed them a few quick things in the software. They nodded where appropriate, they laughed at my stupid jokes (or maybe just at me, in retrospect.) I answered what few polite questions they had, and sent them on their way, full of the warm glow of pride that I had done my part to show the next generation the value of real world, applied geometrical theory.
And then word got back to me – the moment the students from my first session had gotten out of earshot, they basically said that if that’s what it was like making games for a living, they’d rather do something else.
So there you have it. I took arguably one of the most interesting jobs you could have and made it boring. Ah. My contribution to the next generation.
Excuse me now, I’m going to go boil my head.
Hahaha, funny story (and the picture that comes with it)! I guess the reality check came just too fast for the poor kids.
I know! My buddy said, “What did you SAY to those kids?” Man, I just told ‘em the truth. Maybe that was my mistake…
Loved this post! I think your “mistake” is that you revealed to much of the mystique around gamecreation in your demontration to the kid.
Kudos to you for daring to go through this kind of stuff in middleschool. I have found from my own experience in teaching at thoose grades that it’s a hard line to balance where you’re at the risk of on one side underestimating the kids and at the other side you’re talking above their heads – even more so when you just step into a classroom of kids you barely met before. I’m sure you’ll get more chanses in the future.
Wow… sounds fun.
I guess I should find another profession to think about other than game making? 
And they say telling the truth will do you well. 
Hey at least they know it’s not all magic and mumbo jumbo. They probably think making games takes a week. You told them the truth.
~L~
You suddenly turned into Billy Crystal in “City Slickers”. Did you go home and say to your wife “I sell air!” ?
Oh dear… I am… suddenly dreading children.
I think you just opened their eyes, and made them understand that playing games, and making games are two completely different things.
And the other bunch who don’t confuse the two, probably confuse game design and game development.
I started programming back in middle school, and way before that I used to play around making graphics and animations in DPaint on the Amiga, the good old pixel graphics days.
I actually did a presentation on game development in Japanese a few weeks back.
Everyone liked games, but I was surprised when no one said they’d ever wanted to make games, so I felt I lost the entire audience after about 5 sentences.
Yes… excellent. Steve Ogden has done wonders for us, the elite, who create games and animation in order to control the minds of lesser humans who now believe intelligence is just too much of a burden for them. World Domination shall be mine!
I mean… Ours! Muahahahahaha!