FIELD TRIPPIN'

working for ign definitely has its moments; usually, those moments are had in front of our street fighter II turbo: hyper fighting cabinet. but earlier last tuesday was one of the first times i have actually been proud to be an employee. for whatever reason, just over a half-dozen eighth grade boys visited our offices on a field trip.

THIS KID KILLED EVERYONE...

david adams, the fellow in the neighboring cube showed the kids how he enters new stories into our back-end system just before i gave them a brief video creation demo. i would have had a better chance keeping their attention if i hadn't had the brilliant idea to allow them to play the game we were capturing footage from. apparently destroy all humans is much more interesting than avid. at least there was one interested young mind. seeing the future video producer in him just warmed my heart. so damn cute...

during the roundtable session, the children were free to ask a group of us editors questions about the business, our industry, etc. of course, it only took about two-and-a-half minutes before the subject matter in question was no longer inter-office protocol but rather the Playstation 3 launch line-up and Halo 2.5. The adult supervision present didn't seem too thrilled about the gaming conversation, but oh well. it wasn't their day.

we took them into our demo rooms for some 16 player halo 2 multiplayer matches before interviewing the lot of 'em on-camera for an upcoming feature. the distraction did keep me from my desk for the morning, which i, of course, totally appreciated. in addition, i could tell that those children were genuinely thankful for the day's experiences. i know i would've loved to have had the chance to visit a gaming publication at such a young age... i would've loved to have been able to show my parents proof, without a doubt, that there were people who made money writing about games. sometimes, i still don't think they believe it. Posted by ryan at June 5, 2005 10:13 PM | TrackBack