In 1997 I typed up a letter to Maxis in Microsoft Creative Writer about how much I liked their games and wanted to move to America and work at Maxis when I grew up: https://i.imgur.com/1eHcead.jpeg Unfortunately I made the mistake of mentioning that it'd be cool if you could print out an image of your city in SimCity 2000, as you could in the previous SimCity game. That was enough to get me only this letter from lega…
Can't see the images as imgur has geoblocked the UK.
At 8 I pitched a rocket car to the DoD and got a letter from my congresswoman and the Secretary of Defense. They were a bit bored pre 9/11 i think.
It was more likely written by a staff member who thought it would make your day, and signed by the Secretary of Defense. It is pretty neat that you got two letters though, because your letter probably got passed around and made the day of several people.
Yeah you’re right. The local news came to my house too and filmed me playing with my hot wheels volcano blowout set like i was some kind of child prodigy. So embarrassing lmao.
These letters matter a lot to kids. I sent my video game idea to Nintendo as a little kid and I had the same reaction seeing that envelope from Nintendo in the mailbox addressed to me. I think it was also a bit more special pre-internet as these companies felt a bit more magical and mysterious. You can only read about them through video game magazines and see their names in the credit scenes at the end of the games.…
I don't have a cool story about sending a letter as a kid, although I had drafted one to send to Lego, but have been on the receiving end before. My office is across the street from an elementary school that we have a relationship with, evidenced by the annual trick or treat we host for them. One day roughly every third cubicle or so had a letter at the desk from one of the kids with a cute note. It was clear that our leadership provided the names and we weren't looked up, because mine had my nickname. Anyway, even though it was clearly a class assignment, it was really neat, and I made a reply with official company letterhead and everything in hopes of making the day of the kid who wrote me. Turns out that other peers had the same idea, because when I went to leadership to ask how to return it to the kid (I didn't know his classroom or anything. Just a first name and school address), they had letters from several other employees that they were going to return to the school.
Around this age I went to a water park and was similarly inspired. I had the idea for making an entire water park dedicated to making sure people would get wet and jump onto rides from beginning to end. I called it "Totally Wet People", drew up an elaborate concept art for water slides, sprinklers, pools, tubes, etc. My mom thought it was hilarious and brought it to work (alas, she worked for the Navy at the time, no…
Little did you know that your ideas were incorporated into Navy training. The Navy is wet work and you need practice working in such conditions. They unfortunately left out your concessions stands and the water slide. Sorry. (I know that submariners literally have water obstacle courses where they have to learn to, for instance, do some repairs while a compartment is flooding, but I’ve no idea what the Navy does as a…
I don't have to - it's called image branding and is a well-known and established marketing discipline. Not direct ROI like hard sell techniques, but it lands you with higher margins, lower customer acqusition costs, longer customer lifetime value, etc. Apple was a master at that, Nike, and in this particular example LEGO regularly responds to children mail, Nintendo built a whole business channel around it with Ninte…
So according to you, we should all quit our jobs and go work for Lego, Nike, Apple and Nintendo because they have good PR with kids, while you ignore the fact that most of them use sweatshop labor in China, fuck the environment and sue honest people for bullshit IP reasons? If the problem of society could be summed up in one bite, this would be it.
Maybe you'd be less angry if you worked for a better company, who knows. Try it.
"Of course now in the later stage of capitalism, these execs, investors, etc can just do full-on mask slips." Just a reminder: we've supposedly been in/near late/end stage capitalism for over a hundred and fifty years now. Marx was proposing this back at the end of the nineteenth century.
I think starting in the 30s and esp after WW2/cold war era helped reset it somewhat. It started to pick back up in the 80s and into overdrive with the internet
It was supposed to collapse in the 1930s. It's a bit like the street preacher, if you say "the end is nigh" often enough, one day you'll be right.
These letters matter a lot to kids. I sent my video game idea to Nintendo as a little kid and I had the same reaction seeing that envelope from Nintendo in the mailbox addressed to me. I think it was also a bit more special pre-internet as these companies felt a bit more magical and mysterious. You can only read about them through video game magazines and see their names in the credit scenes at the end of the games.…
I so much wish we could all get together as engineers and make a site where kids can write to and send videos etc on and we just praise them and tell them their ideas are good as a community.
i will never stop finding it weird when American software developers/IT people call themselves 'Engineers'. I am actually an 'Engineer' in the UK and it's a very different term here that basically implies someone who works on physical projects, in CAD or by hand. i am also a software developer...but in my experience software developers often make very bad 'engineers' as we would define the term just because they're not very practical/don't have a STEM background etc.
In the UK we even have protected and quite difficult to achieve things like 'chartered engineer' which similar to 'chartered accountant' etc originates from royal charter but it carries with it ethical and legal implications etc. You need a STEM degree and 6 years relevant professional experience before you can even consider applying lol. I am not chartered but have worked with many CEng engineers.
It is easily the weirdest thing about HN that Americans seem to equate writing code/handling infrastructure to designing eg Superyachts or Peristaltic pumps - 2 things I've done as an 'engineer'!
These letters matter a lot to kids. I sent my video game idea to Nintendo as a little kid and I had the same reaction seeing that envelope from Nintendo in the mailbox addressed to me. I think it was also a bit more special pre-internet as these companies felt a bit more magical and mysterious. You can only read about them through video game magazines and see their names in the credit scenes at the end of the games.…
Back then the working class was simply more powerful. Companies had to have good PR, hence feeling 'magical' or 'mysterious.' Of course now in the later stage of capitalism, these execs, investors, etc can just do full-on mask slips. I think some of this is definitely childhood nostalgia, but its also very different world today. I don't know any kid that sees Nintendo as magical as I did. The Legend of Zelda was this…
I disagree actually. There certainly are games that I have felt are pretty 'magical' as you put it but they tend to me almost childlike in some of their design choices. Monument Valley for example was amazing. I was so impressed by that game and how it mixed the childishness of magic toyboxes and Escher inspired puzzles with the adult complexity of some of the puzzles and the eeriness of the setting.
Love that they took the time to draft a kind letter and let you down easy. Maxis cared.
I can't tell if you're joking or not about the form letter there. It's such a terrible response for someone that was not in fact suggesting a new feature for the franchise. And even if it had been, rejecting the entire letter for one sentence is still bad. It's polite. Being polite is pretty much expected here.
I wasn't joking. I don't think that was a form letter. I think someone took the time to write a personalized, thoughtful letter to a wide-eyed 10-year old.
