Firaxis Studio Tour

Our field trip group got to take a tour of Jason's office recently.  Firaxis usually only has tours for small groups of college or upper level high school students.  But they agreed to let our younger bunch come.  People were REALLY excited about the trip and so way more people signed up for it that we first anticipated.  Firaxis didn't give me a cap number, so we just all showed up.  All 80 of us.  I think the Firaxis people were a little nervous, but everything worked out wonderfully.
Jason got to be one of the people to give short talks to the older kids while the younger kids took a tour of the studio.  The kids were all really interested in what each guy spoke about and asked very good questions.  I had several of the adults comment later how neat it was that each person seemed genuinely excited about his job and said they each thought they had the best job at the studio.  That was part of the point through the presentations, that is takes a high level of self-motivation to be good at each discipline in the game industry.  If you don't love what you do, you won't want to do it on your own, so don't just make a "job" out of it.  Pursue what you're passionate about and you will find a level of satisfaction that just a "job" can not give.  And hopefully that passion will be rewarded with a career that pays the bills too.

It was also interesting that instead of having 80 some odd people sign NDA's, they just didn't go in part of the building, and turned artwork around backwards on the walls in some of the parts they did go in.  I am just thankful they did let us do the tour.  Like I said, it was a tour many people were excited about (one dad even took off work to come) and afterwards they felt like it was a great field trip.  I hope that there were some kids that saw the talent and at times tedious work that goes into making a game.  I hope some were challenged by what they saw and perhaps will pursue some of the things the Firaxis guys talked about like art, programming, music, management, and design.  I personally hope that the girls were especially encouraged.  I love to see girls pursue traditionally male lines of work.
So thank you Firaxis for a great field trip!