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HTML Visit Hacker News on the Web
COMMENT PAGE FOR:
HTML I pitched a roller coaster to Disneyland at age 10 in 1978
v8xi wrote 2 days ago:
As an adult that kind of feedback feels like a sales pitch. As a kid
its unforgettable validation. Wonder when that change happened.
Kuyawa wrote 2 days ago:
When I was a kid in the days of the discman, I came up with the idea of
a cigarette-box-sized optical card reader that instead of spin the
media it would scan the card and play the songs in it. I called it the
"opticard" and thought that would be extremely cool to have some music
cards in your pocket instead of carrying inconveniently sized CDs in
your belt.
I wanted to write Sony about my idea but never got the balls. Years
later they released the minidisc, still bulky, a total flop. The memory
stick was a much better idea from them, I never knew why they didn't
implement an iPod earlier than Apple
cs02rm0 wrote 2 days ago:
At the same age I was using the school's phone bill to phone beer
companies and request they send me beer mats, so I could swap them with
other kids in the playground. And they did, which seems a little off
these days.
Reading this I wish I'd set my sights higher, figuratively and
literally!
tolerance wrote 2 days ago:
Reading the letter from WED has confirmed a deep suspicion about
myself. I am a dyed-in-the-wool cynic.
They sent our boy an advertisement.
Oh, joy, whereâve you been left?
divbzero wrote 2 days ago:
So wonderful that someone at WED Enterprises chose to reply
encouragingly to a 10-year-old kid. âThey rejected it straight away,
they don't accept unsolicited ideasâ or ignoring altogether seems to
be the standard legally-defensive response.
stevage wrote 2 days ago:
> I've invented several patented board games that were shopped around
but never sold.
I'm curious about this - I thought it was a very expensive process to
patent something.
codazoda wrote 2 days ago:
Yup, me too. In fact, I might consider simple copyright for something
like a board game. Granted, Iâve never registered an actual
copyright either. I suppose I should try it out.
foxglacier wrote 2 days ago:
I suspect his persistent confidence was already there to lead him to
write to Disney in the first place. As a kid, I had an idea like that
and my Dad was going to write to the company but he never did, I never
had the inclination to do it myself, and now I'm not an actor.
It also takes some awareness to state your age at the start of the
letter. That's what makes people respond so well to it. I would never
have thought age was relevant, or even that it was shameful to admit
you're just a child. I didn't understand how people think. This guy
apparently did, so again, he was already cut out for acting, I'd say.
wordglyph wrote 2 days ago:
Good insight. Yes, I do remember at the time, purposely thinking I
must lead with my age knowing instinctively that somehow that would
help me and they would be more likely to pay attention.
morganf wrote 2 days ago:
I grew up a nerdy kid in the 80s that liked military airplanes, and on
the island I grew up on, was the HQ and manufacturing facility of a
local manufacturer of military aircraft, that at the time was named
Grumman. They were like a local source of jobs and pride and prestige
of something cool to come from the island (second only to Billy Joel,
the most famous celebrity of that era from The Island hahaha.)
Anyhow, when I was about 10, I wrote the CEO of Grumman a letter about
how great they were talking nerdy about my favorite planes of theirs.
The CEO wrote back with a short message thanking me personally. I was
so excited, my parents framed it and put it on the wall of my childhood
room, etc etc. Only as an adult, well into my 30s, did I remember that
and think "OMG, of course his secretary or PR firm wrote that", but I
truly couldn't realize that when I was a kid.
neilv wrote 2 days ago:
Around that age, I wrote a letter to Tandy (Radio Shack), proposing
that I write a hobby electronics book.
In hindsight, I wasn't knowledgeable enough to write a printed book's
worth of material (maybe a few modern blog posts, at best). But at the
time, I knew more about electronics than the other 29 kids in my grade
school class, and that constituted most of my worldview, so why
couldn't I write a book.
I loved the Forrest Mims books, and, like any kid, wanted to mimic the
things that I saw grownups doing.
Someone at Tandy might have realized that I was just an enthusiastic
kid, but in any case, they wrote me a nice letter back. The company
didn't wish to develop a book at this time, but if I did so on my own,
they would be happy to review a copy off the press.
(Edit: I mean, there was a mailing address right there, on the back
cover. In a kid's mind, why couldn't you simply mail a letter to that
address. [1] )
HTML [1]: https://archive.org/details/gettingstartedin00mims/page/n131/m...
RyanOD wrote 2 days ago:
"Be sure to drink your Ovaltine"
Windchaser wrote 2 days ago:
"That ten-year-old inventor is still alive in me, and still doesn't
understand rejection."
ahhhh this makes me feel things
regus wrote 2 days ago:
When I was a kid I sent a letter to Snapple telling them that they
should make Snapple flavored popsicles. They sent me a nice letter
telling me it was a good idea. I have not thought about it since. But I
wonder if my letter directly lead to this disaster:
"Disaster on a stick
An attempt to erect the worldâs largest popsicle in a city square
ended with a scene straight out of a disaster film â but much
stickier."
HTML [1]: https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna8321110
quailfarmer wrote 2 days ago:
I sent this to Apple in 2007. Never heard back :)
HTML [1]: https://i.postimg.cc/52G8rGZJ/File0004.jpg
notxorand wrote 2 days ago:
Great stuff! Reminds me how I used to bother a lot of game publishers
when I was younger
ramblin_ray wrote 2 days ago:
Similar age; similar story to many others' here. I "designed" so many
things as a kid... including this spaceship: [1] I remember the wiring,
pipes, everything actually went somewhere and was meant for something.
Nothing was just for looks and everything served a purpose.
Still hasn't been built to this day ;P
HTML [1]: https://yesteryearforever.xyz/spaceship_cross-section
danparsonson wrote 2 days ago:
Wow that's impressive work - surely you can get some VC funding
together to give it a go??
wazoox wrote 3 days ago:
In 2000 I was in a startup which used yellow and blue colours for all
its graphic design (website, app, etc). For a big trade show (IBC
Amsterdam) someone thought it would be cool to give away M&Ms, but only
in yellow and blue of course ! So we bought many bags of M&Ms, and
sorted them out by hand... That wasn't a good use of our time, plus we
had tons of red, brown and green M&Ms to eat while working and we were
getting diabetic fast.
So Marie called Mars to ask if it was possible to buy only yellow and
blue M&Ms for our trade show. And you know what happened? Mars sent us
a huge bag of each colour for free !
In the following years, they made it possible to order custom M&Ms (for
a price...) and how you can even have your logo on them.
davkan wrote 3 days ago:
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.
eks391 wrote 2 days ago:
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.
davkan wrote 2 days ago:
Yeah youâre 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.
prpl wrote 3 days ago:
I hadnât realized Hyperspace mountain in Disneyland Paris went upside
down (and launched up) before I took my 6 year old on it - I was
assuming it was just a replica of the disneyland one which I thought
He was a bit intimidated by the enhanced strapping, but he liked it
still.
WA wrote 3 days ago:
I once mailed the maker of a little German indie game called Clonk
about wanting to learn programming. It was my favorite game for a
while. Never heard back from him, which I found disappointing.
Now, I answer every single email my app customers are sending me and
have been doing this for close to 20 years and I get a lot of positive
reviews for the great customer support.
personalcompute wrote 2 days ago:
Wow, I didn't expect to see Clonk on HN today! Almost 20 years ago,
as a 13 year old in the US I managed to make friends with an older
player from Germany, and then we collaborated on making Clonk Rage
mods together in c4script. It was an amazing experience and did help
me get more into programming, so I'm so sorry to hear about your
experience! I do recall members of the development team at the time
being accessible and active in the community, specifically Sven2, but
I'm not sure about MatthesB.
Thanks for the nostalgia though. Amazing game.
WA wrote 2 days ago:
I think it mustâve around '98 when I played Clonk 4. I even
downloaded some custom assets via an Internet cafe to floppy disks
to play with them back home. The mail was actually a physical
letter. Maybe the devs became more active later when internet
communities started to grow.
noncovalence wrote 3 days ago:
There's a story by a guy who did something similar when he was in 2nd
grade, and successfully pitched an aardvark plush to a toy company! It
always makes me smile whenever it pops up again.
HTML [1]: https://twitter-thread.com/t/1214607304106098689
mattmon-og wrote 3 days ago:
I once emailed the (former) Logitech CEO asking them to produce a
popular keyboard in a different layout than thier current product
offering.
I actually got a personal response thanking me for my input!
Then a few years later that keyboard I wanted actually became a
product.
Not sure if I really influenced their process or not; but I got that
keyboard and its fun to think I did :)
zendist wrote 3 days ago:
At age ~11, I sent a MSPaint design of a phone with two SIM cards that
you could switch between physically on a phone.
I sent it to Nokia over email :-D. They didn't respond.
Dual SIM phones apparently became a thing that same year: [1] Not
originally by Nokia, though.
HTML [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_SIM#:~:text=The%20first%20p...
dhosek wrote 3 days ago:
Back when SIM cards were relatively new (and credit-card sized) ca
1997 or so, the vision was that you would plug your SIM card into a
landline phone to be able to make/receive calls there. I was working
for Motorola at the time and I remember coming up with a couple ideas
that I never shared with anyone because I didnât know who/how.
The first was essentially the iPhone but with a palm pilot type touch
screen, the other was a PCMCIA card (which were also much larger back
then) that you could put your SIM card into and plug into your laptop
to be able to make calls or send/receive faxes on the computer.
TZubiri wrote 3 days ago:
>"It's called the quadrupler"
Drop the "It's called" it's cleaner that way.
wordglyph wrote 3 days ago:
Note to self. Build time machine and fix this.
yakkomajuri wrote 3 days ago:
I wonder how much of a role parents played here. Surely there must have
been some help involved with resources, encouragement, and at least
getting the letters sent?
I applaud parents who encourage kids to do stuff like this when they
have the innate drive for it.
weirdmantis69 wrote 3 days ago:
When I was 8 I sent a letter to LEGO about a line of toys that slid
down on stair bannister's. I gave it to my mom to send to them but
apparently she betrayed me and kept it for herself because she thought
it was "cute". Thanks to her I don't work for LEGO :(
insensible wrote 3 days ago:
She should have sent it! The first person to disrespect a child is
the loser, and shouldnât be the childâs parent.
psygn89 wrote 3 days ago:
I did a similar thing with a car design for Mercedes-Benz when I was
around the same age. I had all the car drawing books and really
thought I was going to be a car designer. Much to my surprise, they
responded with enthusiasm and even sent me a Mercedes-Benz keychain :)
andix wrote 3 days ago:
One thing I noticed right away: They never mentioned they would take
some inspiration from the submitted design, or acknowledge any specific
detail. So they can't get sued for IP infringement later, if they ever
build a ride that shares any design details with the "Quadroupler"
aurea wrote 3 days ago:
Now, with a tear in my eye, I wanna know about Tom. I hope this post
gets to him somehow.
lysace wrote 3 days ago:
[1] He had just joined WED the same year he sent that reply (1979).
Worked there until 2020 in various leadership roles. Seems to have
been particularly involved in the making
of EPCOT.
A web search shows all kinds of interesting interviews etc.
HTML [1]: https://disney.fandom.com/wiki/Tom_Fitzgerald
wanderingmoose wrote 3 days ago:
He still works at WDI.
lysace wrote 3 days ago:
Nice!
wordglyph wrote 3 days ago:
He sent the letter in April 1979! He was only 3 months into the
job.
lysace wrote 3 days ago:
Classic, have the new guy deal with the fan mail.
fortzi wrote 3 days ago:
This post and comments are wonderul
RobCodeSlayer wrote 3 days ago:
At age 13 I pitched a candy idea to Mars Bars as part of a school
project to write business letters. I loved Snickers at the time but was
tired of unwrapping so many fun-size ones from Halloween. I told them
something like - âyou should just put the fun-size candies in a big
resealable bag, so people can eat as much as they want without dealing
with the wrappers. You can call them unwrapped minis. All you have to
do is create new packaging and re-use the fun-size bars!â
I found the CEOâs corporate address somewhere online and sent the
letter to him, never to hear back.
Then, around 8 months later, I saw my first ad for Snickers Unwrapped
Bites on TV and freaked out. They had immediately implemented my idea,
which as a kid was amazing, but Iâll never forgive them for not
writing back. Especially because none of my friends ever believed me.
MattGrommes wrote 2 days ago:
I wonder if they have a policy about not accepting ideas / replying
to people don't think their idea was stolen. I know TV shows have
that policy so nobody can accuse them of plagiarizing their script
idea.
hinkley wrote 2 days ago:
And yet we get copycat movies all the time where clearly someone
stole an elevator pitch or eavesdropped at a coffee shop and ran
with it.
cm2012 wrote 3 days ago:
I am sorry to say this, but there is a zero percent chance your
letter influenced their product roadmap in an 8 month timeline.
EGreg wrote 3 days ago:
I sent steve jobs (sjobs@apple.com) an email saying that MacOS should
have an unspoofable dialog for the system password authorization,
same way they have for DRM videos etc. I also suggested the user
could choose a secret phrase or image to be displayed in the dialog
during system setup. Never heard back. This was when Steve was alive
and in charge. And to this day anyone can spoof the system password
dialog and steal the system passwordâ¦
krackers wrote 2 days ago:
>And to this day anyone can spoof the system password dialog and
steal the system password
TouchID solves this in a sense.
airstrike wrote 2 days ago:
Make it look like the TouchID isn't working and switch to
password mode, boom. User password obtained
mcintyre1994 wrote 2 days ago:
I always wonder about how easy that would be to spoof, because it
seems like it'd be trivial.
nine_k wrote 2 days ago:
...but obtaining that phrase may be nontrivial.
mcintyre1994 wrote 2 days ago:
Sorry, I mean the current implementation seems trivial to
spoof. I agree that doing something like your suggestion would
make me feel much more comfortable about those logins.
zadikian wrote 3 days ago:
I emailed him in 7th grade asking if Pages could automate
bibliographies. In hindsight, EasyBib was good enough.
niklasrde wrote 3 days ago:
You mean what Vista introduced?
earlyriser wrote 3 days ago:
8 months later sounds too short to have taken your idea, I'm guessing
launching a product at Mars scale takes like 2 years. This is
probably why the always say they cannot take ideas sent by external
people... but on the other hand if this came from the CEO, probably
could be fast tracked. So 80/20.
Do you remember who was the CEO?
dhosek wrote 3 days ago:
Only vaguely related, but the Mars family lived in neighboring
River Forest and the factory was just north of me in Galewood (it
is shutting down or already shut down and the property is planned
for redevelopment, but the neighboring Metra station is named
âMarsâ which means that in Chicago you can take a commuter
train to Mars). Sadly the Mars estate was apparently torn down to
be replaced with a pair of bland McMansions.
IAmBroom wrote 2 days ago:
Silly person, Mars is a city in PA, not a train station in
Chi-town.
The Moon is located just east of the Pittsburgh Airport.
hinkley wrote 2 days ago:
Thatâs a shame. Annhueser Busch turned one of their estates
into a tourist trap. But you couldnât pet the horses, which is
literally the only reason an 11 year old would want to go near a
brewery.
kennyloginz wrote 2 days ago:
Grantâs Farm? I always enjoyed it as a kid, trains and
weird animals.
1980phipsi wrote 3 days ago:
It's packaging an existing product differently than a fully new
product. Would still require either new machines or adapting
existing machines for it.
foobarian wrote 3 days ago:
I pitched a "crit Doritos" idea to Pepsi just recently, but sadly
they haven't implemented it :-)
zannic wrote 3 days ago:
At least you tried pitching something I used to write long emails to
Riot Games back when League first came out cause I kept losing games
haha
psyclobe wrote 3 days ago:
I once wrote a letter to Senator Dianne Feinstein to end her war on
drugs when I was in college. I recall it discretely.
Cshelton wrote 3 days ago:
This is amazing!
I did a similar thing with Roller Coaster Tycoon. I sent screenshots
and explanations of my designs to Six Flags. I was probably around 10
or so. I think I got one generic letter back from them unfortunately.
For some time, I wanted to become a Roller Coaster designer.
tonyvince7 wrote 3 days ago:
WEDâs letterhead was immaculate.
lysace wrote 3 days ago:
Every detail about that letter is immaculate. Damn.
TheGRS wrote 3 days ago:
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, not Disney). I got a lot of second-hand compliments from everyone
at her work and it made me feel awesome for at least a couple weeks.
Wish I had the forethought to send it to Six Flags or Disney!
hinkley wrote 2 days ago:
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 Iâve no idea what the Navy does as a
whole).
JTbane wrote 2 days ago:
Damage Control theme park?
riffraff wrote 3 days ago:
sounds awesome tbh. If you build it, I will come.
wordglyph wrote 3 days ago:
That's amazing!
janwillemb wrote 3 days ago:
As a 10y old, my father taught me about logical ports. I took a very
large piece of paper and in a few days, I designed a tic tac toe
"computer". It had LEDs that indicated the next computer move, based on
the position of the pieces: every single possible state of the board
led to a specific "next move" led. I do not think it actually would
have worked, but of course I was very proud of my design at the time.
Unfortunately, when I showed it to my teacher, he did not believe that
I was serious. "This is a joke, right?" And that was it. Poor kid me...
It did not discourage me however. I was a software engineer for a long
time, and now I am a CS teacher. And I (try to) never ever discount the
efforts of children.
nedt wrote 2 days ago:
This sounds like this old xkcd comic
HTML [1]: https://xkcd.com/832/
nathancahill wrote 3 days ago:
One of the things that got me in to "coding" when I was 9 years old
was building tic tac toe in Excel, locking the window size to 3x3
cells and then implementing clicks as links to the next board state,
with the "computer" having already played the next move. The whole
sheet had every possible board state written out by hand.
ileonichwiesz wrote 3 days ago:
That really hits home. I spent a couple weeks in primary school
sketching my own blueprints for great inventions. Nothing that
could've ever worked (I didn't know what a transistor actually was,
but my machine certainly had a lot of them!), but in hindsight a good
start for a curious tech-minded child - switches that opened/closed
circuits, wires to connect the various imaginary lasers and
electromagnets, and so on. On the back of the paper I scrawled
documentation to remember what the darn thing was actually supposed
to do (the biggest one? Save people who fall out of airplanes, which
to my 9 year old mind was a big issue that needed to be solved)
One day my teacher noticed me doodling in the back, so she promptly
grabbed all the "blueprints" I was so proud of, tore them up, and
tossed them in the trash. I guess I get discouraged easier than you
though, since I didn't design a thing for many years afterwards.
janwillemb wrote 2 days ago:
Thanks for sharing this. It is so sad! Sorry that there are people
like that. The only thing we can do now, is be better people than
those horrible teachers.
amenghra wrote 2 days ago:
Are you familiar with the kids story book Iggy Peck Architect by
Andrea Beaty? Same story, with a happy ending though.
jagged-chisel wrote 3 days ago:
Oh god, whatâs the deal with horrendous people becoming teachers?
Lately, Iâve been, uh, âreminiscingâ about how terrible
adults were to kids when I was a kid (Iâm gen X.)
Itâs no wonder I turned my interest to the computer - it was only
ever a jerk if I programmed it like that.
ngc248 wrote 2 days ago:
Kids come and go, whereas the teachers stay there. I feel a lot
of school teachers are jealous of the kids and hence all the
bullying by them.
janwillemb wrote 2 days ago:
Same (GP). Schools were really unsafe places for children back
then. It always strikes me of you see movies about schools in
that period, that the story is often that children get horribly
bullied and are called ugly, etc. I am glad my children grow up
in better times.
senbrow wrote 2 days ago:
Low barrier to entry and hard to get fired once you're in.
Rotten people put on a good face in the interview and then spread
their misery around for decades to some of our most vulnerable.
It happens in pretty much every unelected position in the public
sector in my experience.
Roedou wrote 3 days ago:
I wrote to Sainsburys (large UK grocery store chain) in 1993,
suggesting an idea for a "self checkout", where you would scan items
yourself as you put them into your shipping cart. My anti-theft
solution was that they'd weigh your cart as you left, to make sure
you'd scanned everything!
I never expected a reply, but was so stoked when I received a letter
with a similar generic-but-enthusiastic reply, along the lines of
"Thanks for such a creative idea!"
Do kids still get the opportunity to experience things like this? I
can't imagine that sending an email to a company's generic contact@
address is ever going to get the save kind of response - and certainly
not something that they can proudly pin on their wall for motivation.
hennell wrote 2 days ago:
The problem with that is the benefit of inspiring children does
little to nothing for the business, while the risk of frivolous but
expensive legal actions because you decide you should get millions
for inventing the self service checkout is not insignificant.
I'd suspect many places would still respond positively though,
especially in the more creative worlds. Almost every creative was
that kid once.
dubcanada wrote 2 days ago:
You'd have better luck mailing a letter, but to be honest the kind of
"sending a letter and getting a reply from the CEO or some sort of
higher up" is long gone unfortunately. There is a few exceptions, but
all of them are for very old private companies. You will never get a
reply from Pepsi as a kid with a new flavour idea. Or Disney about a
new ride for that matter.
dfxm12 wrote 3 days ago:
Ask a kid (preferably one of your own or a niece or nephew, etc.) to
write to your local football team and see what happens. Some are good
about it, some aren't. It helps if you send a letter to the correct
department instead of sending an email to a generic contact address.
dizzy3gg wrote 3 days ago:
So you're to blame!
addandsubtract wrote 2 days ago:
*thank
101008 wrote 3 days ago:
I remember sending a letter to Google in 2003? 2004? (I was 13 years
old) with my idea. It explained that my mom asks questions to Google
instead of using keywords (remember how using the right keywrods was a
skill and could affect the results a lot?), and they should fix that.
I event included some PHP code to explain how they could parse the
input in question format and convert it to keywords, using regular
expression. Ha, how naive. My dream was to receive a letter back saying
how a good idea that was and that I was hired.
Unfortunately I never got a response back.
scottyah wrote 3 days ago:
I remember getting on the gmail beta as a middle schooler and sending
feedback. They implemented three of "my ideas" and called them the
"Most requested features" each time, so I figured I was the only one
sending in feedback lol.
nogridbag wrote 3 days ago:
lmao, I was just thinking about this yesterday. My parents would do
the same thing and I would try to correct them and explain how they
can get better results just typing keywords and not sentences. And
here I am in 2026 typing full sentences in Google search so that AI
can present me the exact answer directly in the search results.
ashleyn wrote 3 days ago:
I often think about how Ask Jeeves had the last laugh in the age of
LLM-powered search.
nogridbag wrote 3 days ago:
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. Unless you were one of those weird kids that called Nintendo
Power helpline of course!
I remember also receiving that weird VHS tape from Nintendo in the
mail: [1] I have no idea how I received that, but it was so cool!
HTML [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJzIc_c1PvE
eks391 wrote 2 days ago:
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.
Wowfunhappy wrote 2 days ago:
> I remember also receiving that weird VHS tape from Nintendo in the
mail:
Wait, the villains have Sega and Sony logos. How were they able to do
that legally?
tombert wrote 2 days ago:
When I was thirteen I sent an email to Tom Fulp (creator of
Newgrounds.com) telling him I wanted to make my own website with
Coldfusion (which I had learned about through a pirated copy of
DreamWeaver) and MySQL, and asked if would help me make it. [1]
He responded back extremely politely and said that my idea seems like
a great idea, but he's far too busy running Newgrounds to build any
other websites right now, but once I build it he would love to see
it.
I never ended up building the website, but I look back and think it
was cool how encouraging he was to some random kid who emailed him.
Kids will pick the weirdest people as "heroes" sometimes, and it's
cool when your heroes turn out to be decent humans. Sometimes just
responding to an email is all it takes.
[1] I honestly do not remember at all what the website was supposed
to be and I don't have the email anymore. Knowing thirteen year old
me, it was probably a forum about Donkey Kong Country or something.
Grazester wrote 2 days ago:
My job entails me writing mostly Coldfusion all day long.
I write new code in Coldfusion script. Its syntax heavily inspired
by javascript, right down to the optional terminating semicolon.
I still have to support a fair bit of code written in Coldfusion
tag syntax. That I dislike especially given the code base was
written by amateur developers and just makes me feel like bad php
from 2003.
tombert wrote 2 days ago:
Oh I am very familiar with Coldfusion. My first job after
dropping out of college [1] was doing Flash and Coldfusion work
for a Martial Arts management company.
I have very mixed feeling on the language as a whole, both the
tag and script language, though theyâre mostly negative
nowadays. I joined the CFML Slack a few months ago, which I was
surprised to find, and the people on there were very nice and I
respected their passion for the platform, but I personally still
find the language pretty irritating, even with the scripty
version.
Granted, I am very removed from web stuff now, and mostly work in
data-land.
[1] I have a degree now, but that came considerably later.
projektfu wrote 2 days ago:
Six year old me sent an idea to McDonnell Douglas for an airplane
with turboprops to back up the jets in case of engine fire. There
was also a fire suppression system. They sent me some nice brochures
about the DC-8, -9, and -10, but looking back on it they could have
mentioned that the jets are already redundant and will usually stop
burning when the fuel is cut.
gosub100 wrote 2 days ago:
Teenage me sent a letter to a US airline maintenance department
asking why they don't put a one-directional fin on the landing gear
tires to cause them to rotate in the air, so they wouldn't create
as much smoke when they contact the runway. I don't remember what
the reason was, but they wrote me back so I appreciated it.
projektfu wrote 2 days ago:
Pinwheels on landing gear would be pimp.
hinkley wrote 2 days ago:
> usually
notahacker wrote 2 days ago:
I hope they at least acknowledge that it was quite impressive for a
six year old to understand the distinction between different types
of engine and consider engine fires.
Anyway, YC's Heart Aerospace's intended commercial airframe design
now does use a turboprop as a backup (for range extension beyond
the capabilities of their battery electric engine), so six year old
you was clearly onto something :)
Nition wrote 2 days ago:
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: [1] 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 legal as a response: [2] I
did grow up to become a professional game developer though!
HTML [1]: https://i.imgur.com/1eHcead.jpeg
HTML [2]: https://i.imgur.com/Y2wGcRt.jpeg
veltas wrote 2 days ago:
Can't see the images as imgur has geoblocked the UK.
recury wrote 2 days ago:
The 2nd image:
HTML [1]: https://pasteboard.co/2aYWHRlnuFuM.jpg
Nition wrote 2 days ago:
Since there doesn't seem to be any record in the Internet by the
way, this is what printed cities looked like in SimCity 1 (these
are my own scans of some printouts from 1996): [1]
HTML [1]: https://i.imgur.com/E9QgkCp.jpeg
HTML [2]: https://i.imgur.com/i3MYCZv.jpeg
stevage wrote 2 days ago:
> "it may be a little hard to understand"
Presumably they are implying that if they read creative
suggestions, they open themselves to the possibility of being sued
if they ever implemented anything similar to what was suggested.
Doesn't sound too complicated to explain to a kid.
notpushkin wrote 2 days ago:
I suppose the legal department wants the wording of that
paragraph to be very specific. Itâs not only there for the kid,
itâs for the court as well.
Nition wrote 2 days ago:
I always thought the catch-22 was funny where they say they saw
that I was suggesting an idea ¾ of the way through the letter,
so they chose to return the letter without reading it.
guerrilla wrote 2 days ago:
> catch-22
That's not really a catch-22. It's just a contradiction.
Nition wrote 2 days ago:
What I mean is, they have to read the letters to check
whether they're ones they can't read.
guerrilla wrote 2 days ago:
Fair enough. I think I cracked the case though: they
probably have someone who isn't "them" read the letters
though, a third party like another law firm or some
contractor that offers that service specifically.
bigDinosaur wrote 2 days ago:
Someone has not read a book even if they read the opening
paragraph, so the solution is likely far simpler.
guerrilla wrote 2 days ago:
Nope. The key sentence was at the end of the letter. At
least we know one person who didn't read it. ;)
postalcoder wrote 2 days ago:
Creative Writer is one of the best pieces of software I've ever
used. What's the state of kids software nowadays?
Nition wrote 2 days ago:
Pretty terrible in my experience. The good stuff for kids mostly
moved to tablets and phones, but no keyboard and mouse is a
limiting format, and you have to sift through a hundred bad apps
to find the good one. Not much that runs easily on modern PCs
comes close to the old magic. Though Tux Paint is actually very
good, retaining the sense of whimsy that most modern software
lacks.
It's hard to describe but it almost feels to me like media today
- this applies to games and films and everything - is often
created at a meta level, a simulacrum of the real thing. Like in
the 80s and 90s people were trying to make things that were fun
and interesting and probably based on their life experiences. And
now they're trying to make things that are the best distillation
of whatever was most successful before. But that makes it feel
dishonest, corporate.
Even Microsoft in the 90s could still make stuff that felt fun
and unique. There was a counterpart to Creative Writer called
Fine Artist that was equally good.
ndespres wrote 2 days ago:
>>It's hard to describe but it almost feels to me like media
today - this applies to games and films and everything - is
often created at a meta level, a simulacrum of the real thing.
Miyazaki had a line in a documentary I watched a couple years
ago which is now only a vague echo in my mind and I am
struggling to search for it, but the gist of it was that early
animators had an appreciation and an eye for people, the world,
real movement of real bodies, whether reflected in cinema or
just in everyday life, while later, he said, were raised on
animation, so the product is a second-order imitation.
The same must be true with software. Early painting/desktop
publishing/presentation software retains a link to how those
things were done with your hands and scissors and paint
brushes, trying to fit them into the screen for the first time,
to be used by someone who might not have used a computer
before. Now itâs a foregone conclusion that youâll be
working on the computer, and nobody involved had ever flipped
through a literal book of clip art or made a slideshow on
transparent paper.
california-og wrote 2 days ago:
I made a paint app for toddlers recently, exactly because I
couldn't find anything fun & useable & educational:
HTML [1]: https://glyphdrawingclub.itch.io/mr-baby-paint
nogridbag wrote 2 days ago:
This is a timely post. Just last night my 8 y/o asked if she
could create a presentation on my laptop like they do at
school. I have no idea what software they use at the elementary
school.
I've let her play around with Google Docs before. But what I
really wanted was something like Creative Writer that is more
kid friendly. I used Gemini (sorry) to suggest some software
and it suggested "Book Creator" which is intended for
schools/teachers. I signed up as a fake teacher and added my
kids as students and they did create some really creative
books, importing images, and adding their own drawings. But
it's still missing that kid-friendly vibe like Creative Writer.
Nition wrote 2 days ago:
Check out Canva. It might even be what they're using at
school already. It doesn't have the simplicity and fun of the
old stuff, but it's intuitive to use even for kids. A lot of
features where they're broken convention in ways that
actually make more sense than the standard, for example
resizing images keeps the aspect ratio by default instead of
stretching.
RyanOD wrote 2 days ago:
Love that they took the time to draft a kind letter and let you
down easy. Maxis cared.
Dylan16807 wrote 2 days ago:
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.
RyanOD wrote 1 day ago:
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.
The world needs more of that.
Dylan16807 wrote 1 day ago:
If it had to be a rejection letter that can't respond to
anything specific, it's reasonably thoughtful under those
constraints.
But it really didn't have to be that.
Forgeties79 wrote 2 days ago:
Man that tape. I wish I still had mine!
Lightstate wrote 3 days ago:
Ah yes, I did similar, I pitched a game idea I had called
"shadowstorm", drew out a sketch of the protagonist and sent it to
Sony PlayStation address.
They sent me a letter thanking me and said that they don't develop
games in a nice way.
I immediately filed that letter with the orange Sony letterhead and
still have it til this day.
Good times.
LtdJorge wrote 3 days ago:
At first, I was thinking you received a cease and desist :D
dhosek wrote 3 days ago:
In sixth grade language arts class we wrote letters and there were
rumors that some companies, if you sent them letters saying you liked
their product would send you coupons for free candy/chips/soda/etc.
nephihaha wrote 2 days ago:
We went down a different path. We used to write to chocolate
companies and they would send us free stickers etc. They advertised
the product of course but it was fun.
WalterGR wrote 3 days ago:
There were even books that listed the companies, their addresses,
and the free things theyâd send you.
kotaKat wrote 3 days ago:
We did Flat Stanley in second grade[1, circa ~2000], including
mailing him to someone to send him on an adventure. I sent my
Stanley off to Volkswagen and he came back bearing little toy
pull-back VW Beetles and smelled like a new carâ¦
HTML [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_Stanley
kraig911 wrote 3 days ago:
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.
SolubleSnake wrote 1 day ago:
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'!
mung wrote 7 hours 12 min ago:
They have high school graduationâ¦
kraig911 wrote 1 day ago:
Engineering in general to me just means 'designed' by
specification per an area study. Whether software or
hardware/industrial application. I know UK is all about titles
though as if they're 'worth' something. A lot of stuff we use in
modern day was made by someone who claimed to be an engineer but
was really a hobbyist on to something.
That said in the US there are some specifications of a license
engineer that you have to earn.
Electrical/Petroleum/Nuclear/Structural etc those areas do have
licensing associated that is different state by state. The main
issue with software engineering is it forgoes that completely
there just wasn't time to make a process about it. It was/is
always about time to market.
hinkley wrote 2 days ago:
Volunteer to judge the science fair?
kraig911 wrote 1 day ago:
I think that's a different thing. Yes it's a possibility. I'm
just saying a site where say there's a group of
engineers/scientist that are just there to listen and praise. No
judging No competition just a place to keep kids interested and
not dither away their creativity watching other kids play roblox
on youtube.
iamwil wrote 3 days ago:
Isn't that what happens when they post their projects on HN?
andix wrote 3 days ago:
A lot of companies and organizations actually reply to letters/emails
of any kind. Often very appropriately and not just with some
boilerplate text.
I guess they have to deal with so many annoying complaints, so they
are really happy if there is something joyful once in a while.
Romario77 wrote 2 days ago:
you can get a lifetime fan just by replying to a letter - like you
see here. That's a very effective marketing.
I got a rejection letter once from a company I submitted my resume
to (online) and I still remember that and in a positive light even
though it was a rejection.
Now they just ghost you even if you went through 5 rounds of
interviews and spend a bunch of your time.
andix wrote 2 days ago:
> you can get a lifetime fan just by replying to a letter
Absolutely. But it doesn't increase next quarter's revenue. Which
seems to be the main metric nowadays.
joebates wrote 3 days ago:
Probably a smart move. Writing and mailing a letter takes a lot
more time and effort than a phone call or comment online. If a
person took the time to write a letter, they're probably worth
taking the time to respond to.
dfinlay wrote 3 days ago:
That VHS was one of my favorites. Me and my sisters would watch it
over and over. Love how camp it was.
zoeysmithe wrote 3 days ago:
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 weird, dark, and
mysterious thing. So many games were oddly mysterious or weirdly
ported from places like Japan, which had their own design language
and often the translation was odd which only added to the mystique.
Games came out with little to no fanfare and you just had to sort of
figure them out. There were cheat books and magazines and such, but
generally you had to approach this art with an open heart and open
mind and sort of drink it in. If everything is a google or AI search
away, then there's no real mystery anymore.
Kids today are forced to be savvy and 'realpolitick' at a young age.
They just complain about the pricing and more 'inside baseball' about
games and absolutely get a little brain fried by youtube gaming
culture that often runs on outrage so no game is good enough.
Suddenly, everyone is a critic and magic and love are hard to
cultivate in a highly critical environment. Its like everyone is
stuck in a Philosophy 101 class with an overly argumentative
professor, forever, and its unrelenting and makes us miserable.
Also kids aren't ignorant, in fact they can be very savvy. Games
constantly begging them to buy DLCs or sell them microtransaction
items absolutely hurt the 'magic.' How can you develop these feelings
when you feel like you're locked in the room with a shady used car
salesman constantly?
I don't know if kids today can even experience that old magic. At
least not in games. It seems now its only in books and getting lost
in novels where magic exists now. A book can't beg you to buy an
extra chapter or make you pay gems for the next sentence.
SolubleSnake wrote 1 day ago:
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.
ngc248 wrote 2 days ago:
Exactly ... Used to play buggy games and used to absolutely love
them, nowadays it seems like everything has to be beyond perfect.
nephihaha wrote 2 days ago:
"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.
cobalt wrote 2 days ago:
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
nephihaha wrote 1 day ago:
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.
ge96 wrote 3 days ago:
> weird VHS tape
I don't remember this episode of Firefly
tetris11 wrote 3 days ago:
I can see where a lot of youtube content creators (WizardsWithGuns
comes to mind...) derive their cartoonish humour from
dfxm12 wrote 3 days ago:
I don't think the magic left with the Internet, but with adulthood,
some combination of your own and among the C's at the company.
metabagel wrote 3 days ago:
Wow, heâs my age. I canât imagine doing what he did at the age of
10. Impressive.
raphinou wrote 3 days ago:
When I was young I wrote to the Formula 1 team McLaren to ask if they
could hire me for a student job. I didn't expect to get a reply, but I
got one. The answer was negative, but I was happy. I never reflected
about it until now, but maybe it learned me that asking doesn't cost
anything, and that the worst thing that can happen is getting a
negative answer? Not sure that was the turning point, but this is
indeed my approach! :-)
microtonal wrote 2 days ago:
When I was probably 10 or so, one of the largest computer magazines
in the country had a job for a 'junior writer'. My 10yo brain did not
realize that junior meant 'just finished the relevant education' and
though 'hey, I'm a junior'. So I just called them up and the guy on
the other side of the line was clearly confused what to say to me not
to disappoint me too much and mumbled something like "the person
responsible for hiring is not around". In hindsight, it's pretty
ballsy for a kid to just call, if I had to do it ten/fifteen years
later I'd have been pretty nervous.
I'm a bit sad that we lose that innocent, carefree attitude later in
life.
hinkley wrote 2 days ago:
I think this is one of the ways in which the internet is dangerous
for children.
Gen X kids were starving for any adult not their parents to
acknowledge their existence. Which made us targets for predators. But
now weâve overcorrected and acknowledgement is routine. That
dopamine hit is practically free.
joe_mamba wrote 3 days ago:
>The answer was negative, but I was happy.
For sure it was a nice experience, I would have done the same,
imagine that kid you wrote back gets inspired, goes to study
engineering then they come work for you instead of the competition.
But nowadays is getting super rare to get human written rejection
emails anymore, let alone to kids.
>but maybe it learned me that asking doesn't cost anything, and that
the worst thing that can happen is getting a negative answer?
Yeah, but what do you think happens when every kid from the UK asks
McLaren for a student job? What happens when everyone from India asks
McLaren for a student job?
A kid every couple of months asking you for a job is cute and
adorable, 5000 kids asking you for a job per month is a nuisance.
The truth is that this attitude of "it doesn't hurt to ask" only
works in high trust societies where people exercise self restraint
and all inquiries are done only in good faith, but doesn't scale at
all when everyone on the planet starts doing "spray-and-pray" crap
shoots and it just quickly becomes spam and overwhelms their capacity
to actually read and reply to messages of people who might be
genuinely qualified, so we get the issue I mentioned at the start
where all messages from applications now first go through ATS and AI
bots instead of actual humans.
Keyframe wrote 2 days ago:
5000 kids asking you for a job per month is a nuisance.
it's a great marketing platform, if anything. Strong brand loyalty
going forward and costs you not much to do well, not to mention you
can brighten a day or few for thousands of kids in all sorts of
life situations.
joe_mamba wrote 2 days ago:
You're severely mistaken if you think that's how businesses
operate. Companies penny pinch on staff even for recruiting,
they're not gonna increase headcount just to answer mail form
kids just because you think it makes good marketing.
Keyframe wrote 2 days ago:
not sure where you work, but you might consider changing the
company you work with.
joe_mamba wrote 2 days ago:
Because you actually believe the world is full of benevolent
companies who work for the public good?
Or maybe people have seen what companies are doing behind the
scenes that goes against their PR, making it worthless and
hypocritic. Remember "don't be evil"?
bigDinosaur wrote 2 days ago:
You can spin up any idea and claim it increases brand
loyalty, but you have to have actual evidence that that
either happens or actually matters in some way, and in this
case it probably doesn't and isn't worth the expense once the
scale exceeds >1 employee spending more than a few minutes a
day. If you've got the data to prove otherwise so that you
can actually make someone money, go ahead and sell people on
the idea.
Keyframe wrote 2 days ago:
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 Nintendo Power and I'm sure I could pull out
many more examples. Not everything is a hard sell
technique.
joe_mamba wrote 2 days ago:
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.
Keyframe wrote 1 day ago:
Maybe you'd be less angry if you worked for a better
company, who knows. Try it.
raphinou wrote 3 days ago:
You're right of course. I hadn't thought of the negatives when this
self-restraint is absent.
I only sent one letter to one team because I was a fan. The
restraining factor was being a fan. Remove that, and it can indeed
rapidly go out of hands....
donkeyboy wrote 3 days ago:
Cute story. This reminded me how in elementary school and middle school
I used to draw pencil drawings of rollercoasters on my page to pass the
time. Rollercoaster tycoon fan :)
-Brian- wrote 3 days ago:
Love it. Reminds me of when me and my friends got tired of launching
model rockets straight up, so we designed and built a shoulder-mounted
model rocket launcher. We made similar drawings and made some dumb
mistakes (a face full of rocket heat is scary), but we ultimately
succeeded. Kids learn a lot through playing and dreaming.
llasse wrote 3 days ago:
I really wonder where some people get this marvelous drive to create -
as it apparently has resided in the author even before Disney replied.
d--b wrote 3 days ago:
I just love everything about this.
I love that kids could be left alone in their home and would burn
plastic over a gas stove to create models of roller coasters.
I love that Disney would respond to him and not even forget the typo in
quadrupuler.
I love that he kept all that and thought of it as a foundational part
of his personality (I think probably he was already like that)
aethrum wrote 3 days ago:
makes me sad nowadays kids just want to watch short form video
instead of create
bsza wrote 3 days ago:
They did forget the typo though, the transcript is wrong.
d--b wrote 3 days ago:
Ah! Well spotted!
droidjj wrote 3 days ago:
It's a nice reminder of how impressionable kids are. A little
encouragement can go a long, long way.
chaps wrote 3 days ago:
When I was 10 I pitched a game to Lucas Arts. Sent a letter and
everything. Their lawyers responded telling me why they cannot make my
game.
Feel like that opened something in me..
dfxm12 wrote 3 days ago:
What was the reason? Anything beyond concerns over ownership of the
ideas, characters, etc. (which I presume is the boilerplate
legalese)? Did they even admit to reading your letter?
GuB-42 wrote 3 days ago:
When I visited the Warner Bros studios, they had a huge pile of
paper in a corner, representing all the unsolicited ideas they
receive.
They told us they took care to not even read the manuscripts. I
don't remember if they return them unopened or destroy them, but
otherwise if the ideas from the manuscript end up in one of their
productions, they open themselves to legal trouble. It may happen
even if it is a coincidence, so they don't want to take any chance.
dhosek wrote 3 days ago:
Yeah, movies are kind of weird like that. If I steal your idea
for a novel (but not your words), you can call me out as an
asshole but you donât have any legal recourse, but if the same
thing happens with a movie, apparently it is possible to sue and
actually win significant damages.
dfxm12 wrote 2 days ago:
FYI, in many (most?) legal systems, you can sue anyone, for
anything. To win the damages, you'll have to convince a judge
or jury of said damages (or present a strong enough case to
settle out of court).
dhosek wrote 2 days ago:
Thus my saying, âand actually winâ
dfxm12 wrote 2 days ago:
Having a convincing case is usually a prerequisite to win.
This is probably a good thing.
nlawalker wrote 3 days ago:
In elementary school, a couple friends and I sketched out an entire
game's worth of ideas for Mega Man bosses and mailed them to Capcom
(this would have been 1990 or so). I remember how thick the
envelope was.
I recall their response being very human, warm and encouraging, but
it also included all of our original sketches, with a very direct
(but kid-understandable) statement that they were obligated to
return the originals to make it very clear that they were not kept
and thus could not possibly be understood to be "inspiration" for
anything that might be in a future game.
a_t48 wrote 2 days ago:
Funnily enough - they do actually take fan submissions for bosses
- [1] - but youâd need to do it during the development time,
and probably mail into Capcom JP. Bad luck, there.
HTML [1]: https://megaman.fandom.com/wiki/Boss_character_contest
chaps wrote 3 days ago:
Yeah, it was about the ownership of the characters that was
at-issue IIRC. From memory, they said they couldn't use the
characters because I made the suggestion.
Cthulhu_ wrote 3 days ago:
Probably this, but despite that people keep trying - e.g. Reddit's
gaming forums are full of "I made a concept for xyz!".
I mean it can work; especially for smaller studios, community
members and modders are often hired to work on the game itself (I'm
sure Bethesda has a lot of that, the modding community is basically
free onboarding / training, but also Factorio's Space Age was
mainly inspired and executed by the developer of the Space
Exploration mod).
ashleyn wrote 3 days ago:
This was a very common thing media companies dealt with and still
deal with. There are too many legal risks in even reading the idea.
SOP is to send back the envelope sealed and with a canned response
explaining that they don't accept pitches from the public.
Romario77 wrote 2 days ago:
they have to open the envelope to see what's inside - they get
mail that is not ideas and they have to open it.
But I assume the people who get the mail are trained to see if
the envelope contains ideas to stop reading and return the mail
with the canned lawyer response.
fhdkweig wrote 2 days ago:
I can't remember what the topic was, but I remember hearing a
story about a company that was soliciting ideas from the public
for maybe a joke book or maybe tv show plots. They got into a
lot of legal hot water once they found out that the ideas weren't
original and people were actually just taking them from other
sources.
If anyone else knows what I am talking about, I'd like to know
the name of the company.
quesera wrote 3 days ago:
How do they know what they are not reading if the envelope is
still sealed?
virgil_disgr4ce wrote 3 days ago:
HAHAHAHAHA I DID TOO!!!!!
Ahhhh this makes me so happy. My brother and I, like many, were so
obsessed with all the LucasArts adventures, so naturally I mailed
them in my idea. I also got a letter back. IIRC it wasn't from a
lawyer, but it was definitely a soft "no." There's a chance I still
have that letter somewhere.
Man, I am not a "good old days" kind of person but the 80s (well,
late 80s early 90s) really were a different time.
chaps wrote 3 days ago:
Amazing. Just texted my mom asking if she has the letter. I doubt
it all these years later but I'll share it if she still has it!
Edit: no dice!
hodder wrote 3 days ago:
The best part about it is his rollercoaster the Quadrupler would have
been much more fun than Big Thunder Mountain Railroad.
bze12 wrote 3 days ago:
It doesnât even go upside down once, let alone 4 times
socalgal2 wrote 3 days ago:
But it does have a goat chewing dynamite.
mikkupikku wrote 3 days ago:
Better than many of my rollercoaster tycoon creations.
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