Video Games (Behind the Scenes)
This was a general seminar given at my undergraduate university, the University of Auckland. (Which is also my home town.)
As such it was a bit more personal than others I've given. I tried to give the talk I would have liked to see as a student, covering what it's like to work at a game studio, and what actually goes into getting a AAA game out the door.
I also started with a "how did I get there from here" section, as I remember in my teens such a thing was difficult to imagine. (NZ is pretty remote from the rest of the world.) Thus I wanted to give a concrete idea of how you could wind up working for a big software company in the US starting from Symonds Street, as it were. Retrospectively it seems a little self-indulgent!
Of course, as I pointed out towards the end of the talk, with the rise of indie and mobile gaming, these days there are many more chances to do this kind of thing without having to leave the country.