How a Dentist Dad Created ODONTOGEMS for Children’s Oral Health

Greetings from the ODONTOVERSE! 

I’m glad you’re here. I won’t take much of your time (couple minutes perhaps?) but I wanted to share a quick story.

It was 2018. I was in my fourth year of dental school in regional Victoria, studying for upcoming exams yet doing anything but studying. Mostly I was playing guitar, writing songs, reading books, and finding creative ways to avoid studying. One afternoon, while avoiding study, my mind wandered into a world of teeth (spot the dental student). This world was colourful, the teeth were charming, anime-esque, Pokemon-like, and for whatever reason they were collecting gems and putting them on their heads to wear. They were a highly productive bunch (I was reading a lot of self help / productivity books at the time) roaming this world that was ALSO in the shape of a tooth.

Honestly, that’s where ODONTOGEMS started. A 30 second thought in between studying for exams. Before long I was imagining a mobile game featuring these little tooth characters where they would go and whack germs with a tooth brush and out would pop shiny little gems that they would collect. It was a highly entertaining game - think of mixing the aesthetics of Candy Crush, Cut the Rope and Plants vs. Zombies and subbing in these cute tooth characters and you have my game. I didn't have the name ODONTOGEMS yet, but I could already see the characters clearly. I knew what they looked like, how they behaved, and the personalities they would have. “Should I ACTUALLY make this into a game?” I thought. That seemed exciting… but it only took me 2 minutes of extra musing to realise that what was actually exciting me was the WORLD, the CHARACTERS, their untold STORIES. Something I could create myself.

And then…. like all ‘amazing’ ideas that are going to ‘change the world’ my vision of my tooth characters took a back seat to exams, placement, job hunting, and eventually buying a house and moving back to the south-east suburbs of Melbourne.

Then in 2022 - my wife and I had our first kid. In that first year I saw first hand a child-like imagination flourishing. I lived vicariously through my son experiencing things for the first time and remembered how I too felt seeing a movie for the first time, tasting ice cream for the first time. Sadly we don’t get a lot of ‘first time’ experiences as we get older, but even seeing it second hand was enough to get my own imagination fired up. What if I could do something for the first time again. I haven’t made a world before, I haven’t written a book, I haven’t made my own stories. Suddenly there were all these things I could do for the first time. The over-quoted quip ‘We don’t stop playing because we grow old, we grow old because we stop playing’ comes to mind. I was fired up, piggy backing off the daily excitement my son would feel at any and every new thing he would experience. Children’s books were a daily routine in our house and slowly these tooth characters started popping back up in my random musings. Children’s books… dental health….. education…. behaviour change….entertainment….music….. I’ll start with a book!

That was the beginning.

Actually that was the beginning of the beginning (I still feel like I’m at the beginning).

I’m starting this newsletter / blog / diary to share my journey of building ODONTOGEMS as well as using it to explore anything interesting I’m seeing in the dental, education, pop-psychology space. It’s an open world as far as I’m concerned.

It’s gonna be an adventure!

Dr. Jesse

7:33pm
From the entrance of Palato Cave - ODONTOLAND