The Game

One morning as I was working on a mundane programming task that my manager had assigned, I had a brilliant idea for a new computer game.

The game would be a realistic simulation where the player could build entire “worlds” using a combination of 4 core elements – fire, earth, water and air. The interplay of those elements would determine whether the world became a massive ball of fire or a tiny ice-rock.

Many of those worlds would forever be barren. But in some of them, as the game progressed, the player could create simple “characters” that lived in the world. The characters would need to multiply and perform certain tasks successfully to be able to “level up” to a higher stage of evolution.

While these were fairly compelling gameplay ideas, I felt the need to add a bit more zing. Perhaps the player could unlock a “special upgrade” to one of the characters, which enabled it to evolve more rapidly than the others. This particular character would have a highly advanced AI, with the ability to form societies and build virtual civilizations of its own. It would be capable of incredibly magnificent creation and immensely terrible destruction. It would generally interact with the world it inhabited in a very erratic way.

That’s about as far as I’d got in terms of the idea before a stern message from my manager reminded me of my task deadline, so I got back to work!

By the way, I forgot to introduce myself. My name is Brom, and I am The Programmer.

Someday, I’m going to create this game.

I do hope you’ll give it a try and let me know what you think.

Author’s note: Sometimes I ponder the true nature of reality.

“Simulation Theory” is an interesting idea and its recent proponents include Elon Musk. Could this world be an illusion… a very realistic simulation game? Could we merely be characters in that game? And the One that many of us spend our lives seeking… might they be the original Programmer?

When searching for a picture representative of this post, I was looking for one that captured a great city, a pinnacle of human civilization.  This picture is from a business trip in September 2006, taken with my Sony Cybershot DSC-S40. With the great city of Chicago in the background, a solitary boat sails across the harbour.