Game Creation on a Whim

Begin Dream Sequence:

I'm sitting at my desk in a bad mood - maybe something at work or an argument with the wife - and I want to sublimate some of this emotion in a creative way.

I can write - load up Celtx or OpenOffice or even Notepad and just start typing. Or put together a blog post. Heck, maybe just grab a Post-It and start putting words down.

I can draw - there's Paint on the computer or Inkscape or I can grab one of my sketchpads and doodle to my heart's content.

I can pick up my guitar and, even without plugging it in, pick out some riffs or blast through some chords.

But the one thing I can't do - yet - is tinker with gamemaking, not with the same ease.

There are two threads to this dream.

One is the desire for a program that makes it truly easy to assemble non-specific games. Getting a blank canvas and going through a huge database of objects and animations and interactions and laying out how they interconnect, testing right from the engine, plugging in code changes that work by selecting object associations. In short, something that has a relatively short learning curve but allows the flexibility and creativity of other programs. A game-making instrument, if you will. Visual, easily-modifiable, instant-compile, fuzzy.

The other is the desire to have a way to make games in the moment. Hence the first desire. As I said, I want an instrument. I want to sit down at my computer after tripping on LSD and assemble a rough cut of the videogame equivalent of Purple Haze. Or a way to capture depression in interactive form. Or joy. Or ecstasy. Or righteous anger. A basic way to put together a game based upon emotion while still in the throes of that emotion, the way Stairway to Heaven was hashed out in one night and only tweaked come recording time.

Maybe there are certain people using certain programs able to prototype in a small amount of time. But I've yet to see a program that handles things organically, that treats a game like a succession of steadily-more-refined sketches or whittling away at a clay block.

Things like Spore will probably be the tech to push toward this program in my mind.

Someone will get it made someday.

Faster, please.