This morning, between sets at the gym, I …

This morning, between sets at the gym, I started designing a philosophical game.

I was catching my breath and wondering about an existential text adventure in Twine. Something slightly surreal, with unreliable narrators and doors you’d have good reason to leave shut. I pulled out my phone, opened a conversation with my AI thinking partner, and began playing with the idea.

By the end of the workout, we had the beginnings of a game concept. I’d gone to lift weights. Somewhere in the gaps, I’d also found something I wanted to make.

I’ve written recently about the pleasure of notes that talk back, and about discovering what I think through conversation. This morning I noticed how much the timing matters.

For years, I’d have reached for my Moleskine. I still love those notebooks: opening a fresh page, the scribbles accumulating, the sentence that makes perfect sense when I write it and looks like evidence from an unsolved case three months later.

I’d have written something like “existential Twine game?” and returned to the weights.

Later, I’d have needed to find my way back into the thought. The words would still be there, but I wouldn’t necessarily remember what had excited me about them. By then I’d be reading another book or following a different question. I have plenty of experience trying to rekindle an enthusiasm from a cryptic sentence written by someone who appears to have assumed I’d know what he meant.

This morning I could stay with the idea while I still wanted to play with it. I could say a little more, see what came back, and work out which part interested me enough to follow. I didn’t have to decide to make a game before beginning the conversation about one.

I sometimes describe these exchanges as developing an idea, which makes them sound more orderly than they feel. Often I arrive with barely enough to ask a question. Through talking, I discover what I’m curious about. I change my mind about what I want to try. Eventually, I can picture myself doing something I hadn’t considered when I picked up the phone.

A text adventure seems a fitting place to end up. In an essay, I can wonder about a choice. In a game, I can put someone in front of a door and let them decide whether to open it. They have to do something before they know what follows.

I rather like the possibility of philosophy happening there, with a finger hovering over a link.

Of course, now I have a game concept. I can feel how easily I could turn that into another thing I ought to finish, as though I’d acquired an obligation by enjoying myself between sets.

I’d like to resist that little administrative ambush.

I may build the game. I’m interested enough to find out what happens next. But I also want to spend a morning imagining one without putting myself in debt to it. I’ve been writing about remaining available to the unexpected. That has to include letting an interest pass through my life without requiring it to become permanent.

My Obsidian vault, the collection of notes and unfinished writing I call the Textual Underground, helps with that. I can leave the conversation somewhere I’ll be able to find it, beside older fragments I may have a reason to return to. I don’t have to keep all my unfinished enthusiasms in mind as reminders of things I ought to be doing.

And I can bring an encounter like this to the weblog while I’m still wondering about it. Someone reading may have made a game, abandoned one, or found another way of making a philosophical question playable. Their response could change what I try.

For now, I have the beginnings of a game and the pleasure of having spent part of my morning imagining it. My old notebooks hold years of such moments. I’m glad I kept them. Today, I got to spend a little longer inside one before leaving it for later.

Somewhere in the conversation, we began imagining doors that probably shouldn’t be opened.

I still want to see what’s behind them.