Leading the Machine

Last week a friend from my university years wrote to me. His daughter had played my game several times and wanted more to learn. In the quiet early days of making something, when you have no idea if anyone cares, one voice like that carries a long way. I promised him a new quest within the week.

I build Save the Dutch live on stream, side by side with an AI. During that stream the goose kept walking into an invisible wall. I described the problem in plain words, and the machine found it in two minutes. It was four forgotten rocks hidden under a node. I would have lost hours and some of my sanity to looking for the solution without AI.

Then I asked for something else. A silky ribbon that snakes out of the goose and around his body in the colours he has been given, then fades away and comes back. A few minutes later it was on my screen, and it was beautiful.

That is the work now. The machine does the heavy lifting. What I bring is the vision, the taste to know when something is right, and the words to say it. The video below is that stream, cut to six minutes.