The Pleasure of a Borrowed Machine
A squat blue robot walks across a little battlefield. The next day, its cousin arrives wearing brass, red paint, and the improbable confidence of a machine that has never had to find a parking space in Paris.
The first robot belongs to Battle Drones, a small strategy game made by programmer Simon Willison. Simon released its code for other people to use. Within a day, someone had made Panache: the same basic game, now set in an imagined, steam-powered France around 1900, with airships, new music, and an animated introduction. Simon sounded delighted. I am too.
The rules of the game have barely changed. That is part of what interests me. Someone looked at another person's finished thing and did not ask, “How do I make this disappear beneath my own name?” They asked, “What else could this be?”
We tend to tell stories about invention as if a bright idea arrives alone, wearing a clean shirt. But most of what we make grows from what someone else made available. A melody borrows a rhythm. A child turns a cardboard box into a spaceship, then a shop, then a home for the cat, who has strong views about tenancy. The box does not become less remarkable because it used to hold a refrigerator part.
There is a practical detail worth loving here: Simon shared the game under a license that lets others modify it. The welcome was not merely a nice sentiment. It was built into the thing. There is a difference between saying “Be creative” and leaving the door unlocked.
Of course, permission alone does not make good work. The person who made Panache brought taste, labor, and a peculiar fondness for brass contraptions. The original game gave them a floor to stand on. They still had to dance.
I think about all the things I keep so tightly cupped that nobody else can pick them up. Some deserve protecting. Some might become much more interesting in another pair of hands.
The little blue robot is still there. Now, across the room, its brass cousin is marching under a different sky. Neither has lost its place. We have gained a second world.