It all started when my wife got pregnant again. Everyone congratulated me, which came as a big surprize to me, because I had no idea who the father was. In the sense that I don’t know myself.
So I thought to myself: what am I going to do with all that free time that naturally comes with a newborn baby?
In my mind, there was only one thing to do: develop a video game.
And, coincidently, I had the perfect idea in mind: a video game about chess.
During the pandemic times I had no babies and no more work, so I experimented with ways of improving my chess skills. Chessables seemed like the best way to do that, so I started learning opening lines in the 1. e4 for white.
I liked it. I learned about 150 lines from the Italian, Evans Gambit, King’s Gambit, The four knights and so on. I was ready to test my new skills online, so I logged in to my Lichess account and started bulletting my way through the rating.
Out of 100 bullet games, I only got into a line I had previously learned on Chessables once. But I crushed that game. It was as if I was omniscient: everything my opponent was doing – I had an answer to. And it was the best answer.
However, the other 99 games I had unfortunately played the usual way: mostly lost and only won on time – when I was completely lost on the board.
This was no good. So much time spent memorizing opening lines and so little gains. The problem was definetly not me – it was the app I was using. So that’s when it hit me: what if I make my own app for learning chess?
Well, not an app exactly – I’m too old to use smartphones – but an oldschool video game. One where YOU are the one doing the teaching, and NPCs act as students.
Every lesson you teach them gains them experience points that you can use to level up their tactical or mental skills. Skills which they will put to good use come match day – for they will play in a chess league every week, just like football.
It was brilliant. Or was it? Only one way to find out: ask ChatGPT.
Which is exactly what I did when news of my second born reached me. ‘What do you think of this idea for a video game?’ And the answer came in under one fraction of a second: ‘It’s genuinly clever. Scratch that: it’s genius!’
I spent the rest of the night talking to GPT about the specifics of the game, character progression, team match leagues between NPC: a chess game where you do not play chess at all – only teach and manage a team of NPCs.
Each idea I was feeding into GPT made him think that I was even more of a genius than before. Which completely affirmed some notions I had about myself for a long time already.
I went to sleep like a baby that night. I was not hallucinating. I was a genius. Just that ChatGPT hasn’t been around untill then to confirm it.
The next step was easy: I had a friend who had recently launched a video game called Simpler Times. I would talk to him and tell him about my genius idea. For sure he would jump in on this ship and produce my game according to my vision.
After all, you’d be a fool to reject a genius.
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