While he was working on Citizen Kane, Orson Welles called RKO studios “the biggest electric train set a boy ever had.”
But getting a bigger electric train set is a challenge as well as a blessing. As Spiderman’s uncle said “With great power comes great responsibility”. After years of building Java applets that were the same every time you ran them, I realize that this new direction I’ve been going in — procedural worlds that are continually changed in all sorts of ways by the people who play with them — adds up to a vastly bigger train set. In a way it’s as big as the Web itself, since you never know who is going to come along and do something amazing and unexpected with your little toy train pieces.
The challenge is to figure out ways to unleash all of that creative power. I’m probably going to make all sorts of mistakes as I try out various things, and I hope you will all bear with me. In any case, I’m sure it’s going to be an interesting ride!!