She’s obsessed with this idea. She likesplayingvideo games
too, but it’s just not the same. Experiencing the world, even
defeating the world, is too passive. She wants tomakethe
world.
So I made her a game where she can make games. A multiplayer world
made of text and images and a tiny new scripting language, where she
can take anything and everything apart to see how it works. I first
learned to code in the days whenView Sourcewas a reliable
teacher, and I think she deserves the same.
The game has a lot of limitations. The language,Cant, is
not a very good language, and that’s on purpose.
But it also turned out to be a lot of fun. I call it:
Canon is a modern, web-based take on the classicMUDsof the Old Internet.
For the uninitiated: back before World of Warcraft made the MMORPG a
big studio genre, we had text-based MUDs (andMUCKsandMUSHes) where players could adventure and socialize in vast realms made of
pure written words.
I spent countless hours exploring these imaginary places. I wanted to
make something in that spirit that would feel more familiar to a
modern audience.
Canon has strong opinions about what makes a good MU*, and what makes
a good learning environment. Every room, object, and interaction in
Canon is player-created, and it can all be inspected, copied, and
modified.
The kiddo loves it. If you’re the kind of grownup who’s into
roleplaying or text adventures, or has some nostalgia for the age of
telnet and the early web, you might like it too.
But first, recipe blog style, let me tell you how we got here.
Do you rememberHyperCard? If not, do you rememberMyst? (If not, congratulations on being young. Bear with me.)
Bill Atkinson dreamed up HyperCard in 1985 after an LSD trip. I first
encountered it in 1989, in my 4th grade computer lab, and also had my
mind expanded.