Tuesday, February 22, 2011

It came to me in a dream

    I dreamed or dreamt that my brother gave me a gigantic wallet, which contained several hundred dollars and several certificates from a computer game called "I Carried $1,000,000,000." The certificates featured rather childish graphics, but then, so does my mind's eye. I guess in real life such a game would be called something punchier like "I Smuggled A Billion," but my subconscious mind doesn't employ any marketing consultants, fortunately or unfortunately. The scenario in the dream was that if you won the game, you also won $1,000 in real life, hence the hundreds of dollars in the wallet. I think this could work in a real game as well. If you play through once without any restarts and win, you could win your score, which would be up to $1,000. Of course I'm not a programmer, but I don't think this ought to be a strain on 21st century technology.
    It comes down to a writing problem. To wit, where are you smuggling and who are you smuggling for? If it's an international border, the player will assume you're (rather he's) working for either drug runners or terrorists and this would be (one hopes) a major turnoff. I guess the only solution is to resort to vagueness. You're working for bad guys (unspecified) asking you to take a billion dollars from point A to point B (unspecified). You're so far under the radar that no cops are involved; the only people trying to stop you are other bad guys. (One likes to think that fighting or killing cops would also be a major turnoff. Anyway it is to me.) You have no idea who your employers are or what they do, but the representative you meet is cultured, well-spoken and friendly. Who has a billion dollars to smuggle anyway? Maybe it's Exxon Mobil wanting to underwrite Limbaugh for another 20 years in a fairly hush-hush manner. Who knows? I want to write it. Hell, I want to play it!

    Since the Monkey loves going up the chimney so much, should I rename her Santa Claudia? Or Santa Claws?

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