Black Golem

Black Golem is an independent video game company, located in Austria. It was formed 2009 by Thomas Schwarzl, the guy on the left-hand side.

It is a one man company. So all game code, artwork, website stuff, support and marketing is handled by Thomas. Sounds to be much work - you are right! But it is fantastic to be an indie game developer and worth all the effort.

Black Golem's philosophy is to create games which are different in some kind. Why should somebody want to play the same stuff again and again? Sure, using established concepts is a low-risk option to make a living from producing games. But how long will fans stick to it?

In my opinion it is good to alternate between revolution and evolution on a constant basis: Create something unique, evolve it, master it, repeat. Fresh concepts are as good as well evolved sequels. But stop it when you reached the top.

As said above Black Golem is a one man show. There are no (and never will be) stakeholders telling me what to do. There is no marketing department directing me to the game selling El Dorado. Only my imagination and the gaming community can tell me which games to make.

'Schwarz' is the german word for 'black'. So the first word is simply a hint to my name.

The Golem is an artificially created being from the jewish mythology. It is made from clay and is a dumb servant who only can do what its master tells him. Computer programs are the same. They can only perform what the coder writes. Ok, often programs do other things than the coder intends but that is another story :)

But there is also a connection to the human nature. Original versions of the bible describe Adam as the first Golem created by god. So we as humans are Golems ourselves, producing narrower Golems (programs). This leads to the following questions:

• If all this is recursive, is god a Golem to? Who made god?
• Is the ability of life creation the difference between god and Golem?
• Are programmers gods for their artificial life creations?
• Will programs become god if they create artificial life themselves?

I know this is quite metaphysical. Nevertheless, these questions lead to an interesting conclusion:

God seems to be an excellent coder who wrote the most complex game ever: life.