About Black Golem

Black Golem is an independent video game company, located in Austria. It was formed 2009 by Thomas Schwarzl.

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.

Why the Name ‘Black Golem’?

‘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.