A few nights back, I had a dream: I saw Warren Spector, affable head of Ion Storm Austin, presenting a new series of video games based on the lives of famous oddball monks from East Asia: Han Shan, Ikkyu. It felt very compelling to me at the time; I had to follow up with an email query to Mr. Spector:

"Get out of my head! How did you know I was thinking about a famous monks game series?"

(He was kidding). I wonder what such a game would look like? For audiences less versed in these lean, gutsy classics, imagine a game based on Kerouac's Dharma Bums. If I remember correctly, most of that book is spent drinking wine and looking out over the forest and stating or debating what quality of life means.

The game Wild Divine takes a somewhat clinical approach to calm - bio-feedback measuring mastery of the mind. Sword of the Samurai borrowed some of the aesthetics and quaint Zen-ism associated with some of these blokes, but concerned itself with political power.

If you had to describe a victory condition for playing an Ikkyu game, I don't know if there could be one other than "entertain oneself" within a constrained environment, a rich symbol set and unlimited imagination. On the subject of "A Man's Root," Ikkyu once wrote, "Within my [underwear] there is an entire universe" - I could say the same thing about my computer!