In This World, You Can’t Stop Thinking

I love how after you’ve played In This World, just hearing real world statements gets your brain juices churning:

Pet owners outlive their pets
Priests believe in god
Food is made of plants and animals
Space is mostly empty
People apply for jobs

Those are totally innocent, factual statements. But once you’ve got In This World in your head, when you hear them you can’t help but ask “yes, but what if..???” Statements become questions. Simple observations become springboards for examination.

That’s what I’ve been doing for months and months while I’ve been developing the rules. Just walking around every day, looking at facets our world and society and going “hmmmmmm…”. I’ll just write down statements that cross my mind: “Sports teams play to win. Suspects are innocent until proven guilty. Songs have set lyrics.” Even without going through the process of actually making up other worlds, I look at things differently, because I’m thinking about the things I saw but didn’t think about before.

Should I put a warning label on the game? “Side effects may include uncontrolled examination of the world around you”.