Silk is about 200AD. Silk is about 1984. Silk is about Glorantha. Silk is about religion. Silk is about Brexit. Five seemingly contradictory statements, all absolutely true. The fact that all these claims are true doesnt spring from any conceptual gymnastics, it flows naturally from the way I came to design and ultimately implement Silk, with the incredible help of Nathan (the programmer) and Jamie (the artist), and many others (like Becky, the portrait artist; Chris, the composer; and Patrick and Sean, the producers). That games are about things doesnt sound controversial, but in an odd way it is. Thats because the entertainment value of a game (or a film, for that matter) is the moral value we elevate above all others for them provided a game entertains, all other priorities are rescinded. Thats why games are a multi-billion dollar industry today: not because they are a vibrant, extravagant, hugely inventive artform (although they are), but because they entertain. And who doesnt like being entertained? By definition, its something we all want. But its not enough of a reason to make a game like Silk, because the people who might be entertained by a game like this are not the same people who are going to be entertained by, say, Grand Theft Auto, even though the GTA franchise and Silk have their roots in exactly the same places: the British games of 1984 and 1985 that invented the open world before anyone had thought of calling it that. No, Silk is a niche game... its a game for players who are looking to be more than just entertained, who are willing to be challenged to take upon a new way of thinking, one quite different from those that most games present us today. We should start by acknowledging that this is a game about 200AD. This is a time period Ive always been enraptured by... the Roman republic has mutated into the Roman Empire, bringing the seeds of its eventual downfall. Thousands of miles east, the Han Empire are about to lose control of China as it slips into the vicious civil war known as the Three Kingdoms. And in between these two ends of the Ancient Silk Road are two other empires that people just dont talk that much about the Parthians, who are Romes bitter enemy (and whom Rome never convincingly defeated), and the Kushan Empire who rule what we now call India with a cosmopolitanism that is quite astonishing for a time two millennia before our own. To play Silk is to visit 200AD. Thats the player experience were offering, over and above any other themes I might have weaved into its narrative design. Ive been writing Designers Notes since 1993 for every game that I can definitively call mine (without denying my immense dependence upon those who work alongside me). I was inspired to do so by Sandy Peterson, the designer of Call of Cthulhu (and level designer on Quake), who first made it clear to me that pretending youre not influenced by other peoples designs is pure arrogance and folly. In this five part series of Designers Notes, I want to look at five things Silk is about. The first, as Ive just discussed, is 200AD. Im not going to say too much about that because if you want to know about 200AD you should play Silk short of a time machine, theres no other way of experiencing it! But the other four thematic influences upon Silk 1984, Glorantha, religion, and Brexit those are things you probably arent going to get out of just playing Silk. They require me to tell something of the story behind the game, and thats what Designers Notes are ultimately about. These are the notes I want to make about the most personal game Ive ever made. I hope youll join me for this journey.