As an admirer of the show Community, it’s seriously fun to watch when its rabid viewership picks up an idea and runs with it. After one episode centered on the show’s characters playing an old school 8-bit game, a few programming-savvy fans decided to open up a project on Github and bring the game to life.

I’m writing about this gray area of creativity that skirts extant intellectual property rights for non-monetary purposes (I hope no one at NBC honestly thinks this is bad for their show). It’s a mode of creativity that’s facilitated by networked collaboration and distribution of labor over a multitude of helpful volunteers; a creativity that openly acknowledges and credits its source; and a creativity that encourages subsequent derivations–there’s call for “forking” on the homepage and you can keep track of branches on Github. It will begin with a strong resemblance to the “original” game fans saw on the show, and then soon transform into several variations that’ll become more wild with each iteration (it’s actually already happening).

I’ve played with the demo on my linux desktop and got a kick out of being able to enjoy the universe of Community on an interactive level. I’ll be keeping an eye on this project.

Download the game at Project Hawkthorne.