The biggest change in the way we work this year has been integrating AI into our daily work, from generating ideas and creating images to writing code. As an example I used the new version of Anthropic's Claude, Sonnet 3.5, to write a Christmas-themed game for you!
First, I asked Claude for a list of ideas. I said:
I want to make something fun to send to friends, family and clients this Christmas. In previous years I've made:
A space invaders game that has Christmas trees instead of aliens
A Christmas tree animation
A quiz PDF about Christmas
An online quiz that wasn't Christmas-themed
A puzzle game that had nothing to do with Christmas
A spot-the-difference game with two photographs, one of which had been photoshopped to add and remove things
What could I make this year?
Claude replied with dozens of ideas such as:
17. A "Christmas Light Untangler" puzzle game
18. A "Santa's Workshop" management game where players organize elves and toy production
19. A "Christmas Dinner Disaster" game where players must save the holiday meal
20. A "Festive Face Filter" web app that adds Santa hats, reindeer antlers, etc.
21. A "Christmas Cracker Joke Generator" with deliberately terrible puns
22. A "North Pole Weather Report" parody news station
23. A "Christmas Movie Bingo" generator for watching holiday films
24. A "Snowglobe Creator" where users can build and shake custom scenes
I loved the Christmas Cracker Joke Generator, so I asked it to start making the game:
I really like 21, let's think more about that. I'd like to make it into a game, with ten sets of cracker jokes. On the left of the screen is the first line, and on the right of the screen is the second line. Your job is to match up the jokes as quickly as possible, and then you get a score. Can you build something that does this?
It wrote five pages of code that drew out the game, generated the jokes (sorry, they're all awful) and stored the scores in a database that it designed. It made some mistakes along the way, so I copied and pasted the error messages and asked Claude to fix the errors. It took us about two hours to write the completed game. The entire game is about 1,500 lines of code, of which I wrote about 10 lines. If I'd been making this on my own it might have taken me 10 - 12 hours.
It was a fun experience, and amazing to see just how good the new version of Claude is. It gets a little confused by really long conversations, and so periodically I'd start a new conversation and paste in all the code it had written so far. And then it would spot problems that I'd missed, or suggest improvements, or security fixes.
Happy Xmas
We wanted to take a moment to thank you for your continued trust and partnership throughout the year. We wish you and your loved ones a joyful Christmas. May the holiday season bring peace, happiness, and time to relax and recharge.
Talking of recharging, our office will be closed from 23rd December, reopening on Monday 6th January. We look forward to working together in 2025 and creating more successful partnerships.
Instead of sending Xmas cards, we've donated 1% of our profits to helping the victims of the terrible flooding in Valencia in October.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!