Nolen Royalty on making things

The internet feels smaller than it used to be, as fun stuff concentrates into a few mega-platforms. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Nolen Royalty creates strange, fun new places and invites everyone inside to play chess, draw on eggs, or even write secret messages on one million shared checkboxes. Whenever he posts a new project, I feel like a kid on the playground again. As part of the Making things project (intro here), I got to interview Nolen on what it means to connect people and keep the internet fun, and how he found his unique style.Bobbie Chen (BC):1. When anything is possible, how do you decide what to create?2. If someone else can create it, why should you?Nolen Royalty (NR): For me these days, I’m making games, which are both art and technical projects. My motivations are very personal. That’s different from tools or utilities that need to be useful, and end up being less personal as a result. There are three things that I really like to do, and ideally a project hits…