When I first started brain-storming there wasn't a Nemo aspect.  At first I was designing a game to be a virtual reality test of the character you are playing.  A test of teamwork and survival for the gamer and an artificial intelligent partner.  I really enjoyed brainstorming the possibilities with a computer operated character (that would stay in the role confined to the island survival scenario) that also doubled as a virtual reality test of your team work ability.  Sharing the experience seemed to enhance it (this later on developed into the basis for a chat environment). Since it was virtual reality (simulation of a simulation) and not a simulator of a real island - it started to sneak in some surreal artistic elements,  justified as insight into reasons for teamwork etc.  Then artistic elements such as the transforming statue started sneaking in, that could only be described as homage’s to humanity.  Eventually ideas (like the thunder radiating out from its source as a way to light up a decayed city into a new city and back to decayed as the thunder subsides - now in its first public version I have nixed the city) began to dominate the terrain more than any game playing element.  Somewhere in there the game play was also strange enough it could suddenly  be justified as the aftermath of a "Captain Nemo" type struggle. The beasts of burden such as dolphins and the oversized birds enslaved by the dual nature pacifist/warrior turn into enslavers themselves. I don’t know where this slavery theme came from but it was still a bigger influence on the terrain than the game play - fantastical creatures were not the center of the  story (so they went away too - but wouldn't the giant beasts in a 50's movie style plot fighting over the remains of a Nemo conflict aftermath be cool?) - something else was - broad themes began to dominate...

So that's where Nemo came in - everything had turned into his backdrop.  He was an excellent stage and his main contribution to this art piece is the island has now become the mind.  Now the surreal, dream, humanistic elements had free reign.  So I continued to do my research and of course one of the areas I had to look into was dreams.  Hold that thought for a moment.  Here is an example of how the brainstorming when in a purely creative moment would develop: I wanted to do lots of spheres and lots of art at the point when I let go of the whole game idea.  I thought it would be cool to have universal binaries. The participant could see 2 half domes created from one sphere.  With investigation the participant walks through the dome shell and sees one part of a duality and then walks out of and into the next and sees the other side of the duality. The binaries could go on and on. I couldn’t visualize a sensible place for these except that it would be in caves (subconscious). Thinking sphere, sphere, sphere, I put them in a perfectly round tube. And lets make them spiral through the tube and the participant wouldn’t even realize at first they are upside down or sideways and no longer restricted to a downside. (Try to keep in mind that I really am not fascinated by my own brain waves - but am fascinated by how some of these things did emerge in a very unconscious stumbling way - and the brainstormer [no that isn't a "word"] would be the last to realize where they were going)  So at some point the participant would look back down the tube and they have created a double helix - as each pair popped up after experiencing the previous pair).  So it was after visualizing this scene that it slowly dawned on me this was a DNA strand - and a fitting centric product of our duality fix on life.  Then I began reading my first dream book.  The research pointed out the use of a double helix as a dream encouraging image.  I steal this from Denise Linn’s "The Hidden Power of Dreams".  In the Dream Recall chapter she outlines a method called the 4 directions technique where she describes rising smoke as a dream association and then later in the method visualizing a double helix rising through the body. I couldn’t figure out where a method for dream recall could come up with a double helix until I realized it had to be associated with rising smoke.  Bingo - it was a natural image - not a modernistic and from that realization the binary tube/DNA tube goes straight up the inside of the volcano versus horizontal.  So first there were binaries, then they started to spiral, then the realization it was a familiar pattern, then discovering it wasn’t a result of creativity but the symbols within all of us. So now to me - to touch the symbols of the subconscious is the meaning of creativity. The only real creativity is how we express the art of something like the subconscious or DNA - and this is where virtual worlds can really take off.  That realization has unleashed a torrent of discoveries.  So that is an example of how that adventure has been going.  Nemo’s Mind has been extremely rewarding and it has become clear these are themes in all of us.  Millions of course have discovered this since the beginning of time and this genre is just a new/old way to bring us back to our minds.