Game Design

A World of Their Own............................ The future for multi-player gaming looks bright indeed. The genre’s hard-core f ...

Chapter 14 Interview: Chris Crawford ............... Chapter 14 Interview: Chris Crawford ................. Today, Chris Crawfor ...

What initially attracted you to making a computer play a game? That actually started back in 1966, when I was a high school soph ...

on the Commodore Pet for fifteen bucks. And then I did another game calledLegion- naire, also on the Commodore Pet. And based on ...

to give you all that space. We’ve got to know you can use it well.” So I had to do a 2K game. And I did one calledWizard, which ...

We released it through APX [the Atari Program Exchange] in August of 1981 and it was a huge success. It was generally considered ...

I’m curious about another game you did during your Atari days,Gossip.Was that game ever released? Yes, it was released, but it w ...

Everyone just convinced themselves that bust was upon us and everyone decided, “Oh, we’re all going to die, so let’s just die.” ...

the industry was that it bought market share. That is,Wing Commanderwas a hugely expensive program to write. It’s funny; Chris R ...

There’s really no other book like it at all. Yes, all the other attempts just turn out to be programming books. It is shameful t ...

So after Atari you became an independent game developer. Why did you do that instead of opting to return to a big company? Well, ...

At any time were you concerned that the game was too different? I did not expect it to become a hit, but I felt it was important ...

So what were the three major innovations? First, the language, use of language as the primary interface element. You talk to the ...

So you didn’t have great hopes to better the original? No, and in fact I felt thatBalance of Power IIwas little more than a clea ...

My conquer-the-world game,Guns & Butter, was really more about macro- economics. In fact, during development, it was calledM ...

work well for him. It was certainly more successful thanBalance of the Planet, because it was a lot better looking and had plent ...

So you think the games industry has reached that same point of stagnation? Yes. Only they’re not even trying to get out; they ha ...

So how did the Erasmatron project come about? I set out to do interactive storytelling. I said, “I’m going to go back, and I’m g ...

least six months and probably a year, but I haven’t proved that. That is what’s stopping the whole project: I need proof. Is tha ...

clearly, that the end game is going to have Mordred revolt. No matter what happens, Mordred is going to revolt at some point. An ...