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
clean-up of BoP I. It’s funny,
though. By the standards of the
industry, it was a major new ver-
sion and deserved to be called
“Second Edition.” But by my
standards it was just tidying up,
adding some bells and whistles,
but in terms of gameplay it didn’t
do much.
So where did the idea forGuns & Buttercome from?
At about the same time, the three best game designers in the world, independently, all
got the same idea. Each of us said, “I’m going to do a conquer-the-world game, an
Empiregame.” (Those three were Sid Meier, Dan Bunten, and myself.) It is interesting
how each of us took a completely different route. We all know how Sid took his, and it
was an immense success. Sid, Dan, and I got together at one point to discuss how the
three of us approached our designs. Sid had a very clear notion: he was going to make it
fun. He didn’t give a damn about anything else, it was going to be fun. He said, “I have
absolutely no reservation about fiddling with realism or anything, so long as I can make
it more fun.”
My approach was to make it educational, and Dan’s approach was to make it social.
Dan came up with this wonderful little game,Global Conquest, where you really inter-
acted with the other people playing. I think that game was an undiscovered jewel. It
bombed even worse thanGuns & Butter. He had endless trouble with Electronic Arts. I
don’t see why he stuck with them, because they kept wanting him to put shoot-’em-up
elements into his games, especiallyM.U.L.E.I considerM.U.L.E.to be, probably, the
greatest game design ever done. That is, in terms of the platform he had to work with,
and the design expertise of those times,M.U.L.E.was definitely the greatest ever
done. And it is a brilliant game, it
is loads of fun, and it has never
been ported onto a modern
machine. That’s a tragedy. And the
reason why is that Electronic Arts
insisted that the players be able to
go shoot each other up. Dan
refused, just said flat out, “That
will not happen.” AndGlobal Con-
questwas the same way. It was not
so much about shooting as about
teamwork.
Chapter 14: Interview: Chris Crawford 269
Balance of Power II: The 1990 EditionGuns & Butter