So what were the three major innovations?
First, the language, use of language as the primary interface element. You talk to the
other creatures. I see this as completely different than the text parser approach,
because I really don’t think that’s linguistic communication, that’s something very dif-
ferent. Second, it used an inverse parser. Actually, the core concept behind the parser
was patented by Texas Instruments in 1979. I didn’t know that at the time. However,
my implementation was different enough that we were never concerned with any pat-
ent infringement issues. TI’s approach was more menu driven. Mine, in the end, boiled
down to being functionally similar to a menu, but technically it’s called a palette. So I
didn’t invent that concept, but I developed its implementation and showed very clearly
how to do that kind of thing. That was a major innovation, and I’m sad to say that nobody
seems to have run with that concept. The third major game innovation was the use of
non-transitive combat relationships, which has been used in some games since then.
That was basically just an extension of the rock-scissors-paper idea. That basic concept
of non-transitive relationships has enormous potential for development; you can build
whole games out of extensions of that. And there’s no reason why non-transitivity has
to be applied to three components. You can have a ring that has twelve components and
then the implications of victory or defeat in the non-transitive ring can be interpreted
many, many ways. It’s a huge area of game design to explore. This would be easy to
implement. It’s just that nobody is thinking along lines that unconventional.
Do you think the unconventionality of the project hurtSiboot’s popularity?
Well, yes and no. Actually, it was only sold on the Mac. There was never a PC version
done. I think we sold about four thousand copies on the Mac, which by the standards of
the day was disappointing but not horrible. The general rule back then was that you’d
sell five to ten times as many on the PC as you’d sell on the Mac. So we’re talking
twenty to forty thousand copies if there’d been a PC port. But the publisher opted
against doing so.
So, as withGossip, was your goal to put people in the games?
Yes. And I took that concept of “people not things” much, much further withSibootthan
withGossip. Another innovation was the interstitial stories that pop up. They weren’t
irrelevant, they actually did tie into the overall game.
So you didBalance of Power IIsolely at the insistence of the publisher?
Yes. I had doneSiboot, and they had published it, and it was obvious that it wasn’t going
to make money for them. They were obviously disappointed. They’d been asking about
a sequel. They pressed me hard this time, and I felt I owed them one. So I did theBal-
ance of Powersequel.
268 Chapter 14: Interview: Chris Crawford