R.i.p.

[General Ludd]

I was about to ask who chris crawford was, too, when I noticed that he made Balance of the Planet, which I had just downloaded a few minutes ago...

[Tau Ceti]

Originally posted by Spiffor
Cinemaware

Cinemaware have been resurrected, and released a sequel to the classic Defender of the Crown late last year - though to less than stellar reviews. http://www.cinemaware.com

I miss Sensible Software, famous for the Cannon Fodder games, Wizball, Wizkid, Mega-lo-Mania and, of course, the Sensible Soccer series.

[Spiffor]

Thanks for the link, Tau Ceti!

I have just seen they released Wings for GBA. I think I have to get my hands on this

[Sava]

whoever made "global ops"...

that game had promise, but was never supported... now the company no longer even has a website for it.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by vovan
Speaking of whom... What's up with Chris Crawford? Many people seem to think he is like a god, and so when I saw his book on game design, I jumped on it, yet... It quite frankly sucked.

Game design is an art, not a science. So it's pretty subjective to whether his book sucks or not.

Sid always goes by the fun factor, but Chris Crawford might want to present something thought-provoking to the player (e.g. Balance of Power) even if the subject itself does not lend itself to fun.

Chris Crawford is generally held to be one of the early greats due to the groundbreaking work he did.

[vovan]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
Game design is an art, not a science. So it's pretty subjective to whether his book sucks or not.

Have you even read why I think the book sucks?

I have nothing against his ideas. I think they are cool, and in fact I am interested in much the same things as he is - like automatic story generation (see MattH's game thread).

What I do have something against is all the arrogant crap he fed me in that book. "Oh, I am zee greatest designer in zee universe!" Screw that, I can read plenty of that on online forums if I want to, like gamedev.net.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by vovan
Have you even read why I think the book sucks?

I did.

Just because his book sucks doesn't mean he sucks as a game designer.

[vovan]

DP...

[vovan]

EDIT: Ah, never mind.

[okblacke]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
Game design is an art, not a science. So it's pretty subjective to whether his book sucks or not.

All things are subjective. Just ask Heisenberg.

However, the book could be considered a failure if it didn't teach anything about game design. Or if it taught relatively little compared to "how great I am".

Sid always goes by the fun factor, but Chris Crawford might want to present something thought-provoking to the player (e.g. Balance of Power) even if the subject itself does not lend itself to fun.

The "fun factor" doesn't , IMO, have anything to do with subject matter, although some subject matter can be so distasteful that the audience rejects it out of hand (cf. "Postal" for some folks).

There is a "doingness" associated with a game. You could call it the interface, though that's not quite broad enough. Bullfrog was very good at this sort of thing: Many of their last games were rather shallow (DK2, P:TB, TPW) but they rewarded incresaed proficiency with all kinds of cool things.

Chris Crawford is generally held to be one of the early greats due to the groundbreaking work he did.

He wasn't that early. He wasn't that great.

No, seriously, what's he got...Balance of Power? SimEarth? Patton? What's so ground-breaking about these games? All between 1985-1990.

From a historical standpoint, I would consider him a fairly minor early-middle developer. I don't see a huge range of influence. I don't see games today that I can trace back to him.

I can pick up any adventure game and trace it back to Crowther and Woods, the Infocom devteam, even the Myst bros.; I can trace the real-time RPG trend back through Diablo, Nethack, Rogue and Beneath Apple Manor; I can see Civ's roots in Hamurabi, Empire, etc., and trace them forward to Rise of Nations, etc. Silas Warner did the first FPS that I know back around 1980; he also did (top-down) Castle Wolfenstein--his influence is clear.

Seriously, dude. Irrespective of any good ideas Crawford has, his most important contribution to the gaming world is probably the book, where he boldly and baldly suggests games can rise to the level of art.

But actual games? Erasmatron's been out for 6 years: It hasn't revolutionized the game industry.

I'm rootin' for him, but I don't see him as a legendary figure. Not yet, anyway.

[okblacke]

Not to continue an overly long rant, but I was thinking of the REAL giants in the early days of the field:

Dani Bunten

John Freeman

Silas Warner

Dave Lebling

Don D. Worth

Michael Berlyn

Infocom (Lebling, Berlyn, Meretzky, et. al.) were really pushing the envelope artistically, and making money at it for quite some time.

Not to mention a bunch of others I've already lamented--I just don't see Crawford as standing shoulder to shoulder with these guys, or with Will Wright, Molyneux, Sid, Romero. Even John Carmack, with his spectacular flops, had a bunch of good titles under his belt and even in failing made a lasting impression on the community.

OK, sorry, rant mode off.

[child of Thor]

Chris Crawford wasn't the greatest - and i think even he was only joking about the whole 'ego' thing of games designers(although i dont doubt that at times he thought himself a genius).
But would be designers could do a lot worse than have a good read of the free advice/info at his site - amongst it are some still very relevent essays.

I think in those early days the most important thing he did was organise a bunch of people and setup a frame work(Game Developers Conference or something like that?) for the actual games creators to work with, they had much more control over the games they made(which was why Chris produced a fair few bad sales ), and recieved a much higher percentage of the money.

Slowly over the years the power has moved from the designer/programmer to the big game production house.

Of the games he made i found Eastern Front the most enjoyable, and Balance of Power the most interesting.

But all these guys in the early 80's had a big influence one way or another - they gave me many good and bad experiences of game design, so i know quite quickly when i'm being ripped of with a game these days

on topic:

Synapse software?

FireBird(they produced Elite i think,atleast for a couple of the platforms?)

Virgin Games.

.......Microprose still hurts the most, even after all the dead greats that have been mentioned.
Is it because of the Sid/Civ link - maybe i'm biased

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by child of Thor
FireBird(they produced Elite i think,atleast for a couple of the platforms?)

Univeral Military Simulator, something like that.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by okblacke
No, seriously, what's he got...Balance of Power?

The groundbreaking part about Balance of Power is the subject matter. To a lesser degree, how the game is played. The player has to walk a tight rope to achieve his goals, and this certainly influenced quite a number of games later on.

Originally posted by okblacke
I don't see games today that I can trace back to him.

These games aren't that numerous. Former efforts include Ashes of Empire and Shadow President.

Originally posted by okblacke
I can trace the real-time RPG trend back through Diablo, Nethack, Rogue and Beneath Apple Manor

rogue isn't a real-time RPG. rogue is the granddaddy of all rogue-like games, which were originally ASCII based dungeon crawls but included surface areas as well later on.

Originally posted by okblacke
I can see Civ's roots in Hamurabi, Empire, etc., and trace them forward to Rise of Nations, etc.

Empire? No. It's just a war game.

Originally posted by okblacke
Silas Warner did the first FPS that I know back around 1980; he also did (top-down) Castle Wolfenstein--his influence is clear.

I fail to see the importance of Castle Wolfenstein. Return to Castle Wolfenstein, id's first FPS, has nothing to do with the original game other than the name and the setting.

[Rasbelin]

SSI, MicroProse, Bullfrog, Maxis (before EA merged it into its core EA Games business) and Sierra Interactive (all the great Caesar games)...