Chris Crawford on Game Design 1st Edition

by Chris Crawford (Author)

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Editorial Reviews

From the Author

When I wrote The Art of Computer Game Design way back in 1981, I really didn't know what I was doing; I wrote the book as a way to sort out my thoughts on game design. That effort helped me solidify my philosophy of game design -- and incidentally became a classic in the field. That book was a bunch of lucky guesses and inspired hunches. This book, by contrast, looks back on a career in game design spanning 25 years, and attempts to digest the lessons of that career. Back then, with so little experience to draw on, I was absolutely certain of my conclusions. This time around, I'm not so sure -- but I've got some humdinger stories to tell. Will this book be a classic 25 years from now? Maybe so, maybe not, but one thing I'm sure of: 25 years from now, people will still be laughing over some of the crazy design misadventures I lived to tell about.

From the Back Cover

Chris Crawford on Game Design is all about the foundational skills behind the design and architecture of a game. Without these skills, designers and developers lack the understanding to work with the tools and techniques used in the industry today. Chris Crawford, the most highly sought after expert in this area, brings an intense opinion piece full of personality and flare like no other person in this industry can. He explains the foundational and fundamental concepts needed to get the most out of game development today. An exceptional precursor to the two books soon to be published by New Riders with author Andrew Rollings, this book teaches key lessons; including, what you can learn from the history of game play and historical games, necessity of challenge in game play, applying dimensions of conflict, understanding low and high interactivity designs, watching for the inclusion of creativity, and understanding the importance of storytelling. In addition, Chris brings you the wish list of games he'd like to build and tells you how to do it. Game developers and designers will kill for this information!

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ New Riders Pub; 1st edition (June 1, 2003)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 504 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0131460994
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0131460997
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.35 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 0.75 x 8.75 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #297,583 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #109 in Computer & Video Game Design
- #164 in Computer Graphics
- #197 in Game Programming

Customer Reviews:
19 ratings

About the author

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Chris Crawford

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Chris Crawford earned a Master of Science degree in Physics from the University of Missouri in 1975. After teaching physics for several years, he joined Atari as a game designer in 1979. There he created a number of games: Energy Czar, an educational simulation about the energy crisis, Scram, a nuclear power plant simulation, Eastern Front (1941), a wargame, Gossip, a social interaction game, and Excalibur, an Arthurian game.

Following the collapse of Atari in 1984, Crawford took up the Macintosh. He created Balance of Power, a game about diplomacy, Patton Versus Rommel, a wargame, Trust & Betrayal, a social interaction game, Balance of the Planet, an environmental simulation game, and Patton Strikes Back, a wargame. In 1992, Crawford decided to leave game design and concentrate his energies on interactive storytelling, a field that he believed would become important. He created a major technology for interactive storytelling systems, patenting it in 1997. He is now commercializing his technology at his company website at storytron.com.

Crawford has written five published books: The Art of Computer Game Design, now recognized as a classic in the field, in 1982; Balance of Power (the book) in 1986; The Art of Interactive Design in 2002; Chris Crawford on Game Design in 2003; and Chris Crawford on Interactive Storytelling in 2004.

He created the first periodical on game design, the Journal of Computer Game Design, in 1987. He founded and served as Chairman of the Computer Game Developers' Conference, now known as the Game Developers' Conference.

Crawford has given hundreds of lectures at conferences and universities around the world, and published dozens of magazine articles and academic papers.

Crawford served as computer system designer and observer for the 1999 and 2002 NASA Leonid MAC airborne missions; he also has done some analysis of the resulting data. He lives in southern Oregon with his wife, 3 dogs, 7 cats, 2 ducks, and 3 burros.

His current work is in interactive storytelling. After seventeen years of work, Crawford's company, Storytron, is releasing its technology to the public at www.storytron.com.

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@GroupOfFour

DON'T BUY THIS BOOK unless you want to design a great game.

Reviewed in the United States on December 13, 2016

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Chris Crawford set the standard and keeps the bar high for game designers from when he started as a teen in the late 70's/early 80s. This book talks about the thought process in designing games, not just the mechanics of the design itself. He explores the drives of players and what you as a designer need to think about to tap into that and make your players enjoy themselves and want to keep playing your game. High scores are one thing, but Mr Crawford wants to go beyond those simple goals. He also presses onto the reader that there is more to games than just shoot-em-ups or platformers. There are all kind of things in the human experience that can be adapted into fun gameplay. He includes some anecdotes about his early years as a designer that are great if you know of him from his early Atari days. Great stuff. Buy this.

One person found this helpful

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joshua wilson

Interesting.

Reviewed in the United States on December 12, 2012

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I found even the books on game design written by industry veterans turn out to be nothing more than low level children's books. This book is the only exception I've found. I don't always agree with Crawford, but even a disagreeable stance is usually a new stance that I've never thought about before. I especially hate the extreme over explanations that follow every point Crawford makes that go on for pages. If he were to cut out those explanations, filler bits, and chapters 13/14 to the end the book would be less then fifty pages and yet still worth a read. Crawford includes all the extra so that his points have a better chance of reaching everyone equally. I thank Crawford for writing this book and hope that others will write on the same level...soon.

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Mike

Excellent

Reviewed in the United States on January 6, 2019

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the man knows what he’s talking about.

Reviewed in the United States on October 8, 2013

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sometime back Crawford said I should read it, I was trying to put together a project (freelance). That didn't fly...but I've turned it to a "creative" non fiction bildungs bit.

I was a little surpised to find I was friend/"playtester" given the min wage existed in 76.
And I thought the time he split my tanks a more interesting episode...

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Antonio A. Rodriguez

No game designer should be without this one!

Reviewed in the United States on September 29, 2003

I picked up this book on a whim, not expecting much from it. Games today seem to be made in cookie-cutter fashion, and I was expecting something along the lines of how to make your game stand out from the rest of the similar ones in the market.
Instead I was presented with a mind-boggling analysis about what is wrong in the game industry nowadays, and what can be done about it. Designers need to be more social-minded, as well as programmers. It seems simple, but it's very far from it. Programmers tend to be a closed bunch, mostly anti-social outside of their own group, and tend to appeal to the baser emotions of our human nature, I.E. violence and sexual gratification. I don't know exactly how to target a game towards more social strata of our community, but it's easy to see that game design is vilified precisely because it seems so base.
In essence, Mr. Crawford details a series of rules that designers should follow, and a list of books that they should read so as to better inform programmers as to what a greater section of the public would want.
There's lots of retrospectives on other games that Mr. Crawford has designed. Balance of Power was one game I had seen before, and though I never got to play it, I did get to see some of the workings behind it. I didn't know that Mr. Crawford was the author of the game, and appreciate him letting us see what was going on behind curtain.
This is a great book that no game designer should be without.

6 people found this helpful

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Jonathan Beyrak Lev

A Must Read for Serious People Interested in Games

Reviewed in the United States on September 14, 2005

I used to think that this book had some sort of flaw in its conception. It's written by one of the greatest game designers of all time, who is also the number one computer game theorist in the world, yet it neither teaches the craft of game design nor does it contain any great theoretical breakthroughs. There are important concepts in here, as well as many useful points, but it really doesn't seem to live up to Crawford's reputation.

But I was wrong. This book is perfect for what it sets out to do. It is designed as a complex, long-winded, utterly convincing argument aimed at the games industry, with the sole purpose of opening the reader's eyes to the sad truth - the computer games industry is in a dire situation from an artistic and creative perspective, and it's only getting worse.

Among other things, Crawford exorcises many of the buzzwords that haunt the dialogue of game design, presenting principles that are so much cleaner and more accurate than we've come to expect from game design books. He contends that "fun" is not a sufficient design goal for a game, indeed, that it's hardly a design goal at all, and presents what served as his goals on his many game projects. He gives examples of several games he'd like to make, each of which is completely different from anything ever seen on the market, although they are all great ideas, and this just serves to prove how narrow the creative emphasis of the games industry is.

This book is the painful look in the mirror that the games industry needs so badly. It lucidly explains what went wrong and why, and what needs to be done differently. If you are a serious person interested in games, then this is an excellent book to learn why today's games are less and less worthy of your attention. If you are actually a game developer, this book will show you the path to a creative freedom and artistic possibilities beyond common imagining, if you're honest and can take the criticism. Either way, Crawford's wit and insight will entertain and enlighten you, as will his stories of the early days of game design.

Highly recommended!

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chiplcd

Chris Crawford on Game Design

Reviewed in France on October 7, 2021

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All is ok

wayfarer

Le meilleur livre écrit au sujet du Game Design ?

Reviewed in France on December 28, 2014

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Ce livre a beau avoir 10 ans, il m'a semblé être le meilleur que j'ai lu au sujet du game design, avec notamment le récit détaillé du développement de 14 jeux faits par l'auteur, dont le fameux Balance of Power. Incidemment, son auteur fut également la première personne à écrire un livre sur le game design, au tout début des années 80. Dommage qu'aucun de ses ouvrages n'ait jamais été traduit en français.

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Chris Crawford on Game Design 1st Edition

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Chris Crawford

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