Chris Crawford is a computer game designer and writer who operated mainly in the 80s. He received a B.S. in Physics from the UC Davis and an M.S. in Physics from Missouri. He is best known for innovating the early game design field, and for having a very controversial view of games’ role in society, and game design as an art medium.
Tanktics
While teaching Physics, Crawford wrote his first video game, Tanktics, in FORTRAN, for the IBM 1130 in 1976. He then rewrote the game in BASIC, mainly for multi-platform use.
The game was a coordinate grid-based game, with different types of terrain and tanks – these diffferences translated to different movement speeds. The game was not a success.
Atari
Crawford becan working for Atari in 1979, and founded the Games Research Group along with Alan Kay in 1982. He initially started working on the game Wizard for the Atari VCS console, but the project was abandoned.
He then began working on games for Atari’s series of home computers called the 8-bit family. His first games on the platform were Energy Czar adn Scram, and were programmed in Atari BASIC.
During his time on the 8-bit team, he began working on hardware-assisted displays. The first application of this project was used to create Eastern Front (1941), which is considered the first great computer-based war game. BYTE magazine called Crawford “easily the most innovative and talented person working on the Atari 400/800 computer today,” however he was laid off during Atari’s collapse in 1983.
Freelance and the Game Developer’s Conference
Crawford worked freelance after his time at Atari, developing several strategy games, including Balance of Power for the Mac in 1985. This game was a best seller and sold over 250,000 copies.
Chris was a founder of the Game Developer’s Conference, hosting the first conference in his living room in 1987. He served as a board member for GDC until 1994, when he was asked to step down.
He often stated that his goal was to create the best possible game and to also represent game design as an art form, and while in doing so he denounced the common game formats and even computer systems common in that time. He spoke out against “simple-minded fun” and strove to make impactful games and aspired to be the “Charlie Chaplin of the game world.”
His unconventional ways led to his renound “Dragon Speech” at the 1992 CGDC, where he declared that he wanted more exploration in the world of video game design and that he must leave the industry in order to meet his dream a reality. Using a dragon as a metaphor for his vision of video games, he said, “I have committed myself, I have dedicated myself, to the pursuit of the dragon. And having made that commitment … all of a sudden, I can see him! There he is, right in front of me, clear as day.… You’re so much bigger than I ever imagined, and I’m, I’m not so sure I like this … I’m not experienced enough, so I’m going to have to start learning. Today. Here. Now. Come, dragon, I will fight you. Sancho Panza, my sword! For truth! For beauty! For art! Charge!” He then charged out of the lecture hall and left the video game industry.
Crawford’s work now lives in the “interactive art” space, and he serves as the editor of the Interactive Entertainment Design magazine. In 2009 he launched a storyworld sequel to his popular game Balance of Power on his storyworld platform Storytron, but it was a colossal failure and was abandoned in 2012.
His personal website: http://www.erasmatazz.com/