Chris Crawford on Game Design

I Get by with a Little Help from the Press

Balance of Power was published in September of 1985. It attracted a great deal of press attention. In particular, the New York Times Sunday Magazine assigned David Aaron, Deputy Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs from 1977 to 1981, to write a story about the game. Aaron wrote a long piece that concluded as follows:

…Balance of Power is about as close as one might get to the cut-and-thrust of international politics without going through confirmation by the Senate.

That story was reprinted in newspapers all over the country, and sales started climbing. By the time the IBM PC port was ready in the fall of 1985, publicity had grown and sales really took off. My game became a big hit, ...