Chris Crawford on Game Design

Chapter 22. Patton Versus Rommel

I started working on computer games because I wanted to build a better wargame. Wargames had been the focal point of all my early efforts. I thought that I had left all that behind me when I began work on Balance of Power. But as I was finishing up my unwar game, I started casting about for my next project. I liked the people at Mindscape and wanted to do another project with them, but we couldn't seem to agree on anything. Meanwhile, Electronic Arts, which had turned down Balance of Power, expressed an interest in doing a genuine wargame. At the time, there were two acknowledged masters of computer wargame design: Roger Keating and myself. Roger was in Australia, and I was in the Bay Area with EA. That made ...