Chris Crawford on Game Design

Design Essays

I set to work on this concept, but progress was slow. I was attempting something completely new and different; almost every aspect of the game had to be invented from scratch. I groped about, attacking problems willy-nilly. To help sort out my thoughts, I decided to write daily design essays. Now, I have long known that an effective way to develop your thinking is to write it down. The arduous task of articulating your thoughts forces you to confront minor ambiguities, reject sloppy ideas, and tighten everything up. For example, I wrote The Art of Computer Game Design as an exercise to organize my own thoughts on game design. Now I decided to make the concept part of my routine. Every day I would write a single-page essay presenting ...