Chris Crawford on Game Design

The Politics of the Game

At this point, I must point out that here is where I got to ply my own political agenda. One cannot develop expertise in a field without developing some opinions, and I'm no exception. While I wanted to be fair to all sides, I had to plunk down some values for the coefficients, and those values represented my own opinions about environmental problems. Although my own values are obvious in this game, the fact is that every game we produce reflects the values of the designer. The physicist who designs a hydrogen bomb can't shuck off responsibility by claiming that he was only following orders; there is an undeniable element of personal approbation required to work on any project. The same thing goes with game designers: ...