Chris Crawford on Game Design

Faces

If you want to have people in your games, you gotta have faces. Early on, I decided that faces were crucial to the emotional feel of any game. The work of Susan Brennan in the graphical representation of faces convinced me that face displays were feasible in games. My first attempt in this direction was the faces in Gossip; also important was the fact that these faces were emotionally manipulable, showing different expressions. The display of a Merlin face in Excalibur was another early example. The original Balance of Power lacked faces, but this was largely because I was sweating memory consumption; with the second edition of the game, I included faces of the advisors. In Siboot I went even further, using a generic face system that permitted ...