Chris Crawford on Game Design

Thinking Big

In 1983, I was asked to attend a meeting in Southern California to discuss a standard for CD-I, a scheme to build a CD player that would include interactive elements. The standard was being put together by Sony and Philips. The meeting consisted of about 20 people: engineers from Philips, a few Hollywood people, and some Atari Research people, including Alan Kay and myself. Like any huge committee meeting, this was a ghastly bore and a great waste of time, as the engineers picked over lots of tiny details that would only be significant much later in the standards-setting process.

I had looked over the technical specifications and was disturbed by the limited processing power that the standard included: They were contemplating an ...