Chris Crawford on Game Design

Getting a Job

In the summer of 1979, my teaching job ran out and I was looking for something new. My wife had just gotten a job in Silicon Valley, and I was back at our house (some hundred miles away), tidying everything up for the move. Every week or so, I would drive down to Silicon Valley for a day to look for work.

Silicon Valley back then was not at all what it is now. It had fewer people, less traffic, and more orchards. The big difference was in the people culture. The denizens of Silicon Valley were engineers who loved to build wonderful toys. The very streets crackled with excitement over the myriad of possibilities opened up by fast-moving integrated circuit technology. There were many more opportunities opening up than could possibly ...