Chapter 26. Patton Strikes Back

It was my interest in wargames that brought me into the computer games universe. My first two wargames, Tanktics and Legionnaire, were groundbreaking in their time, but improved computer hardware had long since left them behind. Patton Versus Rommel was a good design, but again, the march of technology made it look pathetic. In the summer of 1990, after completing Balance of the Planet, I was ready to try my hand at something new. I very much wanted to tackle the problem of interactive storytelling, but I knew that would be a financially risky effort. It was safer to do something tried and true, and I sensed a market opportunity in the wargames field.

Wargames had continued to develop during the 1980s, but they had become increasingly specialized. In the early 1980s, board wargames were still the dominant form, and computer wargames were compared against the board games, never faring too well. As the decade of the 80s progressed, however, computer wargames grew richer and more complex, so that by 1990, they rivaled the board wargames. Everybody could see that board wargames were dinosaurs on their way to extinction. Curiously, as part of this process, computer wargames tried to mimic board wargames as closely as possible. Most companies used hexgrids because that's what the boardgames used. One company even presented its units as on-screen cardboard counters, just like the boardgames!

All this bothered me; I didn't like to see the hardcore gamers take over the industry. I felt that a healthy industry would have a wider array of games, including games for beginners, but all the games on the shelves were huge, complicated affairs that only the aficionados could appreciate. That deficiency, I decided, would set my goal. I would build "a wargame for the rest of us," an alteration of Steve Jobs' marketing slogan for the Macintosh.

This led me to three fundamental design principles that guided my work.



Chris Crawford on Game Design
Chris Crawford on Game Design
ISBN: 0131460994
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2006
Pages: 248

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