Chris Crawford (game Designer)

After receiving a B.S. in Physics from UC Davis in 1972 and an M.S. in the same from University Of Missouri - Columbia in 1975 , Crawford taught at a Community College and the University Of California , then turned his Game Design hobby into a job at Atari in 1979 .

He worked on a number of games at Atari, including the best-selling '' Eastern Front '', and as manager of their Games Research Group, wrote '' The Art Of Computer Game Design ''.

Laid off in the Atari collapse during the Video Game Crash Of 1983-1984 , he went freelance and produced the innovative '' Balance Of Power '' in 1985 , which was both highly-regarded and a best-seller, reaching 250,000 units sold. Additional creative strategy games followed, often taking commercial risks in order to explore new creative ideas (such as Fog Of War in '' Patton Versus Rommel '').

The Game Developers Conference, which now draws over 10,000 attendees each year, began in 1987 as a series of Salons held in Crawford's living room with his game design friends and associates.

More recently Crawford has been working on the Erasmatron , an Authoring Tool for interactive electronic Storyworld s (see Interactive Storytelling ).

BOOKS