The Art of Computer Game Design

Author(s): Chris Crawford
Publication Date: 1982, published online in 1997

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Books review:

This text is an electronic version of the original The Art of Computer Game Design, written in 1982 and it has been long out of print.

Chris Crawford, a game designer, wrote this text in the golden age of of arcade games. It was the age of Space Invaders, Pac Man, Defenders and all other classics. It was the age of coin shortage. It was the first time in recorded history that the whole concept of game design was fully exploited.

Crawford started with the definition of game. From here, we go through the history of games, ancient and modern games, why people play games, game taxonomy, the game technology (written in 1982 but still worth a reading) and the game design itself.

In the final chapter, Crawford presented us with a real experience of designing a commercial game, Excalibur. It was a very rocky experience, and the author actually never managed to design a game in complete accordance with the concept described in earlier chapter, an idealized game design sequence. This should be the most precious chapter in this book.

Intended Audience:

Fast forward to these days, many of the technology discussed in this book in now obsolete. Game designers are no longer bound by the same hardware and software limits to build their wildest ideas. But remarkably, none has changed in terms of the game design itself. Game designers still faced with the same question asked by their predecessors 2 decades ago: how to make a game that rocks? And it seems many of the problems are remain the same.

Students of game design school, game designers, or anyone who want to design a game should find this text valuable.

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