December 22nd, 2020
This is the title of an article I wrote for Computer Gaming World magazine in the early 1980s (probably 1982). I was able to find it on the Web and copy the text. Here it is:
Ed. Note: We are pleased to announce that Chris Crawford will be joining CGW as a regular contributor. As the designer of the highly acclaimed Eastern Front (and others) and as a prolific writer/speaker in the computer entertainment field, we knew that Chris was a talented fellow. But it was not until Chris submitted the following article that we discovered that he is also deeply disturbed. Welcome to the staff, Chris!
From where do game design ideas come? How do designers get their ideas? There is no simple answer to these questions, for they dig close to the very heart of an intensively creative process, and creativity as a human activity remains resistant to analysis. Because of its emphasis on fun, skill in game creation is frequently associated with a sense of humor. Sometimes this sense of humor manifests itself in game designs whose market value is, shall we say, limited. Yet, these designs reveal a side of the game design process that few outsiders see. With this in mind, I would like to present a few of my own outrageous designs; designs which were never produced.
My first such design dates from 1975, before the advent of home computer games. This game was a board wargame, and was inspired by the fad for games of ever larger scale. The game was titled "Bore in the East", in mock homage to the great SPI blockbuster,War in the East. The map showed Germany and Russia, with two gigantic hexes overlaying them. Two gigantic cardboard cutouts represented the two opposing armies, German and Russian. The combat results table insured that the game would last exactly one turn, with the Germans losing five times out of six.
If the player flipped over the two counters and the combat results table, he obtained a new game, titled "Blasto-Cremo: the Ultimate Man-to-Man Game". Each counter showed a stick figure holding the lanyard on a gigantic cannon. When placed on the map, the two cannons faced each other. Players were given only one possible option: to fire their cannon. Combat was executed simultaneously, and the combat results table admitted but a single possible outcome: the death of the target.
It took several years for me to gather up the courage to make a second attempt at humor. By this time I was with Atari, writing programs. A fellow programmer by the name of Tod Frye suggested an interesting idea for a game, which I developed and implemented. The basis of the design was the then current fascination with the so-called "first-person" games. These are games in which the player see on the screen the same scene that he would see with his own eyes if he was on the scene of the game. Most games are "third person"--you see the game situation from the vantage point of an observer at some distance from the action. You see yourself as an impersonal square, dot, or blob. For example, Star Raiders is a first person game, while Pac-Man is a third person game.
Tod's suggestion was that the first person concept be applied in an entirely new way: to a firing squad game. I liked the idea so much that I went home and threw it together over the weekend. The game starts with a little stick-figure man on the screen. Four little stick-figure men come marching across the screen, stick-figure rifles on their shoulders. All the while the player can hear their little feet marching. The first little man squeaks a command; the men halt. A second squeak prompts them to turn to face the player. A third squeak, and they aim their rifles out the screen. A fourth squeak, and the player hears a loud explosion, the screen flashes bright white, and a fraction of a second later, turns black. The game is over. I called it "First Person Firing Squad".
A few months later I designed a programmed yet another laugh-packed game, generally known as the Funny DOS. This game masqueraded as a perfectly normal Disk Operating System, except that its performance was... nonstandard.
For example, the Atari DOS includes a menu item called RUN CARTRIDGE. This command normally transfers control from the DOS to whatever ROM cartridge is in place. In my DOS, however, the command was more direct, more immediately recognizable. Upon entering the RUN CARTRIDGE command, the player saw the word CARTRIDGE appear on the bottom left of the screen with two tiny legs protruding from underneath. The tiny legs worked frantically, generating a sound halfway between "pitty-pat" and "clop-clop", and the word CARTRIDGE galloped across the screen.
Another command, the LOAD FILE command, captured the true essence of excellent user friendly software design. The command is supposed to load a file designated by the user. In my DOS, however, the player/victim who is unfortunate enough to enter a LOAD FILE command is first asked to name the file to be loaded. So far everything is normal. Upon providing this information, however, the player is then asked, "ARE YOU SURE? (Y/N)". This is somewhat abnormal for a command of this type, but most people have seen it before, so the player/victim types "Y" and continues. The program then asks, "THE ENTIRE FILE? (Y/N)". This is definitely nonstandard. But the player/victim is a patient person; he mumbles something to himself and presses "Y". He is of course asked, "ARE YOU SURE? (Y/N)". If he has the patience to type "Y", he is at last rewarded with the question, "WHAT FILE WAS THAT AGAIN?".
My creative urge was not to be stifled by the fainthearted protestations of those less enlightened than I. When the hit movie "E.T." was released, I along with millions of others dabbed away my tears when little E.T. died and cheered when he recovered. And as I left the theater, warm of heart and wet of eye, I knew that I had to design a great game around this noble tale. After weeks of creative agony, I had my design.
The game starts with a simple landscape and a blue sky. In the remote distance, a tiny brown dot is moving toward the viewer. As it approaches, it grows larger until the player can recognize it--why, it's little E.T.! He is speaking to the player! "Home!" he says longingly, "E.T. phone home!" As he nears the player, he stretches his little arms out in supplication. Just then the player hits the trigger button on his joystick. Two powerful turbolaser bolts from the bottom of the screen converge on E.T., blasting him into little bits that float downward.
At this point, the player hears a cry from the side of the screen. "E.T.! What has happened to you, E.T.?" A little boy emerges from the side of the screen and runs toward the center. It's little Elliot! As he reaches the center of the screen, the player again hits the trigger, reuniting Elliot with E.T. The player is awarded points for picking off Elliot's baseball cap as it floats down.
When my E.T. game failed to win the critical acclaim it so richly deserved, I turned my attention to another game. This game, called "AIRSPACE DEFENDER", is best described through the advertising blurb I prepared:
"This is THE action-packed game of aerial combat! It puts YOU in the cockpit of a high-performance SU- 15 fighter, locked in a duel to the death with a deadly unarmed Boeing 747 loaded with hundreds of ferocious passengers!"
My agent assures me that he can sell millions in a certain foreign country...