My last post on the need for the game industry to expand it’s storytelling skills and the stories themselves. Chris Crawford who made lots of early computer games (one game in particular I enjoyed was Balance of Power) and helped to found the Game Developer’s Conference (GDC).
In 1992 he gave a speech at GDC that went down in game designer history and in a meeting I was in this week somebody referenced it. Hearing it so casually mentioned made me actually want to watch it, and lo and behold it’s on YouTube. Crawford’s speech is referred to as the dragon speech and captured his enthusiasm for pushing the game industry into more exciting territory.
After watching the entire lecture I can’t help think that we’ve come so far but didn’t cover any distance.
In 2009, influential game designer Jason Rohrer and Crawford hung out during GDC and had some cameras follow them around. It’s a worthwhile watch.