Chris Crawford (game designer)

Chris Crawford
Chris Crawford at Cologne Game Lab in 2011
Born	1950 (age 66–67) Houston, Texas, United States
Nationality	American
Occupation	Video game designer
Years active	1976–present
Known for	Game Developers Conference
Notable work	Eastern Front (1941) Balance of Power
Website	erasmatazz.com

Christopher Crawford (born 1950) is a computer game designer and writer. He designed and programmed several important computer games in the 1980s, including Eastern Front (1941) and Balance of Power. Among developers he became known for his passionate advocacy of game design as an art form, founding both The Journal of Computer Game Design and the Computer Game Developers Conference (now called the Game Developers Conference). In 1992 Crawford withdrew from commercial game development and began experimenting with ideas for a next generation interactive storytelling system.

After receiving a B.S. in physics from UC Davis in 1972 and an M.S. in physics from University of Missouri in 1975, Crawford taught at a community college and the University of California.

Crawford first encountered computer games at Missouri, when he met someone attempting to computerize Avalon Hill's Blitzkrieg. While teaching he wrote an early version of Tanktics in FORTRAN for the IBM 1130 in 1976 as a hobby, then wrote Tanktics and an early version of Legionnaire for personal computers such as the KIM-1 and Commodore PET. In 1978 Crawford began selling the games and by 1979 "made the startling discovery", he later said, "that it is far more lucrative and enjoyable to teach for fun and program for money". He joined Atari that year, founding the Games Research Group under Alan Kay in 1982.