[zwaps]

Comparing oneself with Neo Einstein to start with led me to write a rather scathing reply here. A moment of reflection led me to delete it.

I think I genuinely lack context. I do not know the author, nor any of his games.

I know that in the wider context of the game industry, they are not defining moments - games that people consider milestones.

We also know that today's games feature much more "realistic" and complex systems than the affine or multiplicative equation the author gives us. After all, interdependent agents on different levels produce results that can rarely be described by such simple measures. Getting a well-defined, realistic, complex yet FUN game system from such agent-based approaches is hard, but ultimately the goal of most game designers.

It seems to me that the author may have had some initial insight, and got snubbed in the mid-eighties by other designers or successes. It further seems that he has since then not reevaluated the state of the game industry. Or, perhaps, he lacks the ability to describe his unique insights in terms the reader can understand?

[morelisp]

> I think I genuinely lack context. I do not know the author, nor any of his games. I know that in the wider context of the game industry, they are not defining moments - games that people consider milestones.

You definitely lack context. I think Crawford's artistic program is completely in the wrong, that the Erasmatron is a joke, and that narcissism is largely responsible for leading him down this path.

But Eastern Front and Balance of Power are seminal in wargaming and computer gaming, Siboot remains an oft-studied object, and the idea of the storytron was both reasonable and radical in 1993 even though Crawford ended up on a useless path developing it.

Crawford was a looming figure in the industry in the 80s, exited (rightly, and literally to applause!) to protest the commercial direction the industry was taking in the 90s, but then disappeared up his own ass for way too long. There's the oft-quoted line from Hamming about productive research, of which Crawford is probably among the most intense, and definitely among the most tragic, example:

I notice that if you have the door to your office closed, you get more work done today and tomorrow, and you are more productive than most. But 10 years later somehow you don't know quite know what problems are worth working on; all the hard work you do is sort of tangential in importance.

[zwaps]

That seems reasonable to me. Other figures in the game industry retain their relevance and are known to me, a contemporary. Crawford, instead, is not.

His writings are difficult from my perspective. He claims to be a genius in quite a few areas, including AI. However, in each of these areas, history has passed him by. None of his ideas seem substantial or important from today’s perspective.

And this is not, how he claims, only our fault for missing his genius. Instead, this person seems to be what we academics call "not well read".

His musings about AI do not predate the science. What he writes about, his work in the mid to late 70s, was already known in the 50s and 60s, as far as I can tell.

Similar to his insistence that game designers somehow do not know about systems, I think this is in part because he does not read or engage with work that is not his own.

It’s one thing to fail to communicate one’s work. It is another thing to ignore the work of other’s and use this to fuel one’s own impression of the state of the world.

Let me put it differently: To be a successful researcher or, I'd argue, developer, you have to learn to deeply respect the contributions of other people. This includes being honest about them. One needs to see deficiencies, yes, but also allow for the possibility that there are many geniuses that share discoveries - as frustrating as that may be. The second element of this respect is then how you engage with others. If one dismisses the approaches outright, one is not only usually unfair or wrong, one also quickly becomes disliked in any community. Internally, we all develop ideas, and we always like our own ideas. However, the process of science or progress is also fueled by interaction, and interaction requires respect. People with an overt superiority complex will always find it difficult to frame their contributions in a way that is accessible. And, with very eminent exceptions, will not really contribute to human progress.

Case in point, Crawford is obviously a deep thinker with important contributions to game development. I do believe you there!

However, from today's perspective, it is hard to find anything at all that one could consider important. Even if some inventions predate the state of the art at the time, our progress was guided by other people - people that were able to cooperate. From my perspective, his ideas were worked out either by people that predate him (or in parallel), or done better by other researchers in what followed. So while I lack context, and recognize that my opinion does not reflect the truth, the simple fact that Crawford shows close to zero respect for other thinkers ultimately leads to a state of the world where I find almost nothing notable, revolutionary or important in his writing - be it wrong today's or yesterday's perspective. Instead, I find that his website does not lend itself to a very charitable impression of this person. Most of all, because he implicitly insults other researchers that have at least his level of genius, and which I deeply respect.

Instead, I need someone like you telling me that yes, this man is or was important.

[morelisp]

I don't mean to give a charitable impression of him (I also don't have one), but only try to provide context I feel is missing here - a lot of people are reading this as "another indie game developer feels he didn't get his due" (boring) but the reality is "industry founder completely out of touch after 30 years" - which I think has more of a useful lesson for all of us. And that all of us (perhaps especially Crawford) should study modern history more deeply before passing any judgement.

> Other figures in the game industry retain their relevance and are known to me, a contemporary. Crawford, instead, is not.

It's hard for me to think of someone from Crawford's cohort who has remained more well-known than him, to be honest. From Wikipedia's description of the first GDCs:

About twenty-seven designers attended, including Don Daglow, Brenda Laurel, Brian Moriarty, Gordon Walton, Tim Brengle, Cliff Johnson, Dave Menconi, and Carol and Ivan Manley. The second conference, held that same year at a Holiday Inn at Milpitas, attracted about 125 developers. Early conference directors included Brenda Laurel, Tim Brengle, Sara Reeder, Dave Menconi, Jeff Johannigman, Stephen Friedman, Chris Crawford, and Stephanie Barrett. Later directors include John Powers, Nicky Robinson, Anne Westfall, Susan Lee-Merrow, and Ernest W. Adams.

Of those, I can only place Crawford, Moriarty, Westfall, and Adams off the top of my head. A few others I am familiar with their work if I follow through on the links, but can't easily associate the name with the product or company. Moriarty is the only one I would consider to have a current stature near Crawford's.

Keep in mind we're not talking about the usual "game dev ancient history" cohort of early PC developers - Romero, Carmack, Sweeney, et al. - here. This is a full generation earlier and for a set of machines that didn't come to dominate the world. Crawford exited the industry, after a long career, just as this phase was starting.

[zwaps]

I absolutely take your points and share your sense that this is unfortunate both for him and, likely, for the industry as a whole.

I did not want to imply that he or his contributions are in fact unimportant. Rather, the way he approaches communication leads to that feeling among the uninformed such as myself. The unfairness he feels seems to be, in part, a result of his own writing style.