Balance of power
The game Balance of Power (1986) is about the geopolitical situation during the cold war. It aims to teach the player insight into the geopolitical arena by either playing the President of the US or the Secretary General of Russia. The book, written by the lead programmer, describes in a clear style the game rules and processes, and provides a valuable insight into the mind of a game designer. Its focuses on the four main challenges of the game: insurgencies, coup d'etat, Finlandization, and crisis, addressing each of these aspects in detail. Interestingly, the main concepts still apply in 2010. The author has made the text available online too
Stats for nerds
6recommend
11mentions
11people
2010–2022years
55% recommend45% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Off topic, but you just reminded me of the classic game Balance of Power, by Chris Crawford. He has some very interesting thoughts on global political power plays that definitely influenced me as a 20-something.
http://www.erasmatazz.com/library/my-books/balance-of-power-...
- > 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.
- Agreed, and thank you for pointing out the other posts. The remembrance of his friend was particularly affecting. I recall playing Balance of Power, and reading Chris Crawford's book on game design as a teenager in the early 90s. He's had an impact, beyond tilting at windmills and watching his friends grow old.
- For anyone lacking the context (I just read someone claim "I've never heard of this author or his games").
Crawford, Eastern Front and Balance of Power were a big deal in their day. These were always niche games, but for those in the know, they were brilliant.
You can read more about this period of videogame history in the freely available online book "Halcyon Days": https://dadgum.com/halcyon/
Feel free to disagree with Crawford, but please don't do it out of ignorance. Know your history. Otherwise you'll be like someone who argues Charlie Chaplin has no business arguing about cinema, because he doesn't ring a bell to you and who watches silent black & white movies anyway?
If there's one thing I take out of this: how easy we forget the history of computing and videogames. Past celebrities and heroes get forgotten, unlike with book and movie authors.
- Chris Crawford, the author of the brilliant (for its time) game "Balance of Power," wrote a book about the game and his design process. In it, he pointed out that the simple facts encodedc in the game--such as the GDP of Ghana or the number of troops in Mali--were unimportant, but the relationship between the facts, the cause and effect between actions countries take and the facts, those were the important things to understand.
Thsi comes up all the time when discussion programmer intervies. No, there is no point in asking if somone has memorized something they can find in Google. But their is a point in asking questions to elicit their understanding of the relationships, correlations, causes, and effects between the facts. Being able to Google the answer to a relationship is not the same thing as understanding a relationship directly.
- I wonder if there will be a "Finlandization" of software development (concept courtesy of Chris Crawford's classic "Balance of Power" game) where small devs and dev shops align with larger, protective entities that provide defensive protection in exchange for association with the aura of small, indy developers.
Think (evilly): Myrhvold's IV Labs or Apple or Microsoft or IBM offers a "Friends of IV/Apple/MSFT/IBM" program where for $495 annually (like a Apple Developer Connection subscription) you're guaranteed protection, get a t-shirt, give up some PR, etc.
Eh...
