Chris Crawford On Games

The Guardian's Game Blog has an interview with opinionated games designer Chris Crawford. Insightful stuff.

What is the essence of interactivity, from your early games to the products you’re working on now?
It’s the choices, giving people lots of interesting choices. Actually, that’s Sid Meier’s definition of a good game too. It’s just that you have to give choices that are intrinsically interesting, and that’s why we have so intrinsically failed to address the female market. They are not interested in choices involving spatial reasoning and guns.

Social reasoning is one of the primary entertainment impulses for women. You know, figuring out who likes whom, allies and enemies and that sort of thing. That’s a major part of a woman’s psychological or emotional life. That’s what we should be doing. However it’s a lot more complicated. It’s easier to measure the trajectory of a bullet, but chasing people’s feelings is a much more difficult job.