graphics and multimedia

This is very personal book. The author shares his experience and knowledge with you, showing you the strenghts and weaknesses of his designs. What is important it looks he always worked alone ( as designer and programmer ), so you can see all the difficulties related with such lonely achievments. From time to time Chris compare his games with Sid's Mayer Civilization (1991), but he do not mention that this game was created by a team of maybe 12-15 people!
This book is also a wonderful essay of game development history.
How to create a game if processor of your computer does't know how to devide two numbers (there is not such assembler instruction)!
Chris also diagnoses that entire game industry is in crisis today. He argue that from quite a long time the most important thing during game creation is not a game itself or the gameplay but just a beatiful graphics! So today, almost every game has beatiful graphics but it is difficult to find any fun while playing! And I agree with him.
Game creation is the form of the art. From the other side, the game should be fun for the player. This is very important to keep track on both.

Chris Crawford has a reputation in the game industry for being a bit of a nut. But it is this nuttyness -- or original thinking -- that makes this book worth reading. Who else but Chris Crawford would list Siboot, his own game, as one of the most important computer games of all time?

Crawford's attacks on the game industry are for the most part accurate, although not always completely fair. His perspective on what makes an interesting game is unique, and contrary to most of the things that are hyped in this disposable industry. Not many people see things his way, but not many people have cared about computer games this much for this long.

Anybody who is familiar with Chris Crawford won't be surprised to know that his latest book on game design is littered with opinions! Also they wouldn't be surprised to know that there are some real gems of insight buried within the morasses of fluff and opinion. This book is a 'MUST READ" for that 19% of insight.

His rants, side tracks and "old fart stories" are always amusing, I am sure some people will take offense and unfortunately they probably wouldn't get past the first few chapters and hence miss out some great thoughts on game design.

This should not be your only book on game design in your library, but it should definitely be there. Chris's thoughts on creativity, his list of "games I would like to write" and analysis of his games are worth the entry price alone.

Overlook the ego, be amused by rants and stories, ignore the author's over use of a thesaurus to sound smart but most definitely take note of his insights.

Only 4 stars, but no books with this much bias can truly get 5.