Well, that was a waste of $19.95.

The big problem with game play: the game did not give you enough synthetic experience to make useful decisions.

Compounding the big problem, there was stuff going on that was (a) absolutely inscrutable (i.e., you as the player had zero insight into the decision-making used by the AI) and (b) horribly unrealistic. (For example, aiding the Afghan insurgents could very easily start World War III, despite the fact that it had been underway for several years. Indeed, it was ridiculously easy to start a nuclear exchange.)

The collapse of the Warsaw Pact and the end of the Cold War was absolutely impossible to achieve.

I tried the Storytron Balance of Power 2009. It’s even worse. As the US player (the only role possible), you have exactly zero useful moves.

I am convinced that Balance of Power series reflects less any real sense of international relations and far more Chris Crawford’s political biases.

Chris Crawford is a blowhard who yaks endlessly about gameplay but in the end doesn’t really know how to make playable games.

Until then… I’ll get on with actually enjoying myself, thanks.

I’m actually amazed he’s released/releasing a game because he proclaimed at that talk that “I do not make games”, because games are toys and toys are unworthy and beneath him. As this was the Game Developer’s Conference you can imagine this went down about as well as a silent but deadly fart in an elevator full of nuns.

Has he finally realised that the eternally pretentious field of “interactive storytelling” (which he declared to be the new coming in video-based entertainment) is nothing but a masochistic exercise in self-flagellation? Has he returned to making games in order to genuinely find new ways to develop the artform? Or is he desperately trying to bring in a few quid by trading off being moderately well-known, somewhere on the B-list on a good day, more than two decades ago?

I neither know nor, honestly, do I care. When the time comes for Chris Crawford to move on to the next world, the sum moral worthiness of the human race will increase. The man is pond scum – and his games, or interactive stories? Even worse.

But it was earlier, maybe around 1986 or 87.

Does he even NEED Java to do that? And does he understand the difference between Java and Javascript? I didn’t stick around long enough to find out.

Specifically, in Balance of Power you try to advance your geopolitical position by selecting minor countries to intervene in. Then you make a request, demand, or threat. If the country refuses all of your threats, the game ends and you get a snotty lecture.

Really, that’s about the size of things.