Chris Crawford and people games

Having worked in the game industry for sometime, Chris Crawford became tired with the stagnation of the games industry, which he described as being too 'deep' and lacking 'breadth'.

People games, as termed by Crawford, are games where the goals are of a social nature and focus on interactions with well-defined characters. They are described in Chris Crawford on Game Design as follows:

“

I dreamed of the day when computer games would be a viable medium of artistic expression — an art form. I dreamed of computer games expressing the full breadth of human experience and emotion. I dreamed of computer games that were tragedies, games about duty and honor, self-sacrifice and patriotism. I dreamed of satirical games and political games; games about the passionate love between a boy and girl, and the serene and mature love of a husband and wife of decades; games about a boy becoming a man, and a man realizing that he is no longer young. I dreamed of games about a man facing truth on a dusty main street at high noon, and a boy and his dog, and a prostitute with a heart of gold. This is a famous 'dragon speech' in which he describes the industry as a dragon, and 'leaves to fight it'