FROM THE ARCHIVES OF PRAGPUB MAGAZINE, JULY 2017

Chris Crawford vs. the Dragon: One Man’s Quest to Remake Gaming

By Michael Swaine

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He was at the top of his game. And then one day he walked away from it all.

This is no way to fund a software project.

This is no way to fund anything. There is no funding here at all. No seed money, no salaries, no promise of money to come.

“The ultimate goal … is to have lots of people like you writing Encounters that we will include in the final game. There will be no payment of any kind for your services. This entire project is a non-profit community effort in which nobody gets paid.”

And the user experience is encumbered by what the author blithely calls user animosity. There is no Undo. It appears that one user can easily overwrite the work of…