Showing results by author "David L. Craddock" in All Categories

To politicians and parents, Mortal Kombat was a menace to society. To gamers, it was a way of life. From dedicated hustlers who put thousands of miles on their odometers driving coast to coast to challenge the top players in arcades, to fans who devote their free time to collecting action figures, setting world records, and plumbing the depths of its lore, the Mortal Kombat franchise has topped sales charts for thirty years, and its popularity shows no signs of waning. But before Mortal Kombat offended politicians and sold over 12 million units, executives at Midway saw it as filler.

In 1980, computers were instruments of science and mathematics, military secrets and academia. Stern administrators lorded over sterile university laboratories and stressed one point to the wide-eyed students privileged enough to set foot within them: Computers were not toys. Defying authority, hackers seized control of monolithic mainframes to create a new breed of computer game: the roguelike, cryptic, and tough-as-nails adventures drawn from text-based symbols instead of state-of-the-art 3-D graphics.

In 1994, the producers at MicroProse UK aspired to design a tactical game that matched or exceeded the success of their American counterparts. Nearby, a bespectacled teenage boy toiled away on his home computer, dreaming of the day his programming aptitude would catch up to the epic campaigns unfolding across his imagination. From his early experiments in board games to digital battlefields that lit up best seller charts, Monsters in the Dark charts the career of legendary designer Julian Gollop through the creation of 1994's X-COM.

Composed from exhaustive research and hundreds of personal interviews, the Stay Awhile and Listen series divulges the fated meeting that brought the two Blizzards together, the clashes that tore them apart, and their transformation from grassroots democracy to corporate empire. At the center of it all - Diablo, a hack-and-slash adventure through the darkest recesses of Hell that changed online gaming forever.

Orcs and humans. Angels and devils. North and south. Harmony and discord. Threatened by competition in the space they popularized, Blizzard Entertainment looks to the stars to build a new franchise and evolve into a well-oiled machine. No longer the underdog, Blizzard North takes Diablo out of murky dungeons and across deserts, jungles, and snowy mountaintops.

On June 27, 2013, Kenny and Teddy Lee were broke and jobless. After four years working together on smaller videogames, the two brothers had pooled their resources to create Rogue Legacy, a game exponentially larger in scope than any they had created before. Seven days and 100,000 sales later, they were back in the black. Their recipe for success: 18 months, countless arguments, a surprisingly popular game about holding one's bowels, and unwavering trust.

Prince Aidan Gairden's life was planned out for him 800 years before he was born. On his 16th birthday, he will take up Heritage, the magical sword wielded by his mother and generations of Gairden ancestors before him, and lead the kingdom of Torel into a new golden age of peace and prosperity.