Sorry, firebones, "Balance of Power" Chris Crawford != "Patent 5771354" Chris Crawford. (Fwiw, I made the same assumption while I was listening to "This American Life" too.) I spent far too much time digging to get to the bottom of this identity question....the disambiguation is in the middle name/initial. On the patent filing, the inventor is Christopher M. Crawford. In video-game-Chris-Crawford's preface to his new self-published ebook on Amazon

http://www.amazon.com/Art-Computer-Game-Design-ebook/dp/B005...

he refers to himself as Christoper Charles Crawford. QED.