Inventor: `I Know What Kids Want'

Camberley Crick 12 years old Co-designer of computer games

Accomplishment:Inventing the concept and designing nearly all the graphics in a new Nintendo computer game - Dudes with Attitude - released two weeks ago through a California company. Working with her father after school and on weekends, Crick says that, in four months, she put together the six "little circular dudes with personalities" who march through doors, tubes and "attitude converters" in 32 different levels of the game, avoiding the mouse with fangs and other "bad guys" - all in an effort to accomplish the game's main objective: collect jewels.

Crick, a seventh grader at Forest Ridge School and granddaughter of Francis H.C. Crick, who with James Watson and Maurice Wilkins, won the Nobel Prize in 1962 for determining the structure of DNA, says she plays computer games an hour or more a day. "I'm not a total Nintendo fan," she claims. "They're sort of boring once you play them enough. Usually, I play on Amiga. They have better graphics."

She admits she did not do all the work on the game. Her father, Michael Crick, is a professional computer-game designer whose work includes the popular Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade computer game. He took care of all of the programming on Camberley's game. But Michael Crick is quick to credit Camberley with making sure the game worked and was packaged the way she wanted it. "She's very strong-willed. I call her a baby Margaret Thatcher."

The game, which is set in the Caribbean, is being produced by American Video Entertainment Inc. of San Diego, a subsidiary of computer-chip designer Macronix.

Secret: "I have a lot of computer experience. I mean, a lot," Camberley Crick says. She started playing computer alphabet games at age five. "My family has been a computer family as long as I've been alive," she says. The Cricks currently own a dozen computers, most of them for game playing. She also has taken classes in computer art from leading computer artists.

Camberley admits, too, that her age was a big help. "Because I'm not an adult, I guess I what kids want. I know what games I like to play and what games appeal to other kids better than my dad does."

"I came to rely on her judgment," says her father. Camberley and her three siblings also consistently top their father in playing computer games.

Quote: The hang-up with most Nintendo games is "you just blow bad guys away and get to the end. There's no problem-solving."

Setback: The hardest part of drawing the graphics for Dudes with Attitude was balancing school and work. She and her father had only four months to finish the project. "When it came right down to the end, there was a day I didn't go to school," she admitted. "I wasn't really skipping school. I was actually being productive."

Advice: Don't procrastinate.

Reported by Times East bureau business reporter Scott Williams.