Alan Emrich

Alan Emrich is best known as a writer about and designer of video games, who coined the term "4X", contributed to the design of Master of Orion and Master of Orion 3, and wrote strategy guides for video games. Before the rise of video games Emrich wrote about and designed board games and organized conventions about them. He currently runs a small game publishing company and lectures in game design and project management. In 2001 Emrich received the Blomgren / Hamilton Memorial Award for Lifetime Achievement from ConsimWorld.COM.

4X games

Emrich coined the term "4X" ("eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate") in his 1993 review of Master of Orion in Computer Gaming World, describing strategy games that involve exploration, expansion, and exploitation of territory, and extermination of opponents. The design of Master of Orion includes several suggestions he and Tom Hughes made.

Until April 2002 Emrich was a lead designer of Master of Orion 3, which attempted to add a 5th X, eXperience, to the genre. Then he left the developer, Quicksilver Software, for reasons neither party wished to explain.