Balance of Power: The 1990 Edition

In 1992 Crawford gave the "Dragon Speech" where he explained that he was going to leave the game industry to make something more interactive and artistic. After many false starts, this emerged initially as The Erasmatron, and later re-released under the name Storytron. Both systems were used to make highly complex interactive storylines, and as a demo, Crawford used Storytron to build a new game, Balance of Power: 21st Century. This version begins on 12 September 2001 and mostly involves the US's interactions with Asia and other emerging powers. It was not a success; Crawford himself describes it as "crap".

Around 2013 Crawford released source code of several of his games, among them Balance of Power, from his career to the public, fulfilling a 2011 given promise.

In 1986, Crawford published a book also called Balance of Power, which goes into great depth on the game, including the background of the politics, the formulas used to calculate prestige and related parameters, and an account of its (lengthy) gestation.