Alan Emrich, the game designer and writer who coined the term ‘4X,’ has died

Alan Emrich, a designer and writer of board games and videogames credited with coming up with the term “4X” to describe sprawling, empire-building strategy games, has died. Emrich’s death was reported by friends in a forum post on the wargaming community website ConsimWorld.

Emrich was a notable figure in the world of boardgaming: His bio at BoardGameGeek says he was the founder of boardgame publisher Victory Point Games as well as multiple tabletop gaming conventions.

He was also a significant presence in the early days of videogaming, working on games including Castles 2: Siege and Conquest, Warlords 2, Conquest of the New World, and Master of Orion 3. His most recent credit listed on MobyGames is as a design consultant on the 2016 Master of Orion remake.

As well as making games, Emrich also wrote about them, which is where I came to know his work: He served as a longtime editor on Computer Gaming World, the preeminent gaming magazine of the 1980s and ’90s, including as its first-ever “On-Line Editor.” It was in those pages that he made what I would consider his most enduring contribution to the form, although it’s unlikely anyone realized it at the time: Creating the term “4X,” which continues to be used today to describe the subgenre of strategy games in which economic development and expansion is as important as military conquest.

While he didn’t use the term directly, he very clearly laid its foundation in his September 1993 review of Master of Orion (via CGW Museum), calling it a “quadruple-X” game, a play on the unofficial triple-X rating applied to porn flicks.

“I give MOO a XXXX rating because it features the essential four Xs of any good strategic conquest game: EXplore, EXpand, EXploit, and EXterminate. In other words, players must rise from humble beginnings, finding their way around the map while building up the largest, most efficient empire possible. Naturally, the other players will be trying to do the same, therefore their extermination becomes a paramount concern. A classic situation, indeed, and when the various parts are properly designed, other Xs seem to follow. Words like EXcite, EXperiment, and EXcuses (to one’s significant others) must be added to a gamer’s X-Rating list.”

“A longtime giant of the gaming world, both tabletop and digital, Alan founded VPG, taught game design in college before it was cool, and coined the term ‘4X’ for those games we all love,” wargaming community Armchair Dragoons wrote in a tribute to Emrich shared on Bluesky. “He’s the guy responsible for Master of Orion, made print-on-demand wargame publication a viable business model, never met a monster game he didn’t want to like. Alan’s influence will be rippling through the hobby gaming world for many years to come, and he is gone too soon.

“There’s a significant hole in the wargaming world tonight. Everyone raise an extra glass tonight in honor of a man happy to sling dice with any opponent, so long there was a good conversation during the game.”

A cause of death has not been released.