Raph Koster

If you missed the STARS REACH trailer, here’s another link to it! #mmo #mmorpg #sandbox youtube.com/watch?v=ZRd5xi…

@osamadorias Haha, ironically I just did this exact design task over the last two days!

Puzzle Design is hard. Go ahead: craft a puzzle that was believably put together by an advanced ancient civilization to protect untold treasures successfully for thousands of years ... ... and it has to be solvable by the average gamer in less than 5 minutes.

@DamonWilkinso11 @_Floura_ UO is where they were basically invented. Pet systems in earlier games were limited to summoned elementals mostly. Crafting as we know it today was essentially introduced into videogames in UO.

@_Floura_ I mean… Thise are pretty standard in MMOs. Mabinogi has those.

A sizeable portion of the skills showcased in Aincrad in particular are taken straight from Ultima Online, most notably Cooking, Fishing, and Blacksmithing. Even Beast Taming (known as "Animal Tamery") comes directly from UO, and both that and Blacksmithing were pathways Kawahara did actually pursue for himself during his time in UO, which directly inspired Silica's and Lisbeth's stories. uo.com/wiki/ultima-on…

@_Floura_ That said, though, Theory of Fun has nothing about UO in it. For that you want my other book Postmortems. :)

@_Floura_ There are episodes of the first season of the anime which are directly drawn from specific bugs and features in UO. The player killing in town was taken right from the game. So was much of the peaceful play: cooking, housing, and fishing. UO pioneered those in MMOs.

Call me deeply autistic, but I also got my hands on a book about game design from Raph Koster, one of the lead developers of Ultima Online, since UO is one of, if not the single biggest inspiration for Kawahara's writing when it came to SAO. Plus I have an interest in diving deep into game mechanics as a whole. 😛

As usual I have signed all the copies of my books at the @Official_GDC bookstore!

@Stretchedwiener The context of the original quote is that the game system didn’t make you cry, the story did. We’ve known for centuries that stories can make you cry. ;)

"Game designer Raph Koster feels that Floyd's death is "cheating" because it occurs in a cut scene." From Wiki - really @raphkoster ?

When Floyd died, I cried.

@MadisonRaeGun I’m trying to bring back the vibe with Stars Reach!

I wouldcry tears of joy if STAR WARS GALAXIES ever came back (pre-CU patch btw). This game was magnificent; before WoW defined the MMO genre as a theme park ride, MMOs were weird and open and esoteric. SWG had player housing, playing neighborhoods, bars, communities. I miss it 😔

@liminal_warmth @rebelempiricist Well, some have. But yeah, this is very much not a hot take… but there’s this odd perception I’ve seen esp on Reddit that WoW classic and EQ are sandboxes, that WoW was a small scrappy project (!)… so I get where you are coming from.

@rebelempiricist They've never read Raph's treatises.

Hot take: By Raph Koster's definitions, WoW has always been a theme park by design with the rough edges of gritty world simulation sanded down, so continually moving in the direction of mass market appeal was a foregone conclusion at the outset

@RGTreasure All depends on scheduling… can you drop me a line via my website maybe?

@raphkoster Raph, would you consider coming on our Podcast and talking games?

Recommended posts, 2017-2025: It's been over five years since the last time I gathered up recommended posts in one place and added them to the menu above. I figured I was due. As usual this will include talks and interviews as well as articles. raphkoster.com/2025/11/26/rec…

JustaMirage has once again impressed the dev team with his construction of a helicopter.

My last and final tweet <3 telegra.ph/The-last-messa…

@akspad I have become convinced that if you are an inhabitant of a preferential attachment network, you only ever want to live in ones with a certain degree of connectivity. Put another way: flat or steep power laws both suck to live in. Midrange is best. :)

Interesting read by @raphkoster - a practical example of when a power law can be detrimental to an otherwise reasonable system. raphkoster.com/2017/09/22/310…

Today I came across a project that rebuilt all of Tatooine from SWG in VRChat, and another that is recreating all of UO as a Valheim mod. Kind of wild to see.

Holiday 🎄 Fireside Chat 🔥with Raph Join us for a delightfully festive and exciting Holiday Fireside Chat, with Carneros, Frommy, Leric, and our special guest, Raph! youtu.be/827I344-VXY

@zimbatsu @patrick_oshag Aww thanks. I assume you meant raphkoster.com/2025/11/26/rec… :)

@patrick_oshag A great summary of past writings of @raphkoster if you want to dig into everything games - there are incredible posts for weeks of reading.

Best thing you’ve read lately? Any topic

I never posted widely about the public health simulator design I wrote as Covid was shutting down the world. Until now. raphkoster.com/2025/11/16/loo…

Today we reveal our Stars Reach development roadmap. More than a timeline, this is a full-featured living document. Click on individual cards for more information. Watch as cards move between categories as development progresses. We want your feedback. starsreach.com/roadmap/

This update went up today. Can't wait to see what people do!