Posts tagged Raph-Koster 
Raph Koster categorizes his best game design blog posts
If you're looking for an entry point into the voluminous back-catalogue of game design posts sitting on Raph Koster's web server, look no further than his newest entry, which serves as something of a greatest hits listing. For those unfamiliar with Koster, most gamers associate him with ...
The Daily Grind: Who will be our MMO development heroes of tomorrow?
The lifespan of the MMO genre is still fairly short when you take general gaming into consideration. Fifteen years ago, most of us wouldn't have dreamed of what's available online today, thanks to the innovators who brought together graphical roleplaying games and the MUDs of the day. People like ...
The Guild Counsel: SWTOR is stealing my (character) identity!
Guild leading is often as much about managing personalities as it is about managing the nuts and bolts of the game. In previous columns, we've looked at all sorts of issues that guild leaders have to solve, and at the root of almost all of them is some sort of personality clash. Show me a nice ...
The Daily Grind: What's your favorite item-quality system?
Grey, white, green, blue, purple, gold. World of Warcraft may not have invented what's become the standard colors for item quality, but it's surely cemented the hierarchy in gamers' minds. Last week, Raph Koster suggested that these tiers of items are part of the "yuck" that leads to the loss of ...
Leaderboard: Play the game vs. play the system
Recently, MMO guru Raph Koster made some waves by lamenting the loss of immersion as a core game virtue. In a follow-up post to his first one, he clarified that he was speaking about the two different sides of game play and game development: "These are also two ways to play a game. You can come ...
Raph Koster: Immersion is not a core game virtue
Yeah, you read that right, virtual world fans. One of the more celebrated sandbox MMORPG developers is apparently throwing in the towel when it comes to immersion. Raph Koster wrote what can only be termed a lament on his personal blog today, saying that "immersion does not make a lot of sense in ...
Raph Koster talks about free-to-play models and whales
The idea of free-to-play business models can prompt a lot of venom from players who are certain that the model, essentially, is a trick. You'll be forced into paying for the game somehow, or you'll be able to pay extra money and walk away with all of the best stuff in the game. Raph Koster has a ...
The Game Archaeologist crosses Meridian 59: A chat with Brian Green (part 2)
Welcome to the second part of our interview with former Meridian 59 developer Brian "Psychochild" Green as he reminisces about running one of the oldest graphical MMOs in history. If you missed the first part, I heartily recommend you catch up on it before continuing further. And now, for the ...
Enter at Your Own Rift: The casual revolution in RIFT
The Fae Yule world event has arrived in Telara, and there's one part of the event in particular that really captures the holiday feeling. It's not the daily quests but the festive "shinies" that players can harvest around town, like mistletoe and the holiday candle. At first I enjoyed the fun of ...
Video series chronicles the evolution of MUDs to MMOs
If you're looking for a reasonably short video primer on the history of MMOs, look no further than a series of clips recently uploaded to YouTube. According to some genre heavyweights, though, you shouldn't take all the info presented at face value. Former sandbox (and current social games) ...
