Raph Koster - President Areae, former CCO Sony Online

A panel discussion featuring Raph Koster, President, Areae; Former Chief Creative Officer, Sony Online Entertainment; Lead designer for Star Wars Galaxies (SOE) and Ultima Online (EA)

Raph got started in virtual worlds back in the days of the text MUDs in the early 90s, working on LegendMUD. He was creative lead on the original Ultima Online and lead designer for UO Live and Ultima Online: The Second Age while working for ORIGIN and Electronic Arts. He then went on to be creative director for Sony Online Entertainment. From 2003 to 2006 he served as Chief Creative Officer at Sony Online. He's also the author of the acclaimed book A Theory of Fun for Game Design, and somehow finds the time to write constantly on his popular blog. http://www.areae.net/

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• Raph
• Koster
• Areae
• Sony
• Online
• Entertainment
• Video
• Computer
• Games
• Star
• Wars
• Galaxies
• Ultima
• Calit2
• CRCA
• UCSD

[Akrill]

He masterminded the original my friend...nothing to do with the NGE. He broke the mould for MMO's

[kaiwren75]

Designer Dragon is the reason UO was so awesome and revolutionary in the beginning. MMO gamers today owe everything to him imo. Since UO your freedom in MMOs has only gotten smaller as companies aim to control your behavior to increase their bottom line. MMOs are infinitely more boring and meaningless because of the EQs and the WoWs.

[Saerain]

Boy, what a bunch of arrogant comments.

[Saerain]

No one laughed at the betting pool on Paris Hilton? Bah.

[kaiwren75]

Raph Koster: Being safe from evil is, in my mind, an uneven tradeoff for the fact that you don't get to be heroes anymore, in that you can just opt out of fighting evil. It may be nobody wants to be heroes except when it doesn't count, when it isn't challenging, that people would rather fight "pretend evil" than the real thing, but I don't personally believe that. I still think people are better than that.

[zwandaba]

stop hating and get money

[DukeOfWarrenSt]

THIS is Raph Koster? I've never seen an image of him before, and now I can understand why. Not only does he sound like a higher pitched Paul Giamatti when he speaks, but he also looks like a bearded Garfield. What an arrogant. Fat. Fuck.

[IvanPlayStation]

you people don't even understand what he means.

[Huxley2k7]

Completely agree, fat arrogant nob end.

[hollyronne]

wow, what an arrogent piece of crap.

[Vyrquenox]

Yes this is the guy behind the swars galaxies travesty and who helped drive Garriot away from Ultima Online while he repeatedly drove it into the ground for as long as he was allowed (long enough)