Postmortems

Few game designers have shared as many lessons learned as Raph Koster. In a quarter-century of writings and talks, he has offered up game design lessons, online community theories, and candid self-evaluation.

This first volume of a three-book set of selected essays collects previously written postmortems and many brand new pieces. They are accompanied by historical material such as posts written for players, chat logs, speeches, design sketches, and more. The result is an inspiring historical look back at the development of virtual worlds.

These are the stories behind Ultima Online and Star Wars Galaxies, the story of the early art game Andean Bird and the story of the ambitious project Metaplace that aimed to build the Metaverse, including:

• “A Story About a Tree,” the classic piece from MUD days about whether our online bonds are real.
• “The Ultima Online Resource System,” a detailed design breakdown of the pioneering world simulation.
• “A Jedi Saga,” the popular tale of how an impossible design dilemma broke a world.
• “Influences,” a challenge to the game development community to pursue art.

Foreword

Dedication

Introduction

Early days

In Peru

Una carrera

My first game

MUDs

What is a MUD?

What is a Diku?

Announcing LegendMUD

A brief history of LegendMUD

LegendMUD

Scripting Languages in Diku MUDs

LegendMUD scripting examples

Beowulf

1950s and what a MUD could be

Moods

AFK chat

Living with playerkilling

Fumbling around with bad behavior

An Open Forum on the Future of LegendMud

New Immortal Structure

Player Code of Conduct

Immort Code of Conduct

MUD Influence

Leaving Legend

Alright guys!

Ultima Online

Ultima Online is Fifteen

Random UO Anecdote

Origin Culture

The Technology Stack

"Sharding" Came from UO?

The Ultima Online Resource System

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

How UO Rares Were Born

Use-based systems

The evolution of UO’s economy

Selling virtual property for real world money

Random UO Anecdote #2

Notes on "Making of UO" articles

The UO essays

A Story About A Tree

Revisiting the Garden of Remembrance

What Rough Beast?

Who Are These People Anyway?

So Let’s Get Practical

The Man Behind the Curtain

A Community Cookbook

A brief history of murder

The safe world

Storytelling in the online space

Two models for Narrative Worlds

Why Don't Our NPCs?

Is it a game or is it a world?

Is the future in smaller muds?

Postmortem

UO's influence

The End of the World

Privateer Online

Star Settlers

Privateer Online

Star Wars Galaxies

Comments from the Team letter

SciFi MMPs: Lessons learned

Talking to the players

SWG Design Process

MMO Design and Satisfying a Diverse Playerbase

What is the game ABOUT?

Balance and More

A Philosophical Statement on Playerkilling

Socialization and Convenience

Astromech Stats: Economy Stats

Forcing Interaction

Dynamic POIs

The Arts in MMOs

Hairdressing!

Treating Players Like Numbers

Do auction houses suck?

Jared Diamond applied to virtual worlds

Should we pursue balance?

Mailbag: Action Combat

The SWG postmortem series

Temporary Enemy Flagging

A Jedi Saga

SWG's Dynamic World

Designing a Living Society in SWG

The social glue

Did Star Wars Galaxies Fail?

The NGE and Community Building

SWG is shutting down

The End of a Galaxy

Transitions

HOOWAH! Player memorabilia

Speech at SyndCon 2010

Andean Bird

A Vague Game Idea

PKing Duck

Vague game less vague

Andean Bird

Influences

Metaplace

Metaplace

A MetaHistory

Original Metaplace one-sheets

Where did the Metaplace idea come from?

Reinventing MMOs

Life on Metaplace

Connecting to the wider world

Some Zone Design Lessons

The Great Meep-In

Metaplace Game Jam Postmortem

The Golden Egg

Why Isn't Money Points?

Metaplace Postmortem

Closing

Social games

Are Virtual Worlds Over?

The My Vineyard story

Conclusion

Index

About the Author