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An Interview with Raph Koster
by Shayde

There are few MMO developers who have made an impact like Raphael Koster.

Back when MMO’s were text based MUDs, he helped bring LegendMUD to the online world. His work at Legend got him noticed by Origin Systems where he was hired as a developer and helped create one of the first real MMO ever, Ultima Online.

In 2000, Raph moved to Verant and was lead designer on a game many of us came to know and love, Star Wars Galaxies. His vision of an online game that was all about freedom and possibilities was something that few other games have come near realizing.

RealMMO : Many people consider you the Father of the MMO. Your accomplishments in the genre have helped define what kind of game many think an MMO should be.

Raph Koster : First off, I think I have zero claim to the title of “the father of the MMO.” I’ve spent too much time looking at the history of virtual worlds to make any such claim. People should be thinking instead of pioneers like Richard Bartle and Roy Trubshaw, John Taylor and Kelton Flinn, and Randy Farmer and Chip Morningstar. I feel lucky to consider 5 of those 6 folks friends.

RealMMO : Ok, maybe we give you too much credit, or you’re just too humble. From your perspective, what makes a good game?

Raph : I think what someone calls a good game is different for every person. In the book, I talk about how games are about identifying, learning, and mastering patterns. The thing about that is that everyone comes to a game with a different set of experiences, different games in their past, different life experience that means they have a different library of patterns to draw on. They also will have different learning strategies, so what looks like an easy pattern to one person might look insanely hard to another.

Fun happens when the right patterns, or game systems, meet a player with the right sort of expertise, basically. And everyone’s different. Some folks are bored silly by spreadsheet-heavy play. Others think that dancing is unchallenging, or that combat is repetitious and pointless.

I think a key skill for a designer is to be able to understand that simple fact. It’s easy to think that the patterns YOU like are the “right” ones, or to think that games can only have certain sorts of patterns in them. I think you can have great games that are very narrowly focused. But many of my favorite online worlds are the ones where you have a wide array of types of challenges, so you can try lots of stuff, and switch when you grow bored of something.

Sadly, that reality came and went, and so did Raph. Star Wars Galaxies underwent a major overhaul they called “New Game Enhancements” or the NGE. Most of the systems Raph created were tossed aside in favor of a simplistic third-person shooter style MMO that turned the players on their ear. It inspired most of the players to leave the game in anger… while others are trying to re-create the game with their own emulator.

RealMMO : You obviously know about the nge brouhaha, and the work on emulators to help recreate the game they loved so much. How do you feel when so many long for the game you designed?

Raph : Flattered, basically.

RealMMO : Do you think there's hope for those who long for Classic SWG?

Raph : I don’t think the design principles will be gone forever. Someone, somewhere, will make another game with the same qualities and characteristics and philosophies. Hopefully, they’ll make it better, and improve on it. It may not be Star Wars, though.

Could it be Raph’s newest project, Areae? On Thursday, December 14th, Raph announced to the online world the name of his next game. While little details have come out on exactly what type of game Areae is, you know it’ll be the kind of game that we have come to expect from Raph Koster.

But will it fit into an online game dominated by simpler, linear games like World of Warcraft?

RealMMO : Looking at the MMO genre as a whole, you have said WoW has set the industry back instead of moving it forward. Explain this view for us if you would.

Raph : I think WoW sets us back only in specific ways. I think it moves us forward in other specific ways. Blizzard, as usual, nailed polish, nailed guiding the player, nailed a look and feel. They took the old formula and put it in really snazzy bottles. That’s what they do best, and they are very very good at it – the best in the industry.
But they also didn’t pick up the ball and run with a lot of stuff that are growing trends in the MMO industry today – and what’s more, given their expertise, they probably never will. We’re seeing a lot of interest in stuff like user-created content, in-world economies in games like Eve Online, and so on, and we don’t see anything that sophisticated in WoW. WoW is very much a “theme park” sort of world, one which is about putting you on a ride and letting you experience it. There’s a lot of directions that online worlds are starting to grow in, and I think that in a lot of ways WoW is like the apotheosis of the old, rather than pointing a way to the new.

RealMMO : Some say that WoW was so successful because of its high level of polish and low level of bugs , where many companies (SOE, Dark and Light) have been accused of rushing things out half-done? Could this have been a lesson for other companies?

Raph : It’s certainly a huge lesson. But I think it’s important to realize that virtually no other companies can AFFORD the kind of patience and polish that Blizzard had. It cost them a fortune, and WoW is certainly among the most expensive games ever made. A smaller company simply won’t be able to deliver that – they’d fold before they could ship. They have to choose between size and quality. Or perhaps choose different definitions of quality altogether.

RealMMO : Looking at where the market is now.. what do you think the next big thing will be? Skill based sandboxes, or hand-held linear content? Maybe a "Sandbox with toys" approach? What do you think would be the ideal MMO?

Raph : Well, I hope the next big thing is what we’re working on!

If I had to sum it all up in one world, it’s “choice.” One of the things about the more directed games is that they really don’t give you choice. “You pays your money, you takes yer ride.” You don’t get to hop off midway or try out different ways to play. And while pretty much everyone enjoys a theme park ride at least once, the number of people who come back to it over and over is relatively limited compared to the broader array of activities in the world. We lose sight of the fact that WoW is big, but MySpace dwarfs it.

RealMMO : What's missing from the MMO industry right now?

Raph : Well, honestly, I personally am missing a game that I really want to play. Eve looks cool but takes too much time, and WoW is too linear and familiar for me – I burned out on the level grind very very long ago.

RealMMO : What does it take to develop a game? (In broad strokes).

Raph : Mostly, determination. Anyone can start making a game right now. All you need is something to write on. We get so hung up on the presentation, but you could “play” most of WoW with a deck of cards and some dice. Like most any other field, you have to just go DO it.

It definitely helps to have a deep understanding of how games work, on as many levels as possible. A good designer studies how things work, and in video games, a really good designer can talk to team members from any part of the project in their language, from code to marketing, art to UI.

RealMMO : Many think the Sci-Fi genre is highly underrepresented in the MMO market. Some say it's because elves are the popular games... others say the elves are popular because few are making Sci-Fi MMO's. Is it a chicken/egg dilemma?

Raph : I’m torn. I think that SF is associated with certain types of gameplay – shooting, above all – and that has worked against sci-fi MMORPGs. I also think that there’s something to be said for the argument that fantasy has really strong archetypes that it is easy to identify with.

But I also think that sci-fi can probably pull off a lot of that.

So now we look forward to Areae. Could it be the next big thing? Many MMO gamers will be waiting anxiously to find out. As Areae develops, RealMMO will keep you informed on the latest news, as well as provide a place for you to discuss, dream and pontificate HERE.

Lastly, we asked the most important question…

RealMMO : Can the members of RealMMO.COM be your next betatesters?

Raph : Some of them, probably.

There’s hope for us all.

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