Essays
These are full-blown essays, papers, and articles.
Presentations
Slideshows and presentation materials from conferences.
Interviews and Panels
Reprints of non-game-specific interviews, and transcripts of panels and roundtables.
Snippets
Excerpts from blog, newsgroup, and forum posts.
Laws
The "Laws of Online World Design" in various forms.
Timeline
A timeline of developments in online worlds.
A Theory of Fun for Game Design
My book on why games matter and what fun is.
Insubstantial Pageants
A book I started and never finished outlining the basics of online world design.
Links
Links to resources on online world design.
All contents of this site are
© Copyright 1998-2010
Raphael Koster.
All rights reserved.
The views expressed here are my own, and not necessarily endorsed by any former or current employer.
Eric Zimmerman has run "Game Design Challenges" at several GDC's now. At each, he picks a difficult topic to design a game about, and then lets loose three designers to come up with a game based on the topic. I participated in the inaugural one in 2004, losing to Will Wright's "Collateral Romance" idea, which involved setting non-combatants down inside a first person shooter, with the task of making it to the other side a la Casablanca, and hoping that they would form attachments along the way. Warren Spector didn't come up with a game idea, and I presented what's below.