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.

A stunning collection of essays by one of game design’s deepest thinkers. – Dr Richard Bartle, co-creator of MUD

…vital reading for anyone with an interest in knowing how games of any sort come about. – Hardcore Gamer

Koster isn’t just a talented designer; he’s a consummate storyteller… I’ve found myself spellbound. – The Ultima Codex

Ultimately, Koster’s Postmortems is a valuable compendium of insight and essays that has significant value for both developers and genre enthusiasts… Intentionally or otherwise, Koster gives form to the unicorn that so many of us have been chasing for a decade or more, and which always seems just out of reach. – MMORPG.com

 

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Postmortems is the first volume of a projected three that gather together many of the essays and writings that I have been sharing on this blog over the last several decades. This book focuses specifically on games I have worked on, from LegendMUD up through social games, and is a book of design history, lessons learned, and anecdotes. Richard Garriott was kind enough to write a foreword for the book.

It’s not a memoir or tell-all; the focus is on game design and game history. There’s still nowhere near enough material out there in print covering things like the history and evolution of online worlds (MUDs especially), in-depth dives into decisions made in games by the people who made them, and detailed breakdowns of how they worked. So I hope that this will be useful to scholars and designers, and that players might find it a fascinating glimpse behind the scenes. Just don’t expect salacious stories and secrets.

I trust the readers of this book will grow in the knowledge, understanding and ability to work within and help advance the industry, just as I felt from spending years developing games with Raph Koster.

– Richard “Lord British” Garriott de Cayeux

The contents

  • Early Days, which covers my apprenticeship creating board games as a kid, and the lessons I learned that way.
  • MUDs, which has design articles about DikuMUDs, design and administrative practices material on LegendMUD, a lengthy article on the struggles with MUD governance that we went through back then, and even samples from what MUDding was like (for the younger folks out there!).
  • Ultima Online, including the resource system, playerkilling, the evolution of the game economy model, “A Story About a Tree” and the aftermath, and more.
  • Star Wars Galaxies, including the whole postmortem series, a new overall design overview, and even materials I wrote to the players explaining our design philosophy. Oh, and of course, a new piece on the NGE.
  • Transitions, a section on the way in which MMOs changed and the impact they left on players over the course of the 2000s.
  • Andean Bird, the little art game I made back in the mid-2000s, with design diary and a transcript of the popular “Influences” speech that resulted.
  • Metaplace, which hopefully answers the lingering question “what was it?” once and for all, and covers not only the tech architecture but also has a frank postmortem of why it didn’t work. I also go into the social games we made afterwards, with some special love for My Vineyard.

Reviews and Press

Excerpts