Postmortems
Description
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.
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Person
Content
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
