Viewing profile — Raph_Koster

https://www.raphkoster.com/2008/07/09/a-game-designers-core-... which leads to https://www.raphkoster.com/2014/01/15/a-vision-exercise/ and its critique counterpart: https://www.ra…

Towards the end of the article, I say this: "If you just make the same game, the one you know how to make, the players get bored because it’s nothing but problems they have seen be…

"Hard to play" has almost nothing to do with "the underlying game system is Hard in a complexity sense." And both are somewhat orthogonal to the complaint about "adding more stuff"…

This goes back to the motivations thing. For those who are motivated by narrative stuff, that opening works well. It sets up uncertainties and ambiguities that engage curiosity and…

Towards the end of the article I mention "some of us have been working out the rule set for how you can link loops into a larger network of problems for literally over twenty years…

No, I added all the images after writing the article. But the images ARE from the many many presentations I have given on game design, which can be found here: https://www.raphkost…

Most classic games are in fact built out of NP problems, or at least the upper reaches of PSPACE. https://www.raphkoster.com/games/presentations/games-are-mat... has an overview.

No, it's not a very local definition at all, it's actually a generalized definition for all forms of game and entertainment -- and art, even! You seem to be assuming I have a reduc…

1. As the article says, "People will be willing to go along with pretty simple and pretty familiar problems as long as the feedback is great." 2. For arbitrary n x m boards, Candy …

They're not stupid -- they're feedback. You get them as a reward for having done something, usually. But they are also not gameplay, obviously. https://www.raphkoster.com/2012/01/2…

Remember, it's about prediction (point 1 of the 12). Pure random cannot be predicted. From a prediction point of view, it is therefore ironically, an already determined result. So …

You might like this article: https://www.raphkoster.com/2012/01/20/narrative-is-not-a-gam...

I mention it because so many people reach blindly for dopamine as an explanation for everything and expect it to get mentioned. That's why I said "it’s tied to prediction; but it’s…

Frankly, I think you will be hard pressed to find a game that does NOT make use of repeated challenges. Especially when seen through the atomic and fractal framework the article gi…

The article indeed states that fun is different for everyone. The answer on inferring relationships between flavors of fun, and good colalteral fun activities, is in number 11. :D

1. This article, at its very core, says that grind-based games are less successful than games that are not based on grind. How you got the reverse out of it, I do not know. 2. This…

Original lead designer here. Quora has answers on on the tech stack in this thread: https://www.quora.com/What-was-the-technology-stack-driving-... Reddit has answers on the render…

Everyone just called them "servers." Not shards.

It was exactly that, a callback. In fact, the game opening cinematic recounted the story.

I'm an English major -- of course we knew about Chekhov's gun. :) You may want to check here regarding that particular article/video: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18749793

Our dividing line for massive in 1995 was 250, because most LAN play capped at 64, and MUDs achieved up to around 253 (the number of available file descriptors on a standard Linux …

You're welcome! We knew we were making something that could be impactful, but we really didn't have any idea how much impact it would have, and it's always amazing to hear stories …

WoW's crafting system is pretty strongly inspired by UO's. Actually, everyone's crafting system is pretty strongly inspired by UO's. That said, the big difference is that crafting …

Original lead designer of the game here. Richard's recollection is flawed on this (he wasn't close enough to the tech to know why it failed). Reason #1: the closed loop fell victim…

Actually, we do in fact say that X is a jerk over the telephone but less so in person. It's pretty well studied. The generic term is "psychological disinhibition" and it used to co…