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Friday, March 24, 2006
Raph Koster leaves SOE
Gamespot reports that Raph Koster is leaving his post of Chief Creative Officer at SOE. His blog isn't saying anything about the move yet, at the time of writing.
Raph is one of the influential game developers in the MMORPG business, having worked both on UO and SWG, and has written a book about the Theory of Fun. Unfortunately many people confuse "Chief Creative Officer" and "Game Developer for SWG" with "person responsible for everything which is bad about SWG", which clearly can't be true. So Raph gets a lot of bad flak that he doesn't deserve.
I don't know if there is a place in the MMORPG industry for "star designers". WoW is doing well enough without one. In a $25 million project it is obvious that no single developer can have designed all of the game elements. And things like bugs, or crashing servers, which tend to annoy the players the most, are totally out of the reach of game developers. In my humble opinion the problems that SOE has with their games (SWG, EQ2) are more related to sloppy execution than to inherently bad design. Sure, Jedi were probably a bad idea from a design point of view, but I found the bugs of SWG, and the bad user interface, a lot more annoying than Jedi.
Still game developers have some influence on gameplay, and it will be interesting to see what Raph is going to do next.
- posted by Tobold @ 8:47 AM Permanent Link
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I used to think Koster's design ideas were what was wrong with SWG - after a huge bruhaha over at Terra Nova on the subject I've since changed my mind.
Raph's Rants
I now think "Open-Ended" game design is just like anything else - it can be used for good or evil. Raph I think is one of those who truly (and simply) wants to empower players. There are a host of other game designers out there however IMO who are nothing more than virtual anarchists and don't want to create open-ended worlds so much as they want to tear down any semblance of structure and order because they don't like society period. They don't like people (in general).
On top of that they've convinced themselves that controlling everyone in the game world is impossible so they've gone the opposite route of creating worlds in which it's possible to isolate themselves from society. They use the open-ended model to "Get away from the ignorant masses” in other words. Raph, on the other hand, is a True Hippie - he just wants to free everyone.
I think the official statement is apt - Raph and Sony's goals "Don't Match". Sony is going after "Big Fish". That requires a more tradition “Closed System” along the lines of WoW. Raph IMO should be focusing on creating an innovative, open ended, grass roots sort of game along the lines of EVE Online.
Raph's Rants
I now think "Open-Ended" game design is just like anything else - it can be used for good or evil. Raph I think is one of those who truly (and simply) wants to empower players. There are a host of other game designers out there however IMO who are nothing more than virtual anarchists and don't want to create open-ended worlds so much as they want to tear down any semblance of structure and order because they don't like society period. They don't like people (in general).
On top of that they've convinced themselves that controlling everyone in the game world is impossible so they've gone the opposite route of creating worlds in which it's possible to isolate themselves from society. They use the open-ended model to "Get away from the ignorant masses” in other words. Raph, on the other hand, is a True Hippie - he just wants to free everyone.
I think the official statement is apt - Raph and Sony's goals "Don't Match". Sony is going after "Big Fish". That requires a more tradition “Closed System” along the lines of WoW. Raph IMO should be focusing on creating an innovative, open ended, grass roots sort of game along the lines of EVE Online.
# posted by 
: 24/3/06 13:08
: 24/3/06 13:08
SWG made me cry (a few times). But I have nothing but respect for Raph Koster. I can't wait to see what he gets up to next!
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# posted by : 24/3/06 14:38
: 24/3/06 14:38<< Home
