Author: Raph Koster

Raph Koster is a multi-award winning game designer, virtual communities expert, writer and speaker. Check out his full bio to learn more.

  • The Sunday Poem: Since the Zombies Came

    Hours Categories The Sunday Poem
    Comments 2 Comments

    Between Left 4 Dead, and The Last Guy, I think something got into my head. 😉

    Since the Zombies Came

    Since the zombies came, you can’t get decent sushi;
    Zombie sludge, it spoils fish like nothing doing.
    And all the second hand stores, they had to close up shop…
    Stains just don’t wash out the way they used to, do they?

    Stuff that’s better – well, the horror flicks, of course. Duh.
    Extras just show up. And don’t need paid, or credit.
    Watch at home, though! Darkened cineplexes…
    Real bad news. Though crowds are thinner at the malls now.

    ‘Sides, the zombies, mostly peaceful, right? Like yoga,
    Tai chi, meditation, all that shit. OMMMM, then
    Nom nom BRAAAIIIINS. They mostly stand and stare in corners
    Seeing into places we cannot with jelly

    Eyes and dreaming of the sushi and the clothes, the
    Pay and credit, ordinary hungers (BRAAAIIIINS), good
    Posture, faces still intact, more moods than one… sad.
    Pity them; resent them, for the sushi’s sake.

    Worse? It could be worse, sure. Aliens are worse, right?
    Zombies get you, BRAAAIIIINS, you’re dead, undead, whatever.
    Aliens, you live on screaming, tentacles in
    Awkward places, slaved. I’d rather eat my friends, thanks.

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  • Revisiting the Laws

    Hours Categories Game talk
    Comments 4 Comments

    No, not me. Razakius, over at Razakius.com, who is working on what looks like an ongoing project to revisit every Law of Online World Design.

    This does happen every few years — someone decides to do a series revisiting them. I think this is healthy. The last new Law was “Socialization requires downtime,” which was a while ago.

    One of the nicest things about the Laws, I think, is that when you read them they are so clearly high level that so many of the little design cul-de-sacs the Diku genre has fallen into are obviously not applicable. Nobody has asked for “PvP is evil” or “PvP must always be in RvR form” or some such to be put on there, for example.

    On the other hand… never had to remove one yet, either. Not sure whether that is troubling or not!

  • Worlds.com patent suit hits NCSoft

    Hours Categories Game talk
    Comments 36 Comments

    A while back I mentioned that Worlds.com had made known the intention to sue over their virtual world patents.

    Now the other shoe has dropped, as Virtual Worlds News reports that they filed suit against NCSoft on Christmas Eve.

    The patents in question deal with the notion of network culling on the server in 3d worlds, trimming down the set of things sent to the client based on server-side visibility algorithms.

    Worlds.com really is a pioneer in the space — WorldsAway Worlds Chat being one of the early VW systems in the first half of the 90s. The earliest forms of the patents were filed in 1996, so pretty much all of the big 3d MMOs are later.

    That said, there’s still plenty of earlier work done on network culling and yes, even 3d, and of course there’s a lot of money at stake, so expect a fight.

  • Catching up on reading: Ysabeau Wilce

    Hours Categories Reading
    Comments 7 Comments
    Flora's Dare by Ysabeau Wilce
    Flora's Dare by Ysabeau Wilce

    Just finished the lavishly titled Flora’s Dare: How a Girl of Spirit Gambles All to Expand Her Vocabulary, Confront a Bouncing Boy Terror, and Try to Save Califa from a Shaky Doom (Despite Being Confined to Her Room), which is itself the sequel to the similarly sesquipedalian Flora Segunda: Being the Magickal Mishaps of a Girl of Spirit, Her Glass-Gazing Sidekick, Two Ominous Butlers (One Blue), a House with Eleven Thousand Rooms, and a Red Dog.

    Picture (if you can) an alternate San Francisco named Califa, where magic is spoken in sigils called Gramatica, where there lives an adventurous fourteen year old girl named Flora, descended from a noble house (all the noble houses have what appear to be semi-Scandinavian names, despite the liberal use of Aztec and other Mexican verbiage).

    Flora desperately wants to be a Ranger, like her paperback (sorry, “yellowback”) idol Nini Mo. She seems to be well on her way, as long as she doesn’t get killed what with the entanglements with the tentacles in the trendy club’s potty, the fact that her maybe-boyfriend has gone Goth with the Warlord’s daughter, her maybe-psycho father is forcing her to take lots of lessons over her school break, and oh, let’s not forget the city may crumble because of earthquakes and it’s possible that the precarious political situation of Califa may crumble, what with the anarchists and all.

    If Harry Potter had been written by China Mieville, maybe it would read like this. It’s worth your time.  Besides, the Official Web Site of Ysabeau Wilce gets across enough of the flavor that you should be able to decide that Califa (and Flora!) are worth visiting. After all, it’s not like you were going to read Twilight, right? You have better taste than that. Plus, the author’s name is Ysabeau. Come on, you can’t possibly resist.

    Am also midway thru Elantris, and so far it deserves its acclaim…

  • The Sunday Poem/Song in progress: The Road II

    Hours Categories Music, The Sunday Poem
    Comments 3 Comments

    Once you know the shape of the passage, and just how rough the road,
    You’d think that it would be easier, but it’s still so hard to go.

    We always have to part at the doorway, as I put on my shoes;
    You give me a jacket and that wistful smile, and say “Careful out there, silly goose.”

    Maybe the issue is the things that I can see that are left behind;
    There are parts of me you’re keeping close, and parts of me lost to time.

    There are boxes full of our old aspirations, and that one there holds our youth,
    There’s crazy music coming from that one — and that one used to have truth.

    When there are bridges to cross that sway in the wind, and adventure at every turn,
    Wild jungles full of mystery and so many new things to learn,

    I always mention that you could come, but you just always shake your head:
    “Too much to do here at home, someone has to make the bed…”

    But do these shelves hold all of the meaning?
    If the dust is blown off, can we fly with the sun?

    Or do these these pages sit here, quiet,
    until all of the sun setting is done?

    I try to remember to bring back a gift, from all those foreign climes
    But somehow most of them are dust, even if I get them home in time.

    “I swear, this was gold, that was precious diamond, and this one here was fragrant wine…”
    But you brush them aside with relief in your eyes, and choose instead to hold me tight.

    You say you know the shape of the passage, and just how rough the road.
    You act like it should be easy for you now, but it’s still so hard to let go.