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The original MMO set in a galaxy far, far away, Star Wars Galaxies, is ending its online existence this December, making way for Star Wars: The Old Republic. Contracts expire and so too must the occasional online community. More »
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GDC executive director Jamil Moledina's updated his Director's Cut blog with a bit more news about the upcoming Game Developers Conference, cluing us into to the fact that Dave Jones, of Lemmings, GTA and Crackdown fame, will be spilling some beans about his latest project: An MMO. More »
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Gamasutra has a long (long) interview up with Raph Koster (lead designer of Ultima Online and founder of Areae). It's long. But Koster touches on a ton of stuff - the shift in game design, the ultra-casual market like Habbo Hotel vs. WoW, this idea of 'game grammar', why patents are a necessary evil, and is 'single-player gaming dead'? - and it's an interesting read. Even some interesting ideas on the us vs. them mentality present in the industry (or is it?): More »
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At the Austin Games Conference, game designer Raph Koster says that television isn't become kinda like gaming, but is flat out ripping it off. Koster points out: More »
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Harper's Magazine, where all the learned kids go for their gaming news, just published a piece on literacy in the video game age. It's a roundtable discussion with Jane Avrich, Steven Johnson , Raph Koster and Thomas de Zengotita. All smarty pants, no doubt. What did they talk about? Oh, Typing of the Dead and other stuff. They discuss game plot, which moves from "Can games teach narrative?" to "game plots are so crappy" and climaxes with "games don't even have good characters." Johnson adds: More »
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Master MMO designer and Ultima Online graduate, Raph Koster points out the emergent artificial life simulation created by a Second Life user in the non-game. More »
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Next Generation has released a list of their picks for the Top 100 Hot Developers. So naturally, we went on over, eager to feast our eyeballs on the luscious babes of gaming, perhaps dressed in bikinis leaned over a computer, pouring champagne on their glistening rumps. One thing's for sure: when you start promising the top 100 hottest anything, we expect to see some scantly clad babes. More »
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What if instead of weaving fire and ice through giant dragons, MMO-gamers healed, stitched and saved creatures for phat loot? Boing Boing points to bright mind Raph Koster's thoughts on a game that was just that - a healing adventure. From Koster: "Picture an MMORPG just like the ones today, but everywhere you see combat, replace it with healing. A six-man encounter would be a surgical operation that required teamwork. Soloing would be a brilliant doctor doing drive-by diagnostics. Raids would be massive experimental treatments. More »
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OGaming has a nice little interview up with Raph Koster, CCO of Sony Online Entertainment, and creator of Ultima Online (amongst other things). It's an easy and interesting read (especially the bit about static worlds going away), and Raph points to the future of MMOs from his perspective of things: More »
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