Raph's Koster Website
Raph Koster's personal website: MMOs, gaming, writing, art, music, books
http://www.raphkoster.com
URL
Last update
1 hour 43 min agoJuly 23, 2008
17:47
Zynga has raised a bunch of money to keep going after their target of building a network of more casual games — a sort of Internet version of a publisher. In fact, ex-EA Chief Creative Officer Bing Gordon has joined their board.
Zynga CEO Mark Pincus says:
He is super-involved in product strategy, brings the gaming DNA [...]
Categories: Bloggers
02:53
DuoCenti: The Murloc’s Family
This late in the evening, Mrgurlargl was the only one still awake. The others were curled around the campfire, full of wine and food and sleeping soundly. He couldn’t sleep, though, he was too proud, too excited to sleep.
“Die murloc filth!” Loldude247’s assault was swift. His sword sang death even [...]
Categories: Bloggers
July 22, 2008
18:10
PlayCrafter is launching open alpha, joining all the others: Sims Carnival, Gamebrix, Popfly… Looks to me like they lean heavily on Box2d.
One of the things about all of these is that they almost force a game grammar approach to things, in a way.
Categories: Bloggers
July 21, 2008
21:27
For those curious about the tech behind the Electric Sheep’s WebFlock platform, here’s a glimpse from a comment posted on Clickable Culture:
…the avatars are typically created in Maya or Max but they are rendered into sprites. That doesn’t prevent avatars from being individually personalized, but we haven’t finished that capability yet in our feature set.
You [...]
Categories: Bloggers
16:15
Tor.com, the new website for Tor Books, has launched officially. And they’re offering up for free download the bunches of books that they were giving away to newsletter subscribers in their run-up to launch.
Among the books you can grab in DRM-free formats: Old Man’s War, Spin, Farthing, Crystal Rain, and much more. Plus a zillion [...]
Categories: Bloggers
07:53
This week’s poem is a meditation on good and evil and faith and logic via Principia Mathematica, based on the news this week that some genes for violent antisocial behavior have been identified.
It turns out that up to one percent of the population may have these genes. But they do not always express, because nurture [...]
Categories: Bloggers
July 19, 2008
05:21
Dr. Horrible is complete, and it’s brilliant. Go watch it now, before it goes away on Sunday.
BTW — low budget? The credits go on for a while…!
Categories: Bloggers
05:21
Dr. Horrible is complete, and it’s brilliant. Go watch it now, before it goes away on Sunday.
BTW — low budget? The credits go on for a while…!
Categories: Bloggers
July 17, 2008
19:43
The Electric Sheep Company has launched WebFlock, which is an “under 100k/year” Flash-based solution for building white-label virtual worlds. ESC will do the hosting and presumably the work of making the world; their first customer is the TV show The L-Word.
Many of the articles and commentary are comparing it to Lively, but the comparison seems [...]
Categories: Bloggers
19:43
The Electric Sheep Company has launched WebFlock, which is an “under 100k/year” Flash-based solution for building white-label virtual worlds. ESC will do the hosting and presumably the work of making the world; their first customer is the TV show The L-Word.
Many of the articles and commentary are comparing it to Lively, but the comparison seems [...]
Categories: Bloggers
July 16, 2008
19:07
For those wondering what’s up with Metaplace, we have a July Update up on the company blog that should serve to catch you up. We’re really really busy these days, gearing up for going beta.
We’ve seen some absolutely amazing work being created within Metaplace. We’ve had educational learning software, the start of basic RPG’s, an [...]
Categories: Bloggers
19:07
For those wondering what’s up with Metaplace, we have a July Update up on the company blog that should serve to catch you up. We’re really really busy these days, gearing up for going beta.
We’ve seen some absolutely amazing work being created within Metaplace. We’ve had educational learning software, the start of basic RPG’s, an [...]
Categories: Bloggers
18:31
I’m a day late on this, i think! But Second Skin is premiering in New York, and they want to sell tickets.
Today’s the day!? Tickets have just gone on sale for the NYC premiere of our little documentary on virtual worlds, Second Skin.? We would love to have all of you [...]
Categories: Bloggers
18:31
I’m a day late on this, i think! But Second Skin is premiering in New York, and they want to sell tickets.
Today’s the day! Tickets have just gone on sale for the NYC premiere of our little documentary on virtual worlds, Second Skin. We would love to have all of you [...]
Categories: Bloggers
03:09
I am doing an upgrade to Wordpress 2.6, don’t be surprised to see the blog broken for a bit.
Later:
OK, I think it’s done, and there seem to be no adverse effects. During the few minutes that it was defenseless, 7 spams came in.
And my Visual Editor conked out beforehand — the dreaded “visual [...]
Categories: Bloggers
03:09
I am doing an upgrade to Wordpress 2.6, don’t be surprised to see the blog broken for a bit.
Later:
OK, I think it’s done, and there seem to be no adverse effects. During the few minutes that it was defenseless, 7 spams came in.
And my Visual Editor conked out beforehand — the dreaded “visual [...]
Categories: Bloggers
July 15, 2008
22:05
From here, it sure like the virtual world-ish convergence that has long been predicted is hitting the consoles in earnest.
XBox Live is adding avatars, akin to the Nintendo Miis, but it looks like they’ll have a bit more spatiality and multiplayer interaction to them — and will be the basic interface for XBL from now [...]
Categories: Bloggers
22:05
From here, it sure like the virtual world-ish convergence that has long been predicted is hitting the consoles in earnest.
XBox Live is adding avatars, akin to the Nintendo Miis, but it looks like they’ll have a bit more spatiality and multiplayer interaction to them — and will be the basic interface for XBL from now [...]
Categories: Bloggers
21:37
Virtually Blind has the scoop, but in short, Blizzard won on all the major points: the court didn’t go for the copyright argument, saying they were bound by precedent and not a policymaking body; and that making this kind of software looks like tortious interference (meaning, interfering with the contract between Blizzard and users). Further [...]
Categories: Bloggers
21:37
Virtually Blind has the scoop, but in short, Blizzard won on all the major points: the court didn’t go for the copyright argument, saying they were bound by precedent and not a policymaking body; and that making this kind of software looks like tortious interference (meaning, interfering with the contract between Blizzard and users). Further [...]
Categories: Bloggers
July 14, 2008
18:41
This was supposed to get posted yesterday and didn’t.
Im a concerned mom and my son wants to sign up for $34.99 at www.igametester.com to get paid to play video games. My question is do you know if this is a legitimate company? I guess I come from the ol’skool and if you need [...]
Categories: Bloggers
18:41
This was supposed to get posted yesterday and didn’t.
Im a concerned mom and my son wants to sign up for $34.99 at www.igametester.com to get paid to play video games. My question is do you know if this is a legitimate company? I guess I come from the ol’skool and if you need [...]
Categories: Bloggers
July 12, 2008
17:55
Technically, it’s Joss Whedon’s Master Plan, but who could tell the difference?
I’m talking about Dr. Horrible, of course.
ONE WEEK ONLY! AN INTERNET MINISERIES EVENT!
“Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog” will be streamed, LIVE (that part’s not true), FREE (sadly, that part is) right on Drhorrible.com, in mid-July. Specifically:
ACT ONE (Wheee!) will go up Tuesday July 15th.
ACT TWO [...]
Categories: Bloggers
17:55
Technically, it’s Joss Whedon’s Master Plan, but who could tell the difference?
I’m talking about Dr. Horrible, of course.
ONE WEEK ONLY! AN INTERNET MINISERIES EVENT!
“Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog” will be streamed, LIVE (that part’s not true), FREE (sadly, that part is) right on Drhorrible.com, in mid-July. Specifically:
ACT ONE (Wheee!) will go up Tuesday July 15th.
ACT TWO [...]
Categories: Bloggers
July 11, 2008
18:35
Just to keep things straight…
Konami is suing Harmonix over music game patents. Harmonix is owned by Viacom, which bought them because they owned patents on music games themselves, which everyone thought made Activision’s purchase of Red Octane, which published Guitar Hero, kind of funny since they got the brand but not the underlying IP, though [...]
Categories: Bloggers
July 10, 2008
01:54
Blog regular Over00 writes,
Like many people, I always wanted to be able to bring some of my MMOs ideas to reality. Of course, ideas are cheap and everybody got THE good one. So I thought enough dreaming and more doing.
So about a year ago, I started to work on a framework with [...]
Categories: Bloggers
01:47
The two hardest and most critical skills for a game designer (IMHO):
Be able to see the game with no hint of artwork, music, sound, anything — the bare rules, bare mechanics, bare actions, stats, feedback loops. The skeleton, the core, the bone and sinew of it, without any dressing, as a shifting, moving mechanical construct [...]
Categories: Bloggers
July 9, 2008
07:07
Another day, another little tool release over at the Metaplace site. This one is a little helper that assists in making transition textures between different terrain tiles. Sure, some engines do blending for you, but some don’t. And some effects really require handmade transitions. Well, the Transition Tile Maker lets you make your own blend [...]
Categories: Bloggers
04:11
So at this point, I imagine everyone has seen the news about Google finally decloaking off the virtual bow with Lively.
The coverage showed up in both the gaming press, where Google shared a bunch of tidbits that seemed to indicate a PR outreach to the gaming community, and also of course in the tech press, [...]
Categories: Bloggers
July 8, 2008
08:00
For those who have been reading the blog for a year and remember The Reiser Story post (which I did after reading a Wired article), the end of the story has finally come, as Reiser led police to the grave of his murdered wife.
Categories: Bloggers
July 7, 2008
16:59
Oh look, another 3d engine in Flash.
EA and Hasbro have gotten around to launching a legit Scrabble on Facebook. But Scrabulous appears undaunted.
Once in a long ago, I half-heartedly suggested to Gordon Walton that the way to fix the SWG Correspondents program was to have them be player-elected. We never pursued it; the concern was [...]
Categories: Bloggers
00:00
I finally got my recording setup sorted out. It was the stupid webcam. The control panels all said that my soundcard was selected as the input, but guess what — when I unplugged it, the issues went away.
Anyway, I wrote a weird little instrumental thing this morning, which didn’t really go anywhere. But I kept [...]
Categories: Bloggers
July 3, 2008
20:59
Video has been posted of the “All the World’s a Game” panel at Supernova from a few weeks back. (I previously blogged about a summary written by The UpTake Blog). Now you too can see the arguments over dorodango…
Categories: Bloggers
18:56
At this point, everyone is talking about the Age of Conan issue with DPS. In short, they tied doing damage to a trigger in the animation sequence, which meant that slower animations would do damage at a different rate than faster ones. And all the female combat anims are slower, so all the female characters [...]
Categories: Bloggers
July 2, 2008
18:26
I love the serendipity factor of the Internet. Right after I post the last post on whether players know what they want, I see that Richard at QBlog has a ranked list of survey results from players on what they said they wanted in their muds back in 1985. Here’s a sampling:
Intelligent mobiles 25
Conversing with [...]
Categories: Bloggers
17:19
There has been a lot of criticism towards the game industry, accusing them of being unoriginal. Sequels, sequels, everywhere. Diablo 3, Starcraft 2, GTA 4, Halo 3, The Sims 3, Far Cry 2, Fallout 3, not to mention the annual versions of various sports games. Why can’t game companies be more original? Because game companies [...]
Categories: Bloggers
July 1, 2008
18:09
Got this email from T. L. Taylor (author of the excellent Play Between Worlds: Exploring Online Game Culture):
I’ve checked on Raph’s timeline page (and googled a bunch) but don’t quite see the answer I need. I am writing this (very odd) handbook chapter on the internet & games and in my history section I am [...]
Categories: Bloggers
June 30, 2008
21:54
Blizzard Responds to Amicus Brief in MDY Bot Suit | Virtually Blind | Virtual Law | Benjamin Duranske
Although it has not put the issue in quite such stark terms, Public Knowledge is essentially seeking a ruling that says that the sale of consumer software is, in most circumstances, a sale, pretty much regardless of what [...]
Categories: Bloggers
June 29, 2008
21:16
For those who recall the whole “blog gets hacked” odyssey, and my subsequent request for a plugin that would do security scans, check this out:
WordPress Exploit Scanner 0.1
This WordPress plugin searches the files on your site for a few known strings sometimes used by hackers, and lists them with code fragments taken from the files. [...]
Categories: Bloggers
June 28, 2008
02:22
As part of the ongoing raking over the coals of Richard Bartle for saying the obvious (yes, you can tell what side I am on in those debates!), Steve Danuser says over at Moorgard.com » Sacred Cows
I get tired of people implying that today’s MMOs owe their entire existence to the MUDs of yesteryear. Sorry, [...]
Categories: Bloggers
June 26, 2008
17:45
Number of users in Habbo Hotel worldwide: 20,000,000
“Hottest” book in the US last year according to Time Magazine: 1,500,000+. (A Thousand Splendid Suns)
Best-selling graphic novel in the US last year: 80,000. (Naruto)
Digital sales of a hit song: 2,100,000 (Leona Lewis, “Bleeding Love”)
Average downloads of a downloadable Rock Band track: 100,000
Viewers of the #1 show on [...]
Categories: Bloggers
17:22
Sulka Haro just forwarded along a press release stating that Habbo has reached 100m registered users worldwide. For those counting, that means 1.5% of the population of the planet.
Some more stats gleaned from the release:
They get around 10m monthly uniques, apparently.
20m registered in the last six months
50/50 gender split
70% 13-16 years old
64% visit daily (which [...]
Categories: Bloggers
03:18
Slashdot | Children Concerned By Parents’ Web Habits
“Children are becoming increasingly worried about their parents’ Internet habits, according to a report just released in Sweden. Unsurprisingly, dads surfing for pornography is the most common problem, but chatroom addiction also featured in the report — as is a mother who has become obsessed with World of [...]
Categories: Bloggers
Recent comments
1 week 4 hours ago
Posted by: thrinidir
1 week 5 days ago
Posted by: Innsmouth
1 week 5 days ago
Posted by: nixon
1 week 6 days ago
Posted by: J. Kelly
1 week 6 days ago
Posted by: Stranger
1 week 6 days ago
Posted by: Eric
2 weeks 11 hours ago
Posted by: Sheepherder
3 weeks 19 hours ago
Posted by: hic
3 weeks 22 hours ago
Posted by: Adam Tiler
3 weeks 4 days ago
Posted by: Innsmouth