Raph Koster Talks About His Upcoming Return to MMORPGs In New Interview - MMORPG.com

System · October 2019

Raph Koster Talks About His Upcoming Return to MMORPGs In New Interview - MMORPG.com

In an interview with Gamasutra, industry veteral Raph Koster discussed why he's back.

Slapshot1188 · October 2019

Let's be honest. He's back because he sees the boatloads of money people are throwing around for concepts these days.

Tiller · October 2019

Player toxicity is in direct relation to societal norms and generational differences in attitudes towards these things, nothing to do with lack interdependence between players in a game. Sure I guess if you make a game boring enough trolls won't even play, it might keep them away, but it will also keep many others away because not everyone who wishes to avoid toxic confrontations in a game would be happy playing Candyland.

achesoma · October 2019

2.7 million doesn’t seem like a enough to build a AAA mmo these days. Best of luck to him. Hope it’s an actual RPG and not more of this quasi-action nonsense.

Slapshot1188 · October 2019

achesoma said:

2.7 million doesn’t seem like a enough to build a AAA mmo these days. Best of luck to him. Hope it’s an actual RPG and not more of this quasi-action nonsense.

It's "seed money". If he really wants to make bank he will just make some slides and concept art and then Crowdfund the rest.

Utinni · October 2019

Probably another pixelart low effort deal a lot of the old devs are churning out.

achesoma · October 2019

Slapshot1188 said:

achesoma said:

2.7 million doesn’t seem like a enough to build a AAA mmo these days. Best of luck to him. Hope it’s an actual RPG and not more of this quasi-action nonsense.

It's "seed money". If he really wants to make bank he will just make some slides and concept art and then Crowdfund the rest.

Yeah, I was wondering about that. I feel like he missed the boat on the crowd funded kool aid. Most players are burnt out waiting on these other indie projects.

Syphin_B · October 2019

I thought he was working on Crowfall?

Siphaed · October 2019

I'll say it: "Sell me a decent product, not a name!" These 'rockstar developers" from the golden age of MMOs have but maybe 1-2 key titles under their belt in the infancy of the genre. And for some reason the media and long time fans eat it up like their fecal matter doesn't stink. Well, it does. It certainly does.

A few things:

1) An MMORPG isn't built by an individual, but a team. A development TEAM.

2) Standards change. No longer can a game launch like a 'new game' with less than half the features of other games currently available. It is not longer accepted (see Epic Game Store vs Steam feature lists).

3) Just because someone made great in the past doesn't mean they can't make bad in the present (see the current Bethesda situation).

For example, a quick Google search finds Koster making Metaplace for Facebook that he worked on since 2006 and it shutdown in 2010. A "social games platform" that never gained traction at all. And yet had the biggest consumer base to draw customers from. Hmm....

Not to dis on this man's past creations and all the contributions he has had for the gaming market. But that is all in the past. Let's not forget that this same guy was supposed to be lending support and working on a now-competing MMORPG Crowfall. What ever happened to that? Is he done with it 100%? Was his crafting/economy consultation no longer needed?

I'm just saying that those of us consumers who have been in the business quite a bit have been burned by these so called past great developers on multiple occasions. There's the teams behind Everquest NEXT and Landmark; Richard Garriott's two time failures of Tabula Rasa and now Shroud of the Avatar; Wildstar's Carbine studios was founded by not 1 but 17(!) World of Warcraft developers; Red 5 by Mark Kern fizzled out Firefall; and so on. Need I say more?

Amaranthar · October 2019

Siphaed said:

I'll say it: "Sell me a decent product, not a name!" These 'rockstar developers" from the golden age of MMOs have but maybe 1-2 key titles under their belt in the infancy of the genre. And for some reason the media and long time fans eat it up like their fecal matter doesn't stink. Well, it does. It certainly does.

A few things:

1) An MMORPG isn't built by an individual, but a team. A development TEAM.

2) Standards change. No longer can a game launch like a 'new game' with less than half the features of other games currently available. It is not longer accepted (see Epic Game Store vs Steam feature lists).

3) Just because someone made great in the past doesn't mean they can't make bad in the present (see the current Bethesda situation).

For example, a quick Google search finds Koster making Metaplace for Facebook that he worked on since 2006 and it shutdown in 2010. A "social games platform" that never gained traction at all. And yet had the biggest consumer base to draw customers from. Hmm....

Not to dis on this man's past creations and all the contributions he has had for the gaming market. But that is all in the past. Let's not forget that this same guy was supposed to be lending support and working on a now-competing MMORPG Crowfall. What ever happened to that? Is he done with it 100%? Was his crafting/economy consultation no longer needed?

I'm just saying that those of us consumers who have been in the business quite a bit have been burned by these so called past great developers on multiple occasions. There's the teams behind Everquest NEXT and Landmark; Richard Garriott's two time failures of Tabula Rasa and now Shroud of the Avatar; Wildstar's Carbine studios was founded by not 1 but 17(!) World of Warcraft developers; Red 5 by Mark Kern fizzled out Firefall; and so on. Need I say more?

You and I are at two different sides of the spectrum concerning Raph.
I'm trying to stay neutral but it's hard to do that when I've followed his blog and ideas for so long.
Ideas I want in an MMORPG.

Ltldogg · October 2019

Tell me more in 7-10 years when the game is in closed pre-alpha

Thupli · October 2019

Syphin_B said:

I thought he was working on Crowfall?

Believe he just did some contract work with them.

Amaranthar · October 2019

DMKano said:

Thupli said:

Syphin_B said:

I thought he was working on Crowfall?

Believe he just did some contract work with them.

More like just got paid so Crowfall could use his name for promotion.

Could have been like a 1 hour consultation call and Crawfall team is posting Raphs name all over the peroject.

I believe he worked as a consultant for them for about a year. I could be wrong.

Wizardry · October 2019

That short tidbit tells me he needs to quit doing drugs.He made VERY little sense about nothing.

He can BS his way around the press but i know the real reason he is back>>>>$$$$$ and i am 99.9% certain of that.
Anyone paying attention even very little will have noticed how much utter crap is selling on the market.All you need to do is market it properly,you don't need a quality or even a good game,just a title and some BS media speeches to hype it up.

I have an extremely good gut feeling that this guy couldn't make a AAA game if his life depended on it.Everything that we [praise from the past was around an era of infancy,a learning period,gaming was newish so everything seemed magical.

Well if i look back at UO and many other older games,i see OLD,DONE.We can do a way better job of designing games now.

Wizardry · October 2019

On the topic of game toxicity,again he made no sense.The reason there is a toxic nature in games is 99% because of the game design and the developer's implementation of ideas.An example i can use is my MANY years of FFXI.I never even remotely thought about anything toxic for years because we were too busy working together,doing things together,discovering and learning the game and it's world and all of the mechanics.

Now we have far too many games on the market that are tied into pvp,a competitive nature with cash shops and p2w ideas.

In FFXI there was in reality NO pvp at all,everything was a work together design,a friendly design.

That is why i laugh at dev employees who come out and complain about toxicity in their game when they themselves designed a toxic nature'd game.

Albatroes · October 2019

All these devs coming out trying to do stuff makes you wonder if they really that great or was it the tools they had access to at the time what made them great.

The main problem that all of these indie groups have is that they have no one to really answer to, as in there's no accountability in terms of failure. Whereas if they were working for a group like Blizzard/SE/or whatever there were deadlines, budgets, and the like that all had to be adhered to or it was the axe. Whether most people want to admit it or not, a strict environment where pressure has real consequence yields at least results by a time frame, not this false roadmap we've been seeing a lot where 3-4 years down the line, stuff still looks the same it did or veered off in a direction no one asked for (i.e. CoE/Ashes).

So yeah, this guy just sees the easy money being made and how gullible people are to throw money at concept art while he can cost for at least a year before cancelling the project due to 'lack of funds' with 0 consequence. If you wanna make a 'great mmorpg' go get hired somewhere, there's plenty of places hiring.

Mylan12 · October 2019

As far as toxicity goes, these forums have most all games beat in that area. Someone announces that they are going develop a game. Next comes the masses in the forums, oh its going to be terrible, he is a has been will never make another decent game, oh it never be as good as game X (got to wonder why they are here posting and not playing game X ) and so on. Almost everyone is so negative about everything. All this is of course before we know anything at all about the game.

MightyUnclean · October 2019

Mylan12 said:

As far as toxicity goes, these forums have most all games beat in that area. Someone announces that they are going develop a game. Next comes the masses in the forums, oh its going to be terrible, he is a has been will never make another decent game, oh it never be as good as game X (got to wonder why they are here posting and not playing game X ) and so on. Almost everyone is so negative about everything. All this is of course before we know anything at all about the game.

New to the internet?

Amaranthar · October 2019

OldSchoolGamer said:

Wizardry said:

That short tidbit tells me he needs to quit doing drugs.He made VERY little sense about nothing.

He can BS his way around the press but i know the real reason he is back>>>>$$$$$ and i am 99.9% certain of that.

Anyone paying attention even very little will have noticed how much utter crap is selling on the market.All you need to do is market it properly,you don't need a quality or even a good game,just a title and some BS media speeches to hype it up.

I have an extremely good gut feeling that this guy couldn't make a AAA game if his life depended on it.Everything that we [praise from the past was around an era of infancy,a learning period,gaming was newish so everything seemed magical.

Well if i look back at UO and many other older games,i see OLD,DONE.We can do a way better job of designing games now.

99.9% certain means you don't know... Just wish he'd make SWG 2.0

I think it would be even more advanced on the player usefulness side than that.
I see the Cantinas and Camp Sites as a look into where he's going with this, but more advanced and into a lot of other areas. He mentioned Librarians in this article, as an example.

Amaranthar · October 2019

Wizardry said:

On the topic of game toxicity,again he made no sense.The reason there is a toxic nature in games is 99% because of the game design and the developer's implementation of ideas.An example i can use is my MANY years of FFXI.I never even remotely thought about anything toxic for years because we were too busy working together,doing things together,discovering and learning the game and it's world and all of the mechanics.

Now we have far too many games on the market that are tied into pvp,a competitive nature with cash shops and p2w ideas.

In FFXI there was in reality NO pvp at all,everything was a work together design,a friendly design.

That is why i laugh at dev employees who come out and complain about toxicity in their game when they themselves designed a toxic nature'd game.

Wizardry, it sounds to me like he's trying to fix exactly what you are talking about.
He's talked a lot about exactly that for quite a few years.

Amaranthar · October 2019

Amaranthar said:

OldSchoolGamer said:

Wizardry said:

That short tidbit tells me he needs to quit doing drugs.He made VERY little sense about nothing.

He can BS his way around the press but i know the real reason he is back>>>>$$$$$ and i am 99.9% certain of that.

Anyone paying attention even very little will have noticed how much utter crap is selling on the market.All you need to do is market it properly,you don't need a quality or even a good game,just a title and some BS media speeches to hype it up.

I have an extremely good gut feeling that this guy couldn't make a AAA game if his life depended on it.Everything that we [praise from the past was around an era of infancy,a learning period,gaming was newish so everything seemed magical.

Well if i look back at UO and many other older games,i see OLD,DONE.We can do a way better job of designing games now.

99.9% certain means you don't know... Just wish he'd make SWG 2.0

I think it would be even more advanced on the player usefulness side than that.
I see the Cantinas and Camp Sites as a look into where he's going with this, but more advanced and into a lot of other areas. He mentioned Librarians in this article, as an example.

It just hit me.
Wouldn't it be cool if players could have a Librarian skill (as an alternative to a trade skill), where they actually can function similarly to the T.V. movie series, The Librarian?

They could also have an Archaeological skill for similar uses.

I'd envision this as a sort of Player run Events system sometimes, and sources of info for any player all of the time.

I'd also hope that, while a single Player could function on his own with these skills, a group/guild would function much better.

Or maybe it would be better as an NPC guild that Players could join and collect for. And any player could go there to make use of collected magical artifacts.

I think it's an interesting idea, at any rate.

BruceYee · October 2019

It should be mentioned somewhere that SCOTT HARTSMAN is working on the project with him.
You folks remember that super effective on top of his game never misses a beat TRION CEO guy, right? If that ___ had all the resources of Trion at its PEAK and managed to tank the company how will they produce anything beyond concept art for 2.7mil. Add on the terrible hiring choices and it's the same failure all over again. Just wait for Rick Failothar to become project lead and Celesnota.. to become community manager...

As for Koster much respect for past deeds but he is starting to just sound like a game theory guy now akin to Garriott. Not trying to judge too hard but some stuff he says is a bit outdated and belongs in 2005 not really in 2019 like this...

“Because in the end, those connections between players help many games combat toxicity. It's what helps build the notion of players as a society, right. The biggest thing that leads to toxic behavior is your ability to sort of dehumanize and objectify other people, and think of them as not real...that's what leads us to treat people worse, when we don't have that sense of ongoing connection and dependency." <--mobile games already figured this out and remove almost all toxicity with gifting even though it's sometimes of almost useless shit but people in general like free stuff so there's that and it works. Rather than talk about what's wrong about toxicity cause that can be never ending TED talk how about discussing how THIS game will be any different and what SPECIFIC systems it will have instead of toxicity theory 101 forever and ever.

immoralthang · October 2019

All of the these legacy videogame industry veterans working on crowdfunded or indie MMOs reminds me of a rock band popular in the 70's doing a reunion tour with 90% of the original members missing.

DrunkWolf · October 2019

Im so numb to all of these post anymore from people with all these great ideas, only to see them need millions from kick starter so they can work on a game for 20 years.

immoralthang · October 2019

Mylan12 said:

As far as toxicity goes, these forums have most all games beat in that area. Someone announces that they are going develop a game. Next comes the masses in the forums, oh its going to be terrible, he is a has been will never make another decent game, oh it never be as good as game X (got to wonder why they are here posting and not playing game X ) and so on. Almost everyone is so negative about everything. All this is of course before we know anything at all about the game.

I think you are mistaking toxicity with justified cynicism. How many of the crowdfunded/indie MMOs covered on this site have actually been released? Crowfall, Camelot Unchained, Star Citizen, Chronicles of Elyria, Ashes of Creation, The Repopulation, Project Gorgon and a handful of others are range from semi-playable to development hell. None of them seem close to a release date. Many of these projects have people with equally legendary credentials as Ralph.

Slapshot1188 · October 2019

Torval said:

Mr Koster writes some interesting and provocatively insightful things about MMORPGs and social gaming. I'm very interested in what he's going to make just because his perspective and take on this genre interests me.

I work in tech. Tech companies generating seed money for investors is normal. Unless I misunderstood he already said crowd-funding isn't on the table. I'm not interested in speculation and gossip beyond that. If they never deliver, then it's just an unfortunate failure that didn't prey on the community. If they do succeed, then I'll be glad they did it without social money and I won't care who the investors are unless they affect the revenue model (ie: cash-shop, whale-driven, or predatory).

Do you recall where you read that Crowdfunding is off the table? Hope that is correct...

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