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Raph Koster

@raph-koster · 18 positions · 0 changes of mind

Game designer and theorist. Lead designer of Ultima Online and creative director of Star Wars Galaxies, author of A Theory of Fun for Game Design, and founder of Playable Worlds. Has written about game design, virtual worlds and online communities at raphkoster.com since 1998.

Raph Koster did not write this page.

We collected these quotes from things they published elsewhere, and every quote links to where it was said. They have no account here and have not endorsed this site. Quotes are word for word; the short line under each one is our own restatement, not their wording. Their own site. Is this you? Claim it or ask us to remove it. Or tell us what is wrong here.

  1. Our reading

    A game is a machine built around uncertainty.

    Their wordsGames are machines built around uncertainty.

    ↗Game design is simple, actuallyraphkoster.com 1st of 3 in this piece

    Interesting

  3. Our reading

    Lavish feedback wrapped around no real problem is shallow entertainment at best and exploitation at worst.

    Their wordsAt minimum you’re making shallow entertainment. At worst, you are building exploitative entertainment.

    ↗Game design is simple, actuallyraphkoster.com 2nd of 3 in this piece

    Interesting

  5. Our reading

    People learn best when the problem in front of them is just past the edge of what they can already do.

    Their wordsPeople learn best when the problem they are tackling is right past the edge of what they can do.

    ↗Game design is simple, actuallyraphkoster.com 3rd of 3 in this piece

    Interesting
  6. 2 years earlier

  7. Our reading

    A puzzle whose categories can only be seen by the broadly educated is elitist by construction.

    Their wordsBut it’s fundamentally elitist — it basically requires you to have a broad education to find the categories in the first place.

    ↗Why NYT’s Connections makes you feel badraphkoster.com 1st of 2 in this piece

    Interesting

  9. Our reading

    A puzzle that invites guessing and then punishes wrong guesses stops the player learning the very method it could have taught.

    Their wordsFundamentally, the game invites you to make guesses, but punishes you for them — and a missed guess doesn’t help you prune the logic space, only the trivia space.

    ↗Why NYT’s Connections makes you feel badraphkoster.com 2nd of 2 in this piece

    Interesting
  10. 5 years earlier

  11. Our reading

    A service business in games rests entirely on retention: a genre that cannot hold people across sessions cannot be sold as a service.

    Their wordsThere is no ongoing service without retention.

    ↗What drives retentionraphkoster.com 1st of 2 in this piece

    Interesting

  13. Our reading

    A profit motive inside a game holds players there long past the point where they are still enjoying it.

    Their wordsThe profit motive is incredibly powerful and will keep players engaging in your experience well past the point of actual enjoyment.

    ↗What drives retentionraphkoster.com 2nd of 2 in this piece

    Interesting
  14. 4 years earlier

  15. Our reading

    Designing a game imprints behaviour on the people who play it, including behaviour the designer never intended to teach.

    Their wordsknow in your bones that game design is a powerful way of imprinting behaviors on people, and that it is entirely possible to imprint behaviors you didn’t want.

    ↗Games affecting peopleraphkoster.com 1st of 2 in this piece

    design

    Interesting

  17. Our reading

    Denying that games can affect the people who play them is a way of calling games a lesser medium.

    Their wordsSaying games can’t affect people is to denigrate them.

    ↗Games affecting peopleraphkoster.com 2nd of 2 in this piece

    Interesting
  18. 1 day earlier

  19. Our reading

    User-interface design and game design are opposites: one takes problems away from the person using it, the other hands problems to them.

    Their wordsShort form: UX design is about removing problems from the user. Game design is about giving problems to the user.

    ↗Game design vs UX designraphkoster.com 1st of 3 in this piece

    design

    Interesting

  21. Our reading

    An interface should give the user a useful mental model even if it is false, while a game should give the player an accurate model of its own machinery.

    Their wordsWhere UX tries to provide a likely false but useful mental model of the interior workings to the user, game design tries to guide the player towards a fairly accurate mental model.

    ↗Game design vs UX designraphkoster.com 2nd of 3 in this piece

    design

    Interesting

  23. Our reading

    Good interface design uses clarity to hide complexity; good game design uses clarity to teach it.

    Their wordsUX is about clarity that hides complexity, and game design is about clarity that teaches complexity.

    ↗Game design vs UX designraphkoster.com 3rd of 3 in this piece

    design

    Interesting
  24. 7 months earlier

  25. Our reading

    People behave well towards each other where they expect to meet again; trust is a product of repeated interaction, not of identity.

    Their wordsIt’s repeated interactions that drive trust, you see, and we behave well because we expect to be treated well in the future.

    ↗Social media is brokenraphkoster.com 1st of 4 in this piece

    Interesting

  27. Our reading

    The bigger a forum gets, the worse behaviour gets, because people come to care only about their standing inside a small subgroup.

    Their wordsThe bigger the forum, the worse behavior problems get, as people splinter into smaller social groups, and only care about their reputations within that group.

    ↗Social media is brokenraphkoster.com 2nd of 4 in this piece

    Interesting

  29. Our reading

    Downvotes and other negative-reputation systems make online behaviour worse rather than better.

    Their wordsDownvoting and other forms of negative feedback reputation systems, lead to bad social behavior.

    ↗Social media is brokenraphkoster.com 3rd of 4 in this piece

    Interesting

  31. Our reading

    Social media designers routinely ignore what online-community design already established decades ago.

    Their wordsThis matters because all of these lessons, which are well-established across many fields, are routinely ignored by social media designers.

    ↗Social media is brokenraphkoster.com 4th of 4 in this piece

    designsocial media

    Interesting
  32. 16 months earlier

  33. Our reading

    Free-to-play games use the same techniques as gambling machines in order to maximise what players spend and how long they stay.

    Their wordsIn the sense that social games make use of many of the same techniques as gambling games do in order to maximize financial spend and retention, yes.

    ↗Social games vs gamblingraphkoster.com 1st of 2 in this piece

    Interesting

  35. Our reading

    A slot machine triggers the brain’s learning and curiosity pathways while teaching nothing, and that one-way exchange is what makes it contemptuous of the player.

    Their wordsSlot machines don’t teach you anything; they trigger the learning and curiosity pathways without actually giving you a benefit in return.

    ↗Social games vs gamblingraphkoster.com 2nd of 2 in this piece

    Interesting