Raph Koster

Here are my scribbles from Raph's talk Saturday night.  Personally, I feel the talk started a bit slow.  There was a lot of conversation about text-based MUDs (Multi-User Dungeon - had to look that one up afterwards) and other things that were either above or before me.  Once Raph got going though, the man practically exuded insight.

Without further ado (trouble or difficulty - had to look that one up too) and with sparse context, here's a haphazard and mostly nonsensical list of some genuinely interesting thoughts from an experienced (legendary, actually) game designer:

• systems vs. story
• chess as a sandbox game - "explore the world"
• static storytelling (i.e. interactive movies)
• Raph studied English in college
• Who is Chris Crawford?
• MDA (mechanics, dynamics, aesthetics) framework
• "Rules of Play" - Eric Zimmerman
• "Chemistry of Game Design" - Dan Cook
• "Game Grammar" - Raph Koster
• formalism of game design
• Playdom - Raph's company
• formalism in game design as notation, akin to music notation
• verbs, objects, currency - game grammar; Raph creates this game grammar before he creates any prototypes
• curiosity - first common trait of the most bad ass game designers Raph knows
• both brained (meaning left- and right-brained) - second bad ass game designer trait
• Raph thinks we should reduce the role of narrative in games
• you've made it as a game designer when you can see nothing but the play of math underneath your game but at the same time, come to your game, forget how it all works, and see just the surface
• a classic liberal arts education is beneficial to aspiring game designers (take physics AND poetry)
• games driven by systems over narrative
• games designed to be replayed are more systems-driven
• Raph's favorite game of all time is Mule for the Atari 800 - "the most elegant multiplayer design ever"
• Raph still plays Joust on every available platform
• Raph advocates formalism in games
• when designing games, Raph focuses on creating the experience of the game before the systems of the game
• metaphor and mechanic
• What is the game about?  What is the surface experience of the game as well as the mechanical experience of the game?
• Clint Hocking
• ludonarrative dissonance (Bioshock has it)
• Harmonix's Rock Band vs. Amplitude (related to ludonarrative dissonance)
• beat matching on a plastic guitar made "no ludonarrative dissonance"

Some of the things I wrote down will never again make sense outside of the moment my pen hit the notebook.  Still, there are plenty of items here begging for investigation.  Rest assured that any and all sleuthing born from this talk will make its way onto this blog.

You can watch the entire talk here or here.

I included a bunch of Raph-related links at the end of a previous post.  Go there if you want to be transported to other nooks of the Web sprinkled with Koster.

Cheers,

Danny