2026-08-10 · designer-study
Inside Raph Koster's Philosophy — The Moment a Game Is Solved, It Becomes a Puzzle
A study of Raph Koster—author of A Theory of Fun for Game Design and designer of Ultima Online and Star Wars Galaxies—built only from what he has published himself. We read the claim that has barely moved in twenty years (fun is progress on prediction), his obsession with the game/puzzle boundary and the moment a solved game falls to the puzzle side, his first-person accounts of failure at SWG, Metaplace and UO, the dilemma of whether depth is ever rewarded, and the influences he actually credits, from modernist literature to the MUD-Dev list.
