Raph Koster
Game designer; wrote A Theory of Fun for Game Design and worked on Ultima Online and Star Wars Galaxies.
Raph Koster did not write this page. ppll compiled it from their own words, each linked to the source. Is this you? · Report a mistake
Latest x.com
What they believe
-
Lavish feedback wrapped around no real problem is shallow entertainment at best and exploitation at worst.
At minimum you’re making shallow entertainment. At worst, you are building exploitative entertainment.
raphkoster.comSaid 3 Nov 2025This on korrents
-
A puzzle that invites guessing and then punishes wrong guesses stops the player learning the very method it could have taught.
Fundamentally, 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.
raphkoster.comSaid 2 Sept 2023This on korrents
The bold line is korrents’ wording; the quote is theirs. These 2: what they wrote before what they said aloud, one per source, newest first.
Feed
As its own page →Hiding
21 September
19 September
21 July
23 June
16 May
9 March
21 December 2025
26 November 2025
- Bluesky
- BlogRecommended posts, 2017-2025
16 November 2025
13 November 2025
10 November 2025
9 November 2025
7 November 2025
3 November 2025
From one piece Game design is simple, actually 3 beliefs · raphkoster.com
-
korrents.com
A game is a machine built around uncertainty.Their words
Games are machines built around uncertainty.
-
korrents.com
People learn best when the problem in front of them is just past the edge of what they can already do.Their words
People learn best when the problem they are tackling is right past the edge of what they can do.
-
korrents.com
Lavish feedback wrapped around no real problem is shallow entertainment at best and exploitation at worst.Their words
At minimum you’re making shallow entertainment. At worst, you are building exploitative entertainment.
29 October 2025
- Bluesky
- BlogStars Reach visual upgrades
26 October 2025
25 October 2025
Nothing matches.
Beliefs
Korrents What they believe 18 beliefs — each backed by an exact quote.
Each is a — compiled by korrents.com, not by them: the one-line wordings are korrents', the quotes are theirs.
Recent
Lavish feedback wrapped around no real problem is shallow entertainment at best and exploitation at worst.
At minimum you’re making shallow entertainment. At worst, you are building exploitative entertainment.
Game design is simple, actually Said 3 Nov 2025
People learn best when the problem in front of them is just past the edge of what they can already do.
People learn best when the problem they are tackling is right past the edge of what they can do.
Game design is simple, actually Said 3 Nov 2025
A game is a machine built around uncertainty.
Games are machines built around uncertainty.
Game design is simple, actually Said 3 Nov 2025
Show 15 more
A puzzle that invites guessing and then punishes wrong guesses stops the player learning the very method it could have taught.
Fundamentally, 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 bad Said 2 Sept 2023
A puzzle whose categories can only be seen by the broadly educated is elitist by construction.
But 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 bad Said 2 Sept 2023
A service business in games rests entirely on retention: a genre that cannot hold people across sessions cannot be sold as a service.
There is no ongoing service without retention.
What drives retention Said 30 Jan 2019
A profit motive inside a game holds players there long past the point where they are still enjoying it.
The profit motive is incredibly powerful and will keep players engaging in your experience well past the point of actual enjoyment.
What drives retention Said 30 Jan 2019
Designing a game imprints behaviour on the people who play it, including behaviour the designer never intended to teach.
know 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 people Said 30 Jun 2015
Denying that games can affect the people who play them is a way of calling games a lesser medium.
Saying games can’t affect people is to denigrate them.
Games affecting people Said 30 Jun 2015
User-interface design and game design are opposites: one takes problems away from the person using it, the other hands problems to them.
Short form: UX design is about removing problems from the user. Game design is about giving problems to the user.
Game design vs UX design Said 29 Jun 2015
Good interface design uses clarity to hide complexity; good game design uses clarity to teach it.
UX is about clarity that hides complexity, and game design is about clarity that teaches complexity.
Game design vs UX design Said 29 Jun 2015
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.
Where 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 design Said 29 Jun 2015
Downvotes and other negative-reputation systems make online behaviour worse rather than better.
Downvoting and other forms of negative feedback reputation systems, lead to bad social behavior.
Social media is broken Said 13 Nov 2014
People behave well towards each other where they expect to meet again; trust is a product of repeated interaction, not of identity.
It’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 broken Said 13 Nov 2014
The bigger a forum gets, the worse behaviour gets, because people come to care only about their standing inside a small subgroup.
The 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 broken Said 13 Nov 2014
Social media designers routinely ignore what online-community design already established decades ago.
This matters because all of these lessons, which are well-established across many fields, are routinely ignored by social media designers.
Social media is broken Said 13 Nov 2014
Free-to-play games use the same techniques as gambling machines in order to maximise what players spend and how long they stay.
In 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 gambling Said 3 Jul 2013
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.
Slot machines don’t teach you anything; they trigger the learning and curiosity pathways without actually giving you a benefit in return.
Social games vs gambling Said 3 Jul 2013
What is a korrent?
A korrent is a belief a person has stated in their own words: one sentence stating the claim, backed by a quote and a source, kept at korrents.com.
Under a name here, the quoted block is what they actually said. The korrent beneath it is the claim those words support, in korrents' wording — tap it to see the record, its source, and who else holds it.
Nobody here wrote their own korrents. They are compiled from public statements, and a person can change their mind, which is recorded too.
Recommends rcmnd
rcmnd What they recommend 12 things — each backed by an exact quote.
Compiled by rcmnd.app, not by them: the quotes are theirs, and each links to the post it was copied from.
Recent
Recommends Hamlet on the Holodeck
From a less practical and more visionary side, Janet Murray's classic Hamlet on the Holodeck should be eye-opening as regards the possibilities for storytelling using interactive and immersive media.
raphkoster.com 5 Mar 2016
affiliate link
Loved Character Development and Storytelling for Games
My favorite book specific to games writing in particular is Lee Sheldon's Character Development and Storytelling for Games .
raphkoster.com 5 Mar 2016
affiliate link
What others say about Character Development and Storytelling for Games →
Loved Making Movies Work
That said, for cinematic thinking, I really like Jon Boorstin's Making Movies Work , since it goes beyond writing and into cinematic storytelling in general.
raphkoster.com 5 Mar 2016
affiliate link
Show 9 more
Liked How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy
If you really want to delve into genre fiction, as many games do, Card's How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy has a lot of good material in it, regardless of what you think of the author's politics.
raphkoster.com 5 Mar 2016
affiliate link
What others say about How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy →
Mixed on The Writer's Journey
Christopher Vogler's distillation and updating of Campbell in The Writer's Journey is worth a look, even if it is still hammering on the monomyth.
raphkoster.com 5 Mar 2016
affiliate link
Loved On Writing
Moving more towards populist writing, Stephen King's On Writing is also quite excellent, and more in touch with many of the sorts of stories that games tend to tell.
raphkoster.com 5 Mar 2016
affiliate link
Recommends A Poetry Handbook
I am tempted to also mention Babette Deutsch's A Poetry Handbook , even if you don't plan to write verse, because anyone who wants to master cadences of language, and the use of techniques of rhythm, assonance, and the like, would benefit from poetic training.
raphkoster.com 5 Mar 2016
affiliate link
Liked Bird by Bird
For general writing books, among many others I like John Gardner's The Art of Fiction and Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott. They perhaps tend a little more literary than others.
raphkoster.com 5 Mar 2016
affiliate link
Liked The Art of Fiction
For general writing books, among many others I like John Gardner's The Art of Fiction and Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott. They perhaps tend a little more literary than others.
raphkoster.com 5 Mar 2016
affiliate link
Recommends The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You
In short, this book is about the fact that we have set up our digital world to lie to ourselves. Repeatedly. We have built it, step by step, to confirm our biases and to never show us anything that troubles our placidity.
raphkoster.com 19 Jan 2012
What others say about The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You →
Recommends The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood
It begins with African talking drums and the curious poetry they contain embedded in their beats, and from there embarks on a tour of all of information theory.
raphkoster.com 19 Jan 2012
What others say about The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood →
Loved 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created
It's sort of like Connections but for world history since that date, with a huge emphasis on the way globalization changed the world.
raphkoster.com 19 Jan 2012
What others say about 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created →
Where they publish
Blog raphkoster.com His blog on game design, virtual worlds and their economics. Has a feed.
Recent
- Recommended posts, 2017-2025 26 Nov 2025 It’s been over five years since the last time I gathered up recommended posts in one place and added them to the menu above. I figured I was due. As usual this will include talks and interviews as well as articles. Just…
- Looking back at a pandemic simulator 16 Nov 2025 It’s been six years now since the early days of the Covid pandemic. People who were paying super close attention started hearing rumors about something going on in China towards the end of 2019 — my earliest posts about…
- Game design is simple, actually 3 Nov 2025 So, let’s just walk through the whole thing, end to end. Here’s a twelve-step program for understanding game design. One: Fun There are a lot of things people call “fun.” But most of them are not useful for getting bett…
Show 2 more
- Stars Reach visual upgrades 29 Oct 2025 For months now, we have been working on a big overhaul to the visuals in Stars Reach. This has involved redoing most of the shaders in the entire game, and going back and retouching every asset. We started by redoing al…
- New stuff on the site 25 Oct 2025 I really have been neglecting the blog lately. But that doesn’t mean I haven’t been adding content to the site all along. I figured it might not hurt to do a little summary of items that have been added over the last ye…
Link verified 20 Sept 2026. Recent items update automatically from the channel.
x.com @raphkoster Their X account.
Recent
- Any @pgmuscat game is worth playing :) 21 Sept 2026
- A pile of articles recently about this including several quoting my “we need shitty graphics”… and I see lots of opinionated players in the comment threads. The full piece is out now, has a lot of smart people in it & I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the games biz. 19 Sept 2026
- https://t.co/sDayqbzWaO This is a good talk. It also echoes some things I have been saying for years (I stole @bruces' line about musicians long ago, probably back when we hung out in Austin)... Back in 2005, I wrote a blog post called "The Future of Content" that ended with: 21 Jul 2026
Show 3 more
- This is out now and @noclipvideo has done their usual stellar job! 23 Jun 2026
- As usual I have signed all the copies of my books at the @Official_GDC bookstore! 9 Mar 2026
- Today I came across a project that rebuilt all of Tatooine from SWG in VRChat, and another that is recreating all of UO as a Valheim mod. Kind of wild to see. 21 Dec 2025
Link verified 23 Sept 2026. Recent items update automatically from the channel.
Bluesky @raphkoster.bsky.social Their Bluesky account.
Recent
- The full EDGE piece on game industry challenges is out now, has a lot of smart people in it (and me) & I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the games biz. 19 Sept 2026 knowledge.edge-online.com
- This is a good talk. It also echoes some things I have been saying for years (I stole @bruces.bsky.social 's line about musicians long ago, probably back when we hung out in Austin)... Back in 2005, I wrote a blog post called "The Future of Content" that ended with: 21 Jul 2026
- This is out now and @noclipvideo has done their usual stellar job! 23 Jun 2026
Show 12 more
- I did this interview a while ago and had forgotten it was coming out! 16 May 2026
- As usual I have signed all the copies of my books at the @officialgdc.bsky.social bookstore! 9 Mar 2026
- Today I came across a project that rebuilt all of Tatooine from SWG in VRChat, and another that is recreating all of UO as a Valheim mod. Kind of wild to see. 21 Dec 2025
- Recommended posts, 2017-2025 It's been over five years since the last time I gathered up recommended posts in one place and added them to the menu above. I figured I was due. As usual this will include talks and interviews as well as articles. Just think of it as "my take on what the best stuff to… 26 Nov 2025
- I never posted widely about the public health simulator design I wrote as Covid was shutting down the world. Until now. 16 Nov 2025
- This update went in today. Can't wait to see what people do... 13 Nov 2025
- This is unexpected. Not one, but three versions, and of course I am far from the only author whose quotes are for sale on canvas prints. Looks like three different manufacturers, and no, I do not get a cut. Fair use, I assume :D 10 Nov 2025
- Haha, playing Geoguessr in UO. 9 Nov 2025 youtube.com
- Well, this landed on the front page of Hacker News! 7 Nov 2025 news.ycombinator.com
- Game design is simple, actually. Except when it isn't. Here are the 12 things you need to know. 3 Nov 2025
- We've been working on overhauling the visuals in STARS REACH for a while. Here's a look at what's coming up! 29 Oct 2025
- Heh, I just got this reply on a Reddit thread about MMO design. :) 26 Oct 2025
Link verified 23 Sept 2026. Recent items update automatically from the channel.
About the English under a post
Some people here publish in a language other than English. Where they do, this site shows a machine translation beneath the post, in this typeface — the site's own, not theirs.
The post itself is never changed, moved or hidden: what is set in the serif above is exactly what the person published, and it is what to quote them on. A translation can be wrong in ways that matter, especially about tone.
Only the post's own words are translated. A quoted post, a linked article and a belief on korrents.com are left in their original language.