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Raph Koster Interview @ MMPlay

by Dhruin, 2006-07-07 23:04:00
MMPlay has an interview with the one and only Raph Koster. Let's start with an intro:
mmplay.de: Hello Raph and thanks for taking the time to answer some questions for us. I don't think I need to introduce you, I'm sure most MMORPG players know you and your work on games like Ultima Online and Star Wars Galaxies from the past. However, you have been an admin of a MUD server before you started to work professional in the business - well, or what was once to become a business back in these times. How did you first start? How did you get to MUDs and later on to Ultima Online?

I have been making games as long as I can remember; I used to make board games to take into school so we could play them during recess. A lot of them were ports of arcade games like "Pengo." My brother and I were given an Atari 8 bit computer around 1982 maybe, and that's where I really started making games. I also learned on an Osborne 1 running CP/M. We used to make games to sell in ziploc baggies; we sold exactly one copy, and I am pretty sure we sold it at a loss.

I drifted away from games for a while, but came back to them during college. After college, I went on to grad school, but stayed in touch with friends who. were still there. One of them turned me on to MUDs, and suggested they were a cool way to stay in touch. This was in 1992; you did everything with text back then, Mosaic wasn't out yet and there was no web.

I started playing on several muds, and ended up focusing on Worlds of Carnage, where I met a bunch of folks who turned out to be important to the history of MMORPGs: Damion Schubert would later go on to be involved with Meridian 59 and Shadowbane, and Rick Delashmit was the main programmer for UOUltima Online von Electronic Arts. and later on worked on several other MMORPGs. Rick was also the main implementor of LegendMUD, which my wife and I both worked on for a long time.

Rick was hired by Origin to work on UO, and he recommended my wife and I for designer roles, and that's how we landed there.

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