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Game design is simple
So, let’s just walk through the whole thing, end to end. Here’s a twelve-step program for understanding game design.
Raph Koster
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.
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Database “sharding” came from Ultima Online? (2009)
Lessons Learned: Sharding for startups is a technical post about database scalability. What caught my eye was the term . What an odd term — “sharding.” Why would a database be described that way?
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Random Ultima Online anecdote #2 – Horses inside players (2014)
I just stumbled across this old story I told somewhere, and thought I’d share more widely.
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The internet as existential threat
Some days I wonder if we are completely screwed. So today’s post is a perhaps slightly hysterical outburst.
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The cost of games
Yesterday I was in Anaheim giving a talk called “Industry Lifecycles.” (click here for slides and video).
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Ten Years of World of Warcraft
WoW has always been a contradiction of sorts: not the pioneer, but the one that solidified the pattern. Not the experimenter, but the one that reaped the rewards. Not the innovator, but the one that was well-designed, built solidly, and made appealing. It was the MMO that took what has always been there, and delivered…
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The Financial Future of Game Developers
To go back a ways, back in 2006 I suggested that you could look at the winding path a piece of media takes to the public in this way:
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How Ultima Online rares were born
Amaranthar in the comment thread on the last post referred to “rares” in Ultima Online as a feature. They weren’t really, though. They were a bug .