Raph Koster Interview

GameSpot has conducted an interview with Sony Online Entertainment’s Raph Koster, in which the chief creative officer answers questions about the future of MMORPGs, communicating with users, and what a game needs to excel in the genre. Check it out:

Q: The king category for MMOs right now is role-playing games. What’s going to have to happen for an RTS/first-person shooter MMO to come along?

A: On the shooter case, we viewed PlanetSide as a very successful title for us because we learned a lot, and a lot of people really love PlanetSide. So, to us that was a great title. I think in a lot of ways, it pointed out a lot of things about the ways MMO and FPSs can develop and the ways they can change.

I think one of the key things that we definitely learned is once you start thinking of the MMO as a platform or a place, you can put in a lot of different kinds of games in them, rather than thinking of them as having to be an RPG. At the same time, I would say that we also learned that one of the big things about having a virtual place was having a sense of your virtual self and the way in which they advance and progress. With PlanetSide, you have Battle Rank. Even though we were careful to make sure it didn’t take over the game, it’s also very important as a marker of how well you’re doing and how you relate to other people.

So some of the conventions that we consider RPG-ish, like avatars, are actually incredibly important for all MMOs. That doesn’t mean that the game system that you interact with is necessarily rolling dice behind the scenes. And I think PlanetSide’s combat system demonstrates it definitely doesn’t need to be that way.

RTSs are really tricky because it’s a very different experience. You’re way back [away from the action]. You’re not identifying an individual. I think when we see a really successful MMO/RTS, it’s probably going to take on a lot of RPG trappings that kind of ease people in–the sense of, “That’s me,” the sense of, “This is the place where I live or control things. This is my path for advancement.” And RTS style will be put into the game plan.

The economic sub-game in Galaxies works that way. You can plant harvesters and check back on them and you have to keep them funded and build a supply network. That’s a game and it’s a strategy game. It’s an economics strategy game. So I think there are lots of cues in the games right now for the ways in which other forms of game play can develop. I talk a lot.