Raph Koster Lead Designer for Ultima Online

Thanks to Auric of Moongates for the photo

WOO:	Have you worked on any other games?
RK:	Not professionally. I sold a boardgame to a computer game company that was released as a computer game (Nexus) and as a hobbyist I worked on text MUDs for years. Ultima Online is the first game I've worked on as someone in the computer game industry.
WOO:	How extensive is your gaming background?
RK:	I've been gaming since I was a kid. I had Pong at home. When I was in junior high, several friends and I wrote games for the Atari 8 bit machines and the Commodore 64, mostly written in BASIC with some 6502 assembly. We sold them in Ziploc baggies with docs printed on my dot matrix printer. I've still got a large collection of old 8 bit games from when the computer game industry was just getting started. At the same time, we were avid players of RPGs, including most of the TSR ones. I also designed a long series of boardgames that we used to play during lunch hour at school. Later on, during graduate school, I got into muds, which are text-based virtual realities--think UO without graphics, or old text adventures with dozens of players at once, if you're not familiar with them. While in grad school, I studied hypertext some, which informed my views on designing this type of game... for a while I was very active in mud circles, but that's dwindled some as work has taken more of my time.
WOO:	Who has had the greatest impact on your professional life and why?
RK:	That would probably have to be Rick Delashmit, who got me into the industry. He's one of the lead programmers on UO, and he recommended me for a designer job based on my mud work. In terms of influences, well, I've been following the industry closely since the early 80s, so there's any number of great designers and programmers whose work I have followed... Dani Berry (Dan Bunten), Sid Meier, Paul Reiche, Richard Garriott...
WOO:	What was your inspiration for entering this industry?
RK:	I'd been doing design work around the idea of integrating more of a dynamic simulation layer into persistent world games. Closed economies, artificial life algorithms, that sort of thing. I was contacted by both Origin and by Meridian 59 to work on that sort of thing within a few weeks of one another, so I guess that sort of thing was what people were looking for. And UO was an obvious choice for me--the chance to really make a dynamic world was the inspiration... Working with virtual worlds is what I do right now, and the gaming industry was the place to do it.
WOO:	When Ultima Online is a wrap, what project are you looking forward to doing next and why?
RK:	More UO! It's going to be always evolving, so there's still more to do on it. And after that, I'm hoping to work on UO2. There are a lot of things that I'd like to try approaching a little differently now that we've had the learning experience of UO.
WOO:	What feature of Ultima Online is your favorite and why?
RK:	Hmm, that's tough. I have a special place in my heart for the resource system that controls creature AI and the economy and ecology, but at the same time, that's one of the systems that I'd like to take another run at in a future iteration. There's so much to learn and to try out there. I really like the ability to have pets.
WOO:	Which towns and NPC's are your favorites?
RK:	My favorite town is Trinsic. I don't think I have a favorite NPC...
WOO:	What's your take on the current player killing hysteria that has swept online Role Playing Games?
RK:	I think that usually the problem isn't as bad as the tales make it out to be. There's no doubt that this will be a problem that any online community will have to solve. Killing itself isn't the problem, it's more a question of whether or not antisocial activity in a virtual context has consequences. It might be harassment, it might be slander, or whatever. There's the attitude that since it isn't "real," you can take any actions you like without consequences. And this attitude has a real basis in fact, since it is so hard to enforce rules against this sort of thing. But we have to try, just as we have to try in the real world.
WOO:	What is your reaction to the amount of information, fan sites, and guilds that have proliferated through the Internet regarding UO?
RK:	It's awesome! These aren't just games, they are worlds and virtual communities, and it's really wonderful to see how the community builds itself.
WOO:	For several months UO has been the focus of much press, speculation and anticipation. How has this affected the work atmosphere at Origin?
RK:	Well, it's great to get all the attention, of course. A little scary, too, but very cool nonetheless. It's great to be working on something that you know so many people are eager to see.
WOO:	If you had to pick a single person to give special recognition to in developing Ultima Online, who would it be and why?
RK:	That's a tough question, since so many people have done so much for the game. I'd have to pick Rick Delashmit again on this one. He was the first programmer on the project, and much of the basis of the engine is his work.
WOO:	Do you feel that UO maintains the spirit and integrity of its forefathers?
RK:	Which ones, the Ultima ones or the mud ones? I think I maintains the spirit of both, but at the same time it is very different. Ultimas have been moving more and more to being about story as the series progressed, and linear storytelling is s difficult thing to pull off in a game like this. But the emphasis on virtue, on the ability to do a wide range of things and discover a lot of secrets, all that is still there.
WOO:	Ultima fans have been known to be nearly religious in their passion for their beloved Britannia. Do you feel this has added some pressure to your position as a designer?
RK:	Yes! Many of the fans know far more about Ultima than I do, so it's great to have them there as a resource to draw from.
WOO:	What are your hopes for the future of Ultima Online?
RK:	Just to keep getting better and better. Someday, it would be nice to hear it mentioned as a truly landmark endeavor, one of the first steps towards true virtual realities...
WOO:	What do you look forward to in the future of games?
RK:	That's a tough one. I personally look forward to what this new genre will bring, because it has so many interesting areas of potential.
WOO:	What do you think should be the next critical hardware technology for games?
RK:	Fast, realistic 3d. But I think hardware is going to plateau out as a factor fairly soon. The real critical choices will be made in design decisions, in algorithms. Artificial life is an area to watch.
WOO:	What advice would you like to share with aspiring game designers?
RK:	This is going to sound awful, but it helps to know somebody. Start in game testing--I didn't, but many do. Make your own games and make a name for yourself, however small, so that others see the need to have you. Basically, it's not very different advice from any other job. And you have to love what you're doing, just like in any other job.
WOO:	Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to answer some of these questions for us. :) And thanks to Rhoam for his assistance with this interview.