TALKING ABOUT PLAYABLE WORLDS

"My most Anticipated MMO (Or MMO Adjacent Game) On The Horizon: Stars Reach." "Stars Reach intrigues me. ...hearing the developer excitedly talk about the game his team had been working on for a few years was incredibly infectious. And the game was interesting in its concept as well: a fully simulated sandbox galaxy where you [...]

"It should be a pretty decent year for MMO fans!" "This could truly be one of the most impressive sandboxes we've ever seen and the possibilities are endless for players. While I don't expect Stars Reach to fully release in 2025, I expect it will be open enough that if you really want to play [...]

On MassivelyOP, Eliot Lefebvre reflects on a tough year, highlighting moments of unexpected joy in the MMO world. Among the biggest surprises is Stars Reach, which Eliot describes as the industry's ultimate "hey, we’re entering new territory" signpost. With its bold ideas and innovative design, the game stands out as a beacon of what’s possible [...]

Want To Be An Elected Official Or A Planetary Dictator In Stars Reach? According To A Content Creator Stream, It'll Be Possible. There's a ton of tidbits Raph and David dropped on the stream, so grab a snack and chill for 2 hours.

Playable Worlds last updated the NDA on November 15, 2024. Today, slightly more than a month later, the NDA is now fully lifted. Players can now stream, record, publish, comment, podcast, screenshot, and create content about Stars Reach. As part of lifting this, Playable Worlds invited some of our favorite content creators to a special [...]

The Ancient Gaming Noob shares insights from the latest Stars Reach pre-alpha tests, which introduced the new homesteads feature. Despite challenges like server resets and tricky building mechanics, progress was made with tools such as the Grav Mesh and Instaformer, as well as through resource surveying. The community’s creativity was a standout, with jungle settlements, [...]

"Stars Reach in pre-alpha is already too much fun... I've played enough alphas and even betas where so little worked that it was hard to imagine any of it ever being fun. Stars Reach is fun right now. I'm far from not wanting to carry on. The opposite, really. Most of my frustration comes from not [...]

On MMOBomb, Michael Byrne highlights how Stars Reach devs Avi and Light have been blown away by player creativity during testing. From unintentional quartz-making methods to collaborative projects like collapsing mountains and crafting statues, players are already pushing the game’s limits. Light praises the strong community collaboration despite the lack of formal social tools, while [...]

On MassivelyOP, Justin Olivetti shares his growing fascination with Stars Reach, the ambitious sandbox MMORPG from Raph Koster and Playable Worlds. With its vibrant sci-fi aesthetic, dynamic ecosystems, and focus on cooperative planetary development, Stars Reach promises to break away from traditional MMO design and offer players something bold and new. Justin appreciates Koster’s goal [...]

Procedural World Generation in Stars Reach By Meghann Bledsoe Stars Reach is a game where there’s always something new to discover around the corner whether it be new ways to interact with other players or with the environment. So how do we make huge numbers of worlds for players to explore that ensure that [...]

In this article by The Ancient Gaming Noob, the latest Stars Reach pre-alpha test brought new ambitions and challenges, as the author set out to unlock the Civil Engineering skill tree and craft the Instaformer, a tool for building structures. After hours of digging for resources and hunting elusive neon gas dropped by ballhogs in [...]

We all enjoyed your video interview months ago at the announcement of Stars Reach. That was recorded in May and debuted in June. (Editor’s note: it’s here if you missed it.) What’s been the most rewarding or unexpected development in your work since the June 2024 announcement? Avi: The fact that we’ve been running playtests almost [...]

Over on Inventory Full, Bhagpuss dives into their latest Stars Reach pre-alpha test, squeezing in 45 minutes of exploration and experimentation before Beryl the dog declared it was time for hallway football. Despite the short session, this test proved to be one of the smoothest and most immersive yet, with no crashes, fewer mobs, and [...]

The latest episode of the Massively OP Podcast shines a spotlight on Stars Reach’s brand-new housing system! From designing modular homes to creating player-made settlements, this highly anticipated feature is set to take creativity to the next level. 🎙️ Don’t miss this deep dive into Stars Reach! Listen now on Massively OP!

On The Ancient Gaming Noob blog, the author dives into a midweek Stars Reach pre-alpha test, a rare opportunity to explore the game’s evolving mechanics outside of weekend sessions. This time, the focus was on crafting a Grav Mesh—a levitation device that opens up new exploration possibilities—and completing planetary surveys. Starting on the desert planet [...]

In this engaging post on Inventory Full, Bhagpuss shares impressions from their third session in the Stars Reach pre-alpha. After a rocky start in earlier tests, this session delivered a more traditional and satisfying MMORPG experience. Bhagpuss spent a productive 90 minutes gathering materials, crafting gear, and exploring, despite the occasional interruption from aggressive wildlife [...]

In her article on MMORPG.com, Christina Gonzalez explores the exciting new Homesteading feature coming to Stars Reach, Playable Worlds’ ambitious MMO. Christina highlights how Homesteads empower players to claim land—or even space—as their own, enabling them to build everything from farms and homes to starports or smuggling bases carved into asteroids. According to Dave Georgeson’s [...]

In his article on MMOBomb, Michael Byrne dives into the highly anticipated Homesteading system in Stars Reach, Playable Worlds’ evolving MMORPG. This isn’t your typical player housing—Homesteads allow players to claim land or even space, then build anything from cozy houses to asteroid hideaways or fully operational space stations. The possibilities are vast, whether you’re [...]

In her article on MassivelyOP, Bree Royce delves into the exciting progress being made on Stars Reach, the Star Wars Galaxies-inspired MMO sandbox by Playable Worlds. Bree highlights the newly revealed homesteading system, a revolutionary take on player housing that allows players to claim land anywhere in the universe and build to their heart’s content. [...]

OUR NEXT MAJOR UPDATE By Dave Georgeson So there are all these worlds out there for you to explore. A natural question for you to ask is “Can some of it be mine?” The answer is “yes, absolutely”. In our current pre-Alpha state, players can use the Trailblazer tool to set up [...]

In this article by Ancient Gaming Noob, the writer shares a personal and engaging account of their experience in the latest Stars Reach playtest. Exploring two new planets—Zaraxa (desert) and Gaiamar (jungle)—offered a fresh perspective on the game’s expanding universe, with Zaraxa’s pyramids and Gaiamar’s tropical landscapes standing out as highlights. The writer tested new [...]

By Rick Reynolds The game is still in pre-Alpha phase. But we are updating our Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) terms to loosen them further. Why? Because we have some confidence in what we are building, because we wish to embrace transparency,  and because we want to hear your feedback. And sometimes folks are more comfortable providing [...]

By Sean Weeden The Stars Reach Trailer II project was all about creating the trailer we’ve envisioned - a true showcase of the strides we’re making in bringing Stars Reach to life. Trailer II highlights the leaps we’ve made, enhanced graphics, a dynamic world simulation, player-built structures and fast-paced, arcade-style combat, giving players a glimpse of how Stars [...]

An interview with Raph Koster and Daniel Whitehead at Unite 2024 in Barcelona, Spain Many game developers carefully and painstakingly handcraft a beautiful setting for their game, designed to be experienced in the perfect way to achieve their artistic vision. Of course, once that’s achieved, the world can never change, never evolve, and [...]

By Dave Georgeson The time has come for our pre-Alpha MMO to graduate from single zone tests to multizone ones instead. Not only that, but now we start to take the training wheels off – allowing players to explore and make their own paths, gain XP, gather resources, craft new equipment, explore a [...]

By Carneros & Rod TEST ONE! On Saturday October 19th, we ran a world exploration test in Stars Reach. In this pre-alpha version of the game we haven’t tuned for difficulty, are using many placeholder artworks, and are aware that we still have bugs to deal with, but that is [...]

If you read our last blog post, you heard about the features we plan to test this weekend. To date, we have been unlocking only specific features in each test, and trying them out in isolation, rather than letting testers play with all the systems we have done work on. Probably most notably, testers [...]

In the last test we ran on Oct 2, we let players rip up the world, experimenting with a ton of world manipulation tools. This next test, we’re going a completely different direction, removing all of those terrain deformation capabilities and concentrating instead on some of our core game loops: combat, progression and (just [...]

CREATIVE CHAOS, PLAYER FEEDBACK, AND EPIC MOMENTS WITH NEW VOXEL TOOLS We recently ran a wild-and-wooly external test where we gave our players a whole host of voxel manipulation tools and absolutely no guardrails. The ensuing chaos was both a) enormously entertaining, and b) extremely valuable feedback on both performance and giving us [...]

Stars Reach by Playable Worlds is about fulfilling the promise of what online worlds can be. In this video, you’ll learn about upcoming innovations for both MMOG and virtual worlds and Unity’s advantages. This thought-provoking experience draws you into a single shardless galaxy with thousands of living planets and space zones that you can [...]

In this article by Chris Neal from MassivelyOP.com, Raph Koster shares new insights into Stars Reach, focusing on the game's character advancement system. The sandbox MMORPG will feature a skill tree system where players earn XP by performing useful actions, such as a ranger gaining experience when their camp is used or a blacksmith earning [...]

By Dave Georgeson We strongly believe there are three core elements at the heart of a great, massively social MMORPG. Fun and compelling moment-to-moment gameplay, a thriving global economy you're excited to participate in, and satisfying character advancement. These are all married together and intertwined like ivy branches. Each inseparable from the others, and [...]

This past week I was at the annual Unity developers conference called Unite 2024, where we were presenting a couple of times on our game and technology. This year it was held in Barcelona, Spain. I had never been, and it was on my bucket list of places to visit. We work very closely [...]

by Light Bates Hey Folks! Last month we had our first playtest where players could run, grapple, jump, grav-mesh, climb, dance, and more. This was a great way to kick off our external playtests and players had a great time, however through all of these movement tests their toolbelts were empty and their backpacks [...]

https://unity.com/events/unite   This week Unity is hosting the Unite 2024 conference in Barcelona, Spain. Aimed mostly at developers, the conference organizers have asked Raph to present as well as to appear as a guest in other groups' presentations.   Thursday, September 19 from 3:15pm to 3:55pm CEST Peek inside: How Playable Worlds innovates with Unity [...]

by Raph Koster When we announced Stars Reach, the art style and visuals were not yet as far along as the gameplay, the cloud technology, and the simulation. Visual improvements were planned for later in the schedule, starting with this month’s pre-alpha testing. This gave us a challenge: Our development plan calls for early input [...]

In this article by Michael Byrne from MMOBomb.com, the Stars Reach team provides an update on graphical improvements after player feedback on the initial pre-alpha footage. While the art style remains unchanged, the new video shows enhancements in environment design, lighting, and character avatars, offering a preview of the game's progress toward beta testing. Byrne [...]

In this devblog, Raph explains the in’s and out’s of the Stars Reach camera and movement systems. All of these systems are things our testers got to try out in our most recent playtests. Check out some excerpts from our most recent test, courtesy of Alimber. [...]

You may have seen last week that we have started the limited pre-alpha testing for Stars Reach. It’s exciting times – we’ve had outsiders play the game before, of course, but it was mostly investors and partners of the company. This is the first time that real players have gotten to play! (Yay!) We [...]

by Dave Georgeson We had our first external test last Saturday, inviting a slew of people from the Stars Reach Discord channel to join us. Around 58 of them joined during the two-hour test, along with part of the dev team. A good time was had by all. Although this first test was mostly about [...]

By Raph KosterI think this may actually be the last of the posts outlining the high level goals of the game! And just in time too, because the very first Reachers are going to be landing on a planet in Stars Reach this weekend. That’s right, it’s time to start testing! If you’re interested, be [...]

No game can be for everyone. And even though we want Stars Reach to have broad appeal and to bring together multiple playstyles into one world, it also can’t try to be all things to all people. These vision items and pillars and the rest are as much about excluding and ruling out as [...]

by Raph Koster It might be hard to believe now, but a couple of decades ago, plenty of designers didn’t think that games could be art. They didn’t think that there was any greater meaning, that it was enough if games were just fun and didn’t have anything more to them. These days, we have [...]

Hello everyone, I’m back with the third chapter in our exploration of the pillars for our vision of Stars Reach. Today I’ll be talking about the ones that get much more concrete about how the game works. It’s been great to see the discussion of these pillars on the official Discord and MMO sites online! [...]

In this article by MMORPG.com, Raph Koster reveals new development insights for Stars Reach, Playable Worlds' upcoming MMORPG. He discusses the evolution of MMORPGs and how the game will blend the accessibility of modern titles with the depth of sandbox gameplay. Koster highlights a key design goal: combining the simplicity of Nintendo games with deep, [...]

by Raph Koster Hello everyone, I’m back to talk more about our design pillars for Stars Reach. Last time I described an MMO as a virtual place that we put games in, rather than as a game. I also promised that today I would talk about principles that animate the games – the fun! – [...]

by Raph Koster Hi everyone, I’m kicking off a little series of posts here on what our core game pillars are. These are the defining philosophies that animate everything in the game design. They tell us what the game is, and what the game is not. When we do design work, we constantly look back [...]

Steam has added a product page for Stars Reach in the Steam Store. Categorized under Massively Multiplayer Games, Stars Reach is presented with a short description in a small number of languages. The wishlist button is now active and helps us more than you know. Please wishlist today.  

Playable Worlds invites players to sign up and opt-in for consideration for early player testing. Player feedback is requested to help refine and provide input on the design of features of the game. “It’s time to bring you into the process,” said Raph Koster. “That’s why we want to invite you along on our journey [...]

Playable Worlds has announced its first title, Stars Reach, a massively multiplayer sandbox, exploration, and alternate-life game. Playable Worlds also released three videos that focus on early pre-Alpha game play, Raph’s creative vision, and Raph and the development team took questions from the community on what players can expect. Stars Reach is an intelligent, living, [...]

The 258,000-member /r/MMORPG subreddit will be hosting Raph at 10am PST/1pm EST/7pm CEST on Friday, June 28, 2024. The AMA or Ask Me Anything is a respected reddit tradition. Come prepared to read live questions and answers or even ask your own questions about new and old games, books, etc. Visit the subreddit for additional [...]

Chris Melissinos is Principal Evangelist for Video Games for Amazon Web Services  -- AWS for Games. Chris and Raph discuss his history in the design and growth of massively multiplayer online games, how MUDs led him to working at Origin Systems, stories around an infamous event in the early Ultima Online days, how gamers solved [...]

Playable Worlds cofounder Eric Goldberg will be moderating a panel on games innovation at GamesBeat Summit 2024 next week. It's not too late to register. Virtual participation registration is free of charge and available here. Tune in at 11:00 AM Pacific for "Catalysts for the next great studios and games" with special guests Ed Fries, [...]

In honor of the 20th anniversary of the publication of A Theory of Fun, Koster has been invited to present at Game Developer Conference 2024 in San Francisco. Friday, March 22 from 10:00-11:00am PDT This is considered a Design Track presentation and is available to holders of All Access passes or Core passes. A Theory [...]

"We are delighted that Popul8 has such flexible character customization that helps our character artists deliver their magic faster. This will help every player find a way to express who they want to be," explained Raph Koster, CEO of Playable Worlds, Inc. "Our goal is to enable players to create the full range of unique [...]

Technologist and writer Dirk Songuer interviewed Raph about the rights of game avatars for his upcoming book on the history of the metaverse. In January 2000, Raph posted a thought experiment about human rights in a virtual context to the influential MUD-Dev mailing list.  This interview explores the context, reactions, and a number of great [...]

After years of rapid growth in the games industry, we've finally hit a year of ups and downs. We wave goodbye to 2023 and look forward to what 2024 holds in store. "Forging Ahead: Will 2024 Spark a Games Industry Renaissance?" Pocket Gamer Connects | London 2024 - January 22-23, 2024 Location: The Brewery, 52 [...]

This week Lizzie Mintus' Here's Waldo podcast interviewed Playable Worlds CEO Raph Koster. The conversation includes: Playable Worlds and its mission The challenge of funding a startup How Raph broke into the games industry Raph's 10-year forecast for the games industry The early days of Ultima Online Raph's Metaplace experience What makes a video game [...]

This week Lizzie Mintus' Here's Waldo podcast interviewed Playable Worlds Chief Product Officer and Executive Producer Gordon Walton. The conversation covered the earliest days of the games industry, Gordon's philosophy on hiring and managing people, how the industry has changed over the years, Playable Worlds, and much more. You can watch the interview here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDStRDwenaA  [...]

James notices that it has now been two years since Facebook changed its name to Meta and tells some of the lifecycle of the metaverse buzzword. Author of Making a Metaverse That Matters: From Snow Crash & Second Life to a Virtual World Worth Fighting For, Au has interesting observations on Meta, Roblox, and the [...]

A private investor event just wrapped up in Lisbon, Portugal and one of the standout presentations was by Raph Koster followed by remarks by Eric Goldberg, the founders of Playable Worlds. While the event was a closed-door affair, public comments and feedback on the presentation have appeared publicly on Twitter/X. Tim Cotten, founder of Scrypted [...]

GamesBeat Next - the future of gaming Wagner James Au, author of Making a Metaverse That Matters: From Snow Crash & Second Life to a Virtual World Worth Fighting For, will be moderating a panel on Practical Steps to Making the Metaverse interviewing Raph Koster, CEO and founder of Playable Worlds, Inc., and [...]

Raph Koster talks metaverse design by Colin Campbell, Monday, September 25, 2023 Raph Koster is interviewed in his home studio. Raph Koster is one of gaming’s most renowned designers of online play worlds, like Ultima Online and Star Wars Galaxies. As author of the highly influential book A Theory of Fun for Game [...]

The Fourth Curtain podcast team writes, "This week's guest is a poet, writing the poetry of fun. Author of the essential 'A Theory of Fun', creator of Ultima Online and Stars Wars Galaxies, he's likely the world's foremost expert on MMOs. Game industry fundamentals being made for the first time with Raph Koster." Episode 21 [...]

Q. Do you remember your first moment getting emotionally connected to a sandbox MMORPG? A. It was definitely Ultima Online and for an unusual reason. I had played hundreds of games by that point in my life, and all of those games were highly scripted. Results were intentionally predictable so you could learn how to [...]

In this fireside chat, Game Developer senior editor Bryant Francis interviews Raph Koster, CEO of Playable Worlds, Inc. who has worked at EA, Sony, and Disney, and served as lead designer and director for titles like Ultima Online and Star Wars Galaxies. They discuss his career as a top game designer, what's changed in the [...]

Raph Koster predicts the future of the metaverse is a ‘virtual Machu Picchu’ – that you can leave If you’re not exhausted of seeing the word “metaverse” just yet, MMORPG developer Raph Koster has published a blessedly brief whitepaper on the evolution of online spaces like MMOs into metaverses – and by extension why we [...]

PLAYABLE WORLDS CAKE News Brief April 1, 2023 San Marcos, California – Playable Worlds, an online game company created to raise the state-of-the-art of immersive worlds development, has today released an official cake recipe. This is the first crafting recipe Playable Worlds has revealed to the public. There are two parts to this recipe [...]

News Brief The first issue of Games: Research and Practice was released today by the Association for Computing Machinery Digital Library. Games: Research and Practice offers a lighthouse for games research – a central reference point that defines the state of the art on games and playable media across academic research and industry practice. Playable [...]

News Brief Host Marc Fernandez of the Club Metaverse podcast today released an exclusive interview with Raph Koster, CEO of Playable Worlds. They discussed game design, MMO history and design, lessons learned from Star Wars Galaxies & and Ultima Online, the Metaverse, and guitars.   You can view the video version on YouTube or listen [...]

At the invitation of Professor Niklas Elmqvist, PhD. of the University of Maryland College of Information Studies, Raph returned to present a second guest lecture to a game design class. The class is comprised of 50 masters and undergraduate students, mostly from the human-computer interaction and information science programs. The lecture was presented over Zoom. [...]

For better or worse, much of the games market is moving to games-as-a-service. Once upon a time, this was known as the MMO business model, because all MMOs were games-as-a-service, and virtually nothing else was. Obviously, a lot of GaaS games won’t be MMOs. Candy Crush Saga is a service, but it’s not an MMO. Nor does [...]

For those that don’t know, Ultima Online is celebrating 25 years of continuous online play this month! Our CEO Raph Koster (Lead Designer on Ultima Online) helped bring UO to life all those years ago, and continues to draw inspiration from that original vision. And here we are, 25 years later, building new playable worlds. Worlds that feel alive and dynamic, where you can play from any device; using modern cloud-native architecture.

I just watched a couple of videos about sandbox vs themepark games (in particular one by NerdSlayer and another by Josh “Strife” Hayes)… One thing that struck me about the ways players often talk about this (because at this point the history is so old) is that people think of sandbox as the older version of MMOs, and themeparks as newer. But that’s not right – sandbox is not the older form. Sandboxes are the evolution of themepark MMOs, not the antecedent.

For National Video Game Day, we asked the team what their all-time favorite game is and why. Yes, a bold request to ask of passionate gamers (some who may or may not have over a thousand games in their Steam libraries…)  Keep reading to learn more about our favorite games!

Playable Worlds Hires Gordon Walton as Executive Producer and Chief Product Officer. The Executive Producer who has shipped the most western MMOs, Walton brings 40+ years of experience from studios such as Maxis, BioWare, and Sony Online Entertainment and is joined by Omar Abdelwahed, Vice President of Engineering.

Playable Worlds announced today that it has secured over $25 million in Series B funding, led by Korean video game publisher Kakao Games Corp., a subsidiary of Kakao, and with participation from return investors BITKRAFT Ventures and Galaxy Interactive. New investors Lilith Games and Gaingels also joined the round, which follows a $10 million Series A in 2020. This strategic investment will be used to drive Playable Worlds’ talent recruitment and fund its cloud-native sandbox MMO game currently in development.

Welcome to another edition of our Playable Profile series! We chatted with one of our senior gameplay engineers, Abby! While she is newer to the gaming industry, she has years of experience programming that helped her get to where she is now. She even has some great advice if you're looking to get into the industry, too! Read on to meet Abby!

Our Lead Game Designer Greg Costikyan (of Paranoia and Star Wars D6) chats with Dieku Games about being a change maker in the game design industry and speaking up for indie game developers.

We challenged people on our team here at Playable Worlds to join in and support gender equality in the workplace. Check out their pledges to help make the workplace equal for all genders.

Lots of people are promising a metaverse real soon now. Raph Koster of Playable Worlds has actually built one before, so he'll tell you why it’s harder than people think, and what is required to actually fulfill those dreams.

Not many people can say “been there, done that” on the metaverse. But Raph Koster, CEO of Playable Worlds, has been making online worlds for more than a quarter of a century. He gave a speech about what he’s learned from that experience at the GamesBeat Summit: Into the Metaverse 2 online event on January 27th, 2022. Koster has worked on online game worlds such as Ultima Online, EverQuest, and Star Wars Galaxies, and he understands the difficulty of interoperability, how people behave, the importance of creating standards, and the need to focus on fun.

Peek inside for a holiday surprise from the team!

Let’s get one thing out of the way first. Ownership of anything digital is illusory, and always will be. Then again, it’s illusory in the real world, too. Ownership is a convention, not physical reality. This is why we have sayings like “Possession is nine-tenths of the law, which basically means “you can claim you own something all you want, but if you don’t physically have the object, it’s pretty hard to enforce.” In digital settings, of course, you never physically have anything. At best, you have a physical container of data.

Making objects in a virtual world actually *do* something is way harder than just drawing them – and as we have seen, drawing them is already fraught with challenges.

Now we are finally at the hardest part of virtual worlds to wrap your head around – not coincidentally, also the aspect that gets people the most excited. Things. Stuff. Bits and bobs. Widgets. You know: objects.

Raph joins Jon Radoff's "Building the Metaverse" video series to chat about the metaverse, online worlds, MMOs, and more!

Last week I wrote about the challenges of moving art between virtual worlds – especially the long-standing dream of moving avatars across wildly different worlds and experiences. Something I didn’t touch on is whether this is a dream you actually want.

That’s why I am writing about how virtual worlds work today, so it’s easier to have these conversations, and all reach for those dreams together. And I’m going to try to do it with minimal technical jargon, so everyone can follow along. This is a big topic, so today we’ll confine ourselves to just one part of the virtual world picture: what you, as the user, see.

In the last couple of articles, I’ve spent maybe too much time talking about big buzzwords – metaverse this and that. I get it, it can be confusing! I want to talk about why our overall tech approach makes for better lives for developers and better games for players.

Last week, I talked about “metaverse,” the hype around it, and how much of what people dream about is actually stuff online worlds have done for many years now. I ended the article on a bit of a tease, promising that I would talk about what we are doing. I won’t tease this time.

A lot of people are talking about the “metaverse”, and as a result, a lot of folks are wondering what the heck that word even means. Frankly, it’s a reasonable question. But as someone who has actually built, launched, and operated a metaverse before, I have answers! Read on to learn more!

In part 2 of our How Games Get Made series, Greg shares more about each team and their roles, and perhaps most importantly...what's the status of that lightbulb? Check it now! Warning: More bonus jokes inside.

Ever wondered how exactly games are made? Our Lead Designer, Greg Costikyan, shares his depth of knowledge (albeit a little tongue-in-cheek), digging into everything from "the idea", how to get funding, and the stages of development. Read on to learn more! Warning: Bonus jokes imminent.

Hello everyone and happy International Non-Binary People’s Day! I’m Light, resident bigender prototyper (any pronouns), and today I wanted to take a little time to give some advice for those of you looking to get into games! Read on to learn more!

In the latest Playable Profile, I had the pleasure of chatting with Light, who is on our design team! We talked about their experiences with games, what it’s been like working in the industry for the first time, and more! It was an absolute deLIGHT! Read on to meet them!

To celebrate Pride Month, we have shared more about our values and culture here at Playable Worlds. We dig into diversity, equity, and inclusion and why it matters. Read on for more!

It’s time for another Playable Profile - I interviewed Patrick, who is on our engineering team! We chatted about how he got into programming and what he’s learned during his career in games. If you’re looking to get into the gaming industry, he shared some great advice on how to make it happen. Read on for the full interview!

Playable World's Co-Founder, Eric Goldberg, joined the Elite Game Developers Podcast to discuss investing in games and what the future of games looks like.

In this superstar fireside chat from the Game Maker Insights track at Pocket Gamer Connects Digital #6 on April 20th, 2021, Raph Koster and Joost Van Dreunen discuss true multiplayer game design & the cloud.

First, let’s get real: the cloud is not really new. After all, there used to be a time where we ran software on mainframes remotely, and used a pretty dumb terminal with a thin client to connect to the mainframe. Today, instead of a mainframe, we have remote server clusters with tons of compute power that can launch and shut down a multitude of servers to allow for rapid changes in demand. There’s incredible sophistication in what has changed, but it’s still mostly tech plumbing.

Our CEO Raph Koster and co-founder Eric Goldberg chat with Dean Takahashi at VentureBeats about what we're working on here at Playable Worlds. We dig into topics like cloud-native technology, social gameplay, and living worlds!

The reason why businesspeople need to use other words is because “fun” isn’t particularly measurable. For one thing, it’s really different for different people. Some people find fun in raising cute pets, and others in turning them into giblets and loot. Some enjoy building, and others tearing down. There isn’t anything wrong with that! A person’s taste in fun will evolve over time, by quite a lot. When we were little kids, we all liked games that seem trivial or random to us now; one of the biggest characteri

There’s a sweet spot of network development where mom-and-pop shops aren’t crushed by megacorps. A sweet spot where almost no one is really disposable. Where people aren’t forced to overspecialize, but also aren’t forced to do everything themselves. Where no individual node on the graph is so powerful it swallows all the attention or all the rewards.

A player-driven economy isn’t about the money. It’s about having every way to play the game serve a role in the ecosystem. It’s about all the wonderful and weird ways we choose to live and play, and how we find out that our silly hobbies are vital necessities to someone else.

"We dreamt of living worlds, back then: worlds we could fall into, ensorcelled by plausibility and consistency. Worlds that would immerse us. We dreamt of worlds that offered freedom, ways to play and live that the real one does not. We dreamt of worlds where we as players made a difference." Our CEO Raph Koster shares his thoughts on the online worlds of the past, and what is in store for future worlds. Read on for more!

We chatted with a few of our wonderful women and non-binary people on the team and discussed how they got into the industry, what challenges they’ve faced because of their gender, and their personal triumphs and successes. Read on to meet them!

Our CEO Raph Koster was a panelist at the GamesBeat Summit, discussing startups, the road to the metaverse, and why we need to learn from history.

Our CEO Raph Koster recently spoke on a panel about engaging players over the long term, and subscription business models. Check out the video and the follow-up interview!

Playable Worlds announced today that it has secured $10M in Series A funding, led by interactive content and technology investor Galaxy Interactive via its Galaxy EOS VC Fund. The funding will be used to develop the technology associated with a cloud-based game and to continue building out the team.

Our CEO Raph Koster joined Gordon Walton of ArtCraft for a panel discussion put together by GameStar, hosted by Leya Jankowski of MeinMMO and Julius Busch of MAX Monsters & Explosions. Listen in to learn about what makes MMOs special and why these two creators have devoted their careers to them.

Pioneers in virtual worlds Philip Rosedale of High Fidelity; Matthew Ball of Epyllion Industries; Raph Koster of Playable Worlds; Frederic Descamps of Manticore Games; and Sam Englebardt of Galaxy Interactive, met up digitally at GamesBeat 2020 to talk about the promise of the Metaverse.

Josh is joined for an epic chat with MMORPG legendary designer Raph Koster, the current CEO of Playable Worlds, and former lead designer and creative director of Ultima Online and Star Wars Galaxies, respectively. Listen in to one of the best chats the show has featured, as Raph talks everything from Richard Garriott’s castle, to his thoughts on micro-transactions and their place in gaming, to his current work with Playable Worlds.

This is what makes Koster's involvement with Playable Worlds notable: he seems intent on applying lessons learned from decades of studying online game communities, and passionate about building a shared world where combat isn't the focus. 'There are so many ways to exist and interact with these alternate, fictional worlds that to say combat is The Way is just so reductive,' he said. 'We've really started getting that lesson; for me it was a lesson we came into on Ultima Online.

“The gaming industry suffered a schism earlier this year as multiple PC storefronts triggered the Store Wars, an escalating battle for exclusive games. Gamers were divided over the benefits of this, and the debate over it continues as more games come out as “exclusive” to a store. TNW got the chance to speak to Raph Koster, a legend in the industry, about the state of gaming.”

I would go further and say it's not just those sandbox-y elements; there are lessons we could be pulling into MMOs from other kinds of games all together. There's this impression that an MMO has to be something heavy, something you take two hours to do every session. I think there are a ton of lessons we've seen in everything from mobile to indie games showing you can have things that are deep and really engaging but don't require you to make them your principal hobby taking up hours and hours every day.

Playable Worlds, an online game company created to change the way immersive worlds work, announced today it has raised $2.7 million in seed funding, led by BITKRAFT Esports Ventures with participation from 1UP Ventures and several game industry angel investors. The company is led by a distinguished team of developers with many decades of collective online game experience from Disney, Marvel, Sony Online Entertainment, and venture-backed startups.

“I’d say that our goal, though, is to make a sandbox that looks forward, rather than one that looks backwards. There are many lessons to build on, but we’re not out to build a museum to old gameplay. We’re going to bring the best of that stuff forward to the modern day, and blend it with the best of now to hopefully make something that works for tomorrow.”