Raph Koster Game designer: ULTIMA ONLINE, STAR WARS GALAXIES, METAPLACE, & more. Writer: THEORY OF FUN, POSTMORTEMS, SUNDAY POEMS. Music: AFTER THE FLOOD. Speaker: lots.

Raph Koster is a veteran game designer who has been professionally credited in almost every area of the game industry. He's been the lead designer and director of massive titles such as Ultima Online and Star Wars Galaxies; an executive at Sony and Disney; a venture-backed entrepreneur with a successful exit; the inventor of patented technologies; and he's contributed design work, writing, art, soundtrack music, and programming to much more, ranging from Facebook games to AR research with Google.



Koster is widely recognized as one of the world's top thinkers about game design, and is an in-demand speaker at conferences all over the world. His book A Theory of Fun for Game Design is one of the undisputed classics in the games field. In 2012, he was named an Online Game Legend at the Game Developers Conference Online. Recently he just founded a new studio, Playable Worlds, to begin building his next game.