You read that right - we did actually sit down with Raph at GDC this year. Belatedly, we bring you the first in a short series of articles, consisting of transcripts from the marathon interview conducted at the very beginning of the conference.

As is becoming standard with our designer interviews, we're roaming all over the landscape in terms of topics. In this installment, we touch on Areae, team sizes, Chief Creative Officers, game grammars, the play preferences of children and the fun of flapping, among many other things.

Enjoy!

F13: All right, so, we're at GDC on Monday. Everyone's still jetlagged. But we're here with Raph Koster, and we're gonna talk about stuff! So Raph, you've got a new company.

Raph: I refuse to answer that question! (laughs)

F13: Okay, now that we've gotten that out of the way...

Raph: Yes, now, I've got a new company... except it's not new any more!

F13: It's not new any more, it's six months old...

Raph: It's older than that!

F13: Well, it's six months since you've started talking about it seriously... You've released your website, you've started saying you're going to do Web 2.0, massively-multiplayer crossover... Inventing The Matrix.

Raph: Hopefully without the sequels!

F13: So what have you been occupying your time with in the past six months that you're willing to tell us about, then?

Raph: Actually, it's been a lot of fun. The company was actually founded back in July last year, and part of that time was spent fundraising. We were fully-funded as of AGC last year, so since then, actually, it's been team-building. We're up to about a half-dozen people already, and we don't expect to grow that big. One of the virtues of the way we're doing it is that it doesn't require an army, which is actually REALLY refreshing!

F13: So one of the things you're working on is building both a platform and a method of doing business to compress those 200-person teams down to... twenty?

Raph: Well, you know, it's actually the platform itself. If you change some of the assumptions about what the platform really should be, then yeah, a whole bunch of other factors change. And it's been really fun just working with a small team again.

F13: I believe you've already told us there's going to be a 3-D client, so what assumptions are you actually changing?

Raph: Well, that should be obvious just because we have that hiring req on the website. What assumptions are we going to be changing...? I don't think I can actually tell you anything about that YET. ... Yeah, not yet.

F13: So, I think this is the first time in the last several years that you've worked outside of a large business...

Raph: Ever!

F13: Ever! Didn't you work on LegendMUD prior? That wasn't a large business...

Raph: That wasn't a large business, but that also wasn't for pay.

F13: So how are you finding the experience of being your own boss, finally? Is that allowing you to take new, better creative avenues?

Raph: Well, it's different in a lot of ways. I mean... When I compare back to the early days of working on UO, UO was very much a skunkworks project, the UO core team was a half-dozen... less than ten...

F13: Well, nothing like that had really been done before, nothing on that scale...

Raph: Yeah, but it was also... even within Origin, it was very much a skunkworks, off-in-the-corner, most-of-the-company-didn't-know-what-we-were-doing kinda thing. It was very kinda isolated from everything. So because of that, we had this real classic skunkworks kind of mode where we didn't know what the rest of the company was doing, they didn't know about us, and we just did things our way and tried lots of wild and crazy stuff, right? And those skunkworks projects are often the best working times of your life, right? Even UO.. UO didn't finish that way, it eventually, for a while, had the entire U9 team on board, and all that.

F13: And it kept growing and now it's their last product, ten years later...

Raph: Well, but it grew like crazy... And at SOE, everything always started big! I mean, we come into SWG, and we had a core team, but the core team, we already had a half-dozen people and it ballooned really quickly because we had a project very quickly, and we knew it was big... So, you work so differently... The difference between a team of six batting around ideas and a team of twenty right off the bat is just MASSIVE. A huge, huge difference. It's way more collaborative to be working with a smaller group, you can be more experimental, you can try something, throw it away, try something new... Whereas when you're working on a big project with a big team, you have to plan it all out in advance, seek approval, because you're spending a lot of money, and then continue on that path. You don't get to adjust very well, right?

F13: So how have you adjusted your operating methodology to be more creative, since that's obviously what you're aiming for with your company?

Raph: Well, I think the biggest thing is that I'm actually coding things myself again, and that's a big thing...

F13: How long has it been since you've actually worked down on the metal?

Raph: Well, I worked down on the metal on UO. I coded guilds. I coded the original house sign. I coded the Tillerman's Stories, I coded a whole bunch of things, I coded a whole bunch of stuff in UO. The wisp language, lots of stuff. And, you know, gosh... if you work in video games, being able to actually make something as opposed to just working on paper, huge difference, right? On SWG, I never really got to do anything. Almost everything I did was on paper...

F13: Really, so mostly you went to meetings, sat in offices, ...?

Raph: Went to meetings, design meetings... reviewed design docs, had plenty of design brainstorm meetings, but did almost no implementation myself, and what I did, most of it actually isn't actually in the game, so there's just a difference in how close you are to the metal, like you said. And as CCO, I started... I was even more removed from projects, right? I started doing a lot of game stuff on the side just for fun...

F13: So what does being a CCO entail? I don't think there's a clear definition...

Raph: No, and it actually evolved a lot over the course of my tenure there. It was a lot of what I call "public face" work, it was a lot of that. There was a lot of milestone reviewing, I didn't so much review the projects that were ongoing, as it was the new starts. Lots of looking at projects when they were getting started, and seeing how to shape them. But again, there, it's still mostly giving advice to the team, it's not your project, so you're not pursuing your own vision, instead you're trying to help them.

F13: So you said you were doing games on the side?

Raph: Yeah, I did lots of little puzzle games and stuff like that, just for myself, and reconnected, actually, with making games directly.

F13: So you were falling... out of love with the game industry prior to...?

Raph: No, it was just that the nature of the job was so different...

F13: Going back to your roots...

Raph: Yeah, in a lot of ways, it was going back to the roots, right? You know, I'm not a great artist, I'm not a great programmer, but I learned to make games back in the 8-bit days. So that means I know enough to be able to make a game by myself, and being able to stretch those muscles was a lot of fun. It was like, wow, I can still do this! I can make a game by myself! I was doing this the same time as writing the book, so writing the book, focusing on "What Is Fun?" and all that, so easy to lose sight of that on a giant project, so doing it in a... When it's just you, and you make a puzzle game and you have a choose an art style and all the rest... Every choice you make is right in your face, and so... you're not offloading any decisions, it forces you to think about that stuff, I think that... I did a lot of board games too, just for myself, play with my family, that kind of thing, play with friends...

F13: And board games are great, because you can prototype one in thirty minutes.

Raph: Exactly! So I got in the mode of prototyping computer games in thirty minutes too! It was like, start on Friday, and show something to friends on Monday morning when I went into work.

F13: That's pretty cool.

Raph: Yeah, it's a lot of fun! I'm not doing it as much now, but I'm doing a session, Jonathan Blow is running a session called Nuances of Design...

F13: I think I saw that on your blog.

Raph: Yeah, I'm gonna show the Andean Bird game that I threw up on the blog. Which is exactly one of those. I started up on Friday evening going "I wanna make this game about flapping that I've been thinking about", and then I posted it to the blog on the following week, just get it out there...

F13: So, you mentioned your book. It's been about two years since it's been published...

Raph: Yeah, about two years. Came out late '04?

F13: Yeah, late '04. Since then, you have, personally, gone through a lot of changes in where you're working, what you're working on... Has that affected how you think about the same problem? Has your thinking on "What Is Fun?" changed?

Raph: Actually, no, not really, it hasn't...

F13: Has it come more into focus?

Raph: Some of it has come more into focus, because after I did that book, I did all that Game Grammar stuff, and actually... that...

F13: There's a session on that somewhere here on GDC, I believe.

Raph: And I just got a preview of it! Because I'm not going to be able to go...

F13: Really? When is it? I might have to...

Raph: It's opposite the MMO: Past, Present and Future panel..

F13: (grumbling) Well, I can't go either.

Raph: So I got a preview of it, and it's fantastic, it's a natural next step off of what I was doing. And these guys aren't the only ones working on notation, a whole bunch of people... And from what I can see, it is now 100% obvious that this stuff works, actually. Which is kind of cool because, with mine, you couldn't tell if it worked, but now, it's clear, it works, I wasn't insane, which is nice! So, yeah, I think a lot of things have just come more into focus, I guess is the way to put it, I don't think of the underlying stuff is, really....

F13: So now that we're developing a notation for game design, are you actually shopping this around with academic institutions, as well?

Raph: I'm not! I think those guys are...

F13: Are you still involved with the notation crowd, or is that something you're just observing?

Raph: I'm just observing it, you know... I'm not really involved with it. I actually moved on to the next step, which was that horseshoe talk I gave about influences and about the... You know, I'm... I went, first I looked at fun and concluded it was pattern learning, and then I said, "You know what, these are mathematical patterns!" so then I went to the notation thing. And now I've come out the other side and I'm going "Shit! Is that it?! Crap!"

F13: (laughing) So, now you're working on application, of course, because...

Raph: Well, application, but also concern about the fact that it's all Math! And the questions of how much does that constrain what we can do with games?

F13: Well, it also brings up absolutely existential questions, determinism vs. free will, have you run into that at all?

Raph: Um... Not so much from the determinism-free will side, more from the... Some of the concerns I articulated are things like... Well, I'll give you the metaphor. "A wash of gray is not the same as a 256 grayscale palette." And games always work in the palette. Everything they do, they quantify. And what's more, they quantize! They don't just quantify, but they abstract out into these digital steps. Even the board games do it, honestly. And that's... to me, that's a little worrisome, under the... It's this underlying current and I go, "Ehh, I dunno how comfortable I am with that!"

F13: It's a mechanistic form of recreation.

Raph: It's kind of a mechanistic thing, yeah. There's one commenter on my blog, Prokofy Neva, and one of the things she always says is that "Games teach you to obey." It's like, here's the system, work in it.

F13: Particularly with Japanese games, you see that a lot.

Raph: It's like, you can only work in it, you can't innovate on it. And it, it's... that's a little worrisome to me.

F13: It is a hard to make a nondeterministic system in a deterministic machine. Which is one of the problems. But that's why we have tabletop roleplaying games and things like that.

Raph: Yeah, and certainly, we can do computer-mediated stuff along those lines, but it's still an interesting problem because I gained so much appreciation for those mechanistic systems and how powerful they are, and so on... And stages one and two, right, the fun and the grammar, now to be at stage three makes me go, wow, I hate to be calling that into question, because I think there's really cool things there, but it's still a little worrisome. So, you know, that was part of the genesis behind the Andean Bird thing... I wanted to make a game about flapping, because I wanted players to feel what felt like, right? And that's why it's on two keys, like this... and I really want to put it on the analog triggers... (making Xbox-controller trigger motions)

F13: Analog triggers, like on an Xbox...?

Raph: Yeah. But you know, you hit keys on opposite sides of the keyboard to match which wing, and you hold 'em down for different lengths of time. My first draft had all these numbers measuring the angle of the wing, and the time to return to position.

F13: What IS the wing speed of an unladen swallow?

Raph: African or European?

F13: I don't know that!

Raph: (chuckling) Auuugh! Yeah, um... So the thing of it was, though, that what I ended up with was... I was aiming for the sensation of flapping, and honestly, I started out with this very math-driven thing, and then... I had pictured it as almost like a flying platformer, you were picking stuff up and swooping down and grabbing things and dodging stuff, but my first prototype I didn't have any of that, I just had a blue field and you flap your bird around on it. And this amazing thing happened, where I got this crazy Zen thing going on. It was just the weirdest thing. 'Cuz when I started, I couldn't flap at all. It's hard, actually, it's really hard! I sit newbies down to it, they have real trouble with it. But people just click with it, they can pretty soon... they can flap anywhere on the screen, they can deal with wind currents and everything. And I posted that to the blog, what people reported was this Zen vibe of "wow, I'm just flying".

F13: Like that Flow game, almost. It doesn't have an ostensive purpose, it just has a mechanic you can play with. More of a toy, is what it is.

Raph: Yeah, and there was this radical split in the audience, of people who commented on it. Half of 'em were like "Oh I love it, my kids love it", lots of parents... The kids just loved it! My kids loved it. And then there were the people who were like "Where's the game? Give me the lasers, I want to shoot something!"

F13: Did you actually look at the demographic behind those two sets of posters?

Raph: No, I didn't... Um, I didn't. I think it was achievement-driven, versus... you know, that kind of thing. And, some people asked for mouse control, but I was like, but if it's mouse control, it's not the flapping...

F13: Well, you have two mice...

Raph: People actually suggested that. You know, doing this (making push/pull motions) with the friggin' mice or flapping on the mouse buttons. I actually had it on the mouse buttons for a bit, but I switched to the keys, because using one hand versus the other... gives you more of a feel to it! Then the next step, I added... I was like, okay, I can fly anywhere now, now I'm gonna have a 3-D path you have to follow in the air, and there's gonna be wind blowing you off of it! I put that in, it was REALLY FUCKING HARD! Really hard!

F13: How did that affect the comments? How did that affect the way people reacted to it?

Raph: It RUINED the game! Making it more gamey ruined it! You lost the meditative vibe...

F13: You lost the sense of... because now you're working towards a goal.

Raph: You're working, yeah. Before you'd pay attention to how beautiful the clouds were, and you'd look at the sparklies in the water, and you'd see, oh look, if I hold both down, I start diving faster, and the island rises up, and you'd zoom in until the island was way up close and you could see the pixels in it. It was kinda neat in an exploratory way. And then you put the path on, and you're not looking at anything except the path. And that's it! And you don't have that vibe any more...

F13: Especially for a difficult game, if you're not focused right on the path...

Raph: And it was hard enough. You'd dive readily, right, so... So it was a weird, it was a weird thing. So the version I'm showing today... well, not today, but this week, I put back in free-flight mode. And, I actually wrote... Jon Blow said I wrote lyrics to it. I wrote lyrics to the experience, so they float up and come up on the screen, kind of telling the story... It's almost like an abstracted version of the development process, it tells the story of, "Yeah, I started out to make this bird, and I thought I was heading to this, and I actually went over here..." But it's told as a fairy tale about a bird who sets off to fly over the coast and find the edge of a world, and ends up discovering that he's put in a box, because all he is is a dream...

F13: And this is the first time you've released that, here at GDC?

Raph: Well, the new version. I've released like three versions on the blog before.

F13: Well, now you've added narrative to the game. How do you think people are going to react to that?

Raph: I dunno!

F13: Just gonna find out? See what comes?

Raph: Yeah, the thing is... I got a lot of marketing people who post on the blog. And they're always asking, "What's the target audience for this?" And I'm like "I don't have a fucking clue", there's no target audience. That's not the point. What's interesting to me is, I made this thing, I thought it was neat, I put it out there, and a lot of people thought it was neat, and a lot of people thought it TOTALLY sucked! So it was like, you know, whatever!

F13: You mentioned a lot of parents said their children liked it. Do you think that, actually, children might enjoy more... non-linear, or I dunno how to...

Raph: Less goal-driven?

F13: Less goal-driven, but more freeform modes of play. And as we get older, we get either get trained or we become inured to goal-driven play?

Raph: Yeah, I think it's certainly easier to get into Play Mode when you're a kid, it seems, right? We do get kind of goal-driven later in life. But honestly, I don't quite know why it is that kids... On the blog, people were saying kids as young as three were like "Ooh birdie, raaah!" Like, going for it, and I'm like, "Okay!"

F13: I can see a kid as young as three, seeing an abstract representation of a bird...

Raph: Did you actually play it?

F13: I didn't, I don't follow your blog THAT closely. I usually go back...

Raph: Tsk tsk tsk. Every once in a while? Well, if I had my laptop with me, you could play it now, it's in the hotel over there...

F13: Yeah, I'll go head back to the office and I'll take a look at it after this.

Raph: Yeah, the newest version won't be there. You'd have to download two versions.

F13: Or I can catch up with you later this week or something.

Raph: Yeah, or you can come to the session. What they're going to do is, they're going to hand out the installer to every game that'll be talked about. And you play it while people talk about it.

F13: What time is the session?

Raph: I dunno. You're making me look it up! It's in the little folder... (papers shuffling)

F13: Oh, right, you have your speaker's schedule. I was gonna have to go through the twenty-page encyclopedia...

Raph: Thursday, 2:30-4:30. I don't know when in there I will be.

F13: Yeah, I think I actually have something at that time, but I will take a look, see what I can pull...

Raph: Oh look, a party we can go to...
[discuss]