Raph Koster has been penning blogs about the metaverse and how virtual worlds work for several weeks now; his new company, Playable Worlds, has ambitions to build not only a metaverse platform but a sandbox MMORPG on top of it. The latest article has now arrived for your Friday enjoyment and confusion, and he’s talking about stuff, quite literally.
As usual, Koster is trying to break down the game into digestible parts. He explains that objects are more than their appearance; that control and ownership of objects are not the same; that functionality is usually separate from the object; that most objects are spawned from base templates; and that decentralizing databases for objects is not remotely as easy as people think.
“Back in the first article in the series, I pointed out why this is challenging already – there are many formats for art,” he says. “But there’s also the question of whether the art lives in the template or the instance – this determines whether it can change or not! Modern character customization systems store the basic avatar in the template, and a set of fields lives in the instance for all those sliders, letting you adjust the height and cheekbones and hair color and whatnot. You can’t carry runtime customization data like that over to another world unless the template matches. And this is true not just for art-related fields, but for all fields. You can’t carry over your current health to another game if the template for players in that game doesn’t handle health.”
It’s all pretty granular, and there aren’t many hints about Playable Worlds’ MMORPG itself, apart from the tease that “things like web browsers, NFTs, and our platform here at Playable Worlds all rely on” the idea that not all art needs to be in the same database.
Further reading:
• Raph Koster’s Playable Worlds teases housing, planetary governance, and languages for the unnamed MMORPG sandbox
• Raph Koster’s nine Playable Worlds teasers (so far) hint at the MMORPG sandbox you always wanted
• Raph Koster’s Playable Worlds is counting down to… something
• Raph Koster’s Playable Worlds enlists ‘AI-powered’ character platform Popul8
• Raph Koster has been warning about the death of games innovation longer than most MMOs have been alive
• Raph Koster predicts the future of the metaverse is a ‘virtual Machu Picchu’ – that you can leave
• MMO dev Raph Koster disambiguates sandboxes, themeparks, simulation, and stagecraft
• Raph Koster talks about the ‘mission’ of Playable Worlds, his vision of the metaverse, and player ownership
• Crowfall’s Gordon Walton joins Raph Koster’s Playable Worlds MMO and platform
• Playable Worlds’ Raph Koster makes bold promises about his studio’s developing sandbox MMORPG
• Raph Koster’s Playable Worlds scored $25M in investment for his ‘modern sandbox MMO’
• Raph Koster talks metaverse creation and learning lessons from past game design mistakes
• Raph Koster and Playable Worlds won’t announce their MMO until next year
• Playable Worlds’ Raph Koster explains how feedback loops can create unexpected results in MMO design
• Raph Koster’s ‘modern sandbox MMO’ is teasing concept art for the first time
• Playable Worlds’ Raph Koster on who really owns all the stuff inside your video games
• Playable Worlds’ Raph Koster on gaming’s social design problems masquerading as technical challenges
• Playable Worlds’ Raph Koster on the ‘stuff’ inside your virtual worlds
• Playable Worlds’ Raph Koster is not gonna stop saying the word metaverse
• Raph Koster says nobody wants a metaverse with ‘Fairyland butting up against World War II’
• Playable Worlds’ Raph Koster on why avatars traipsing across the metaverse are a major tech challenge
• Playable Worlds’ lead QA engineer on the industry’s problematic ‘godlike status’ for devs
• Raph Koster’s plan is to build the metaverse tech, build a sandbox MMORPG on it, then open it all up
• Massively OP Podcast Episode 338: No power in the multiverse can stop Raph Koster
• So it turns out Raph Koster is building the metaverse and a sandbox MMO on top of it
• Playable Worlds’ Raph Koster has all but said he’s building a metaverse
• Playable Worlds’ lead designer: ‘Our industry does not thrive on ideas’
• Raph Koster expounds on MMO fun, retention, and cynicism in the genre
• Playable Worlds’ Raph Koster shares the secret of good social design in MMOs
• Playable Worlds’ Raph Koster on the player-driven economies at the heart of virtual worlds
• Playable Worlds’ hiring page suggests Raph Koster’s upcoming MMO is a AAA sandbox
• Playable Worlds’ Raph Koster posts a manifesto on the future of MMOs
• The folks working on Raph Koster’s Playable Worlds MMO provide clues into what it’ll be
• Raph Koster argues MMOs are much more than ‘a series of kill and fetch quest pellets’
• MMO designer Raph Koster talks about what makes the subscription model a success
• Raph Koster shares rare behind-the-scenes Star Wars Galaxies pics in honor of the anniversary
• Raph Koster touches on the technology and community that will bring Playable Worlds’ MMO to life
• Raph Koster’s Playable Worlds studio raises an additional $10 million in funding
• Raph Koster will give more insight on Playable Worlds’ in-development MMO next year
• Raph Koster’s dev studio Playable Worlds opens a new website and begins the search for game devs
• Raph Koster’s new MMORPG will reward social gameplay, not just hack-n-slash
• Raph Koster’s new MMORPG will be more than ‘just hack and slashing your way through levels’
• Raph Koster is making a new MMO and just raised $2.7M in seed funding to do it
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