Raph Koster aims to make Stars Reach complex but not overcomplicated – and focused on retention

You didn’t think Playable Worlds’ Raph Koster was going to stop at just two pillars of design for his new sandbox MMORPG Stars Reach, did you? Because Koster seldom does things in half measures. This round of pillars focuses on the “principles that animate the games” – specifically, the fun. And he begins by laying out the problem he’s trying to solve.

“[W]e all know that the audience feels like MMOs haven’t really progressed much,” he writes. “A lot of the action in online games has shifted over to looter-shooters, survival crafting, and the like. These genres are children of MMOs, streamlined down to make them more accessible in a bunch of ways. MMOs were always big unwieldy beasts. Lots of game loops, lots of content, in a big sprawling world that could feel very unfriendly and hard to wrap your head around. This is why when World of Warcraft came along and held your hand every step of the way through the leveling process, it was such a revelation. It ended the days of total confusion, at the cost of total freedom.”

“This matters because I’ve always felt that sandbox play is more popular than orc-slaying, despite the conventional wisdom that sandbox games are more niche. Oh, it’s not to say that orc-slaying isn’t awesome and fun. Of course it is. But I think we all know that decorating a house, or running a business, or engaging in carpentry or cooking or other crafting, is just a more widespread human activity. Sandboxy gameplay by nature offers more than kill, kill, kill, and should broaden the audience. If only it weren’t so intimidating and confusing.”

So Koster wants to claw that back – to add back broader gameplay and worlds without losing the accessibility. Ergo, this week’s pillars:

• The game should “offer deep simulation and freedom for players to make their own choices about how to play” but “limit its interface complexity to what can be achieved with a game controller or a touchscreen” without sacrificing depth. “Easy to learn, hard to master” is the motto.
• The game should “marry ease of use to depth” because “ease of use maximizes audience, and depth maximizes retention” – indeed, Playable Worlds is fixated on “holding people over the long run” to fund itself. The goal isn’t to be the “most popular” game, just to maximize the players it keeps around and playing for years.
• The UI and controls should be “intuitive and simple and familiar” to lower the barrier to entry and maximize the number of platforms and therefore audience. Koster emphasizes the “distinction between complexity and complication,” pointing out that a deck of cards offers endless complexity in game design but uncomplicated shape in object design.
• Finally, the game really will be playable on everything, including mobile, though it may not be as robust as the PC version, which is coming first. Koster says he knows “core gamers” will snub this idea, but he also notes how much gaming is already done on devices like the Steam Deck (and people are always asking for some sort of mobile interface into MMOs).

“All of these pillars end up being about the same things, really,” Koster concludes. “Make it easy for players to participate, but have real depth and complexity inside what seems like a simpler wrapper. All too often surface complication tricks us into thinking there’s real depth in there, when really there’s a lot of stats that boil down to mostly the same thing. We want to build a game that has the true depth and complexity that comes from simple things combining in unexpected ways.”