Quotes from Raph Koster

Get to the other side" is still the basic paradigm. "Visit all the map" is handled by a "secrets"* system. Time limits add another dimension of challenge.

Boredom is the opposite of learning. When a game stops teaching us, we feel bored.

Any striving for understanding that we do is likely to hold back the darkness.

Well, I could take on the Sisyphean task of trying to match these folks in every new game as it comes out, but frankly, repeated failure is a predictable cycle, and rather boring. I have better things to do with my time.

Assumptions are what the brain is best at. Some days, I suspect that makes us despair.

In fact, seeing what is actually there with our conscious mind is really hard to do, and most people never learn how to do it! The brain is actively hiding the real world from us.

how we think we know what we think we know.

That's what games are, in the end. Teachers. Fun is just another word for learning.

Noise is any pattern we don't understand. [...] If we perceive something as noise, it's most likely a failure of ourselves, not a failure of the universe.

Consider the games that get all the attention lately: shooters,* fighting games,* and war games. They are not subtle about their love of power. The gap between these games and cops and robbers is small as far as the players are

Boredom is the opposite of learning.

Games that fail to exercise the brain become boring.

Based on my reading, the human brain is mostly a voracious consumer of patterns, a soft pudgy gray Pac-Man of concepts. Games are just exceptionally tasty patterns to eat up.

In other words, games serve as very fundamental and powerful learning tools.

It's worth asking ourselves what skills are more commonly needed today. Games should be evolving towards teaching us those skills.

having a varied, evolving setting (even though it only evolves in that "middle layer" of NPCs/creatures/economy) encourages roleplay, encourages exploration, encourages alternate styles of achievement

the things that drive community are: shared interest to get everyone in the same place; limited resources that you need to cooperate over so everyone gets enough; and an enemy you have to fight to keep out

It's so easy to fall into ruts and niches in our real lives, and I want online worlds to offer us exotic experiences and interaction with people we wouldn't interact with otherwise, and a chance to try out lifestyles and worldviews we otherwise wouldn't have, a chance to try to solve problems that we find difficult to tackle in the real world. Otherwise, why bother making them?

If your goal is to keep things fun (read as "keep the player learning"), boredom is always the signal to let you know you have failed.

The definition of a good game is therefore "one that teaches everything it has to offer before the player stops playing.

That's what games are, in the end. Teachers. Fun is just another word for learning.* Games teach you how aspects of reality work, how to understand yourself, how to understand the actions of others, and how to imagine.

The illusion of reality lies not in the machinery itself, but in in the users' willingness to treat the manifestations of their imaginings as if they were real.

Our perception of reality is basically abstraction

with. In a very real sense, we do not see the world — we see what our brain tells us we see.