Raph Koster's stuff is boring as hell for me and I get nothing insightful or novel out of it. Having read his endless article series in Game Developer, it came as no surprise he would publish a title like "A Theory of Fun." Probably a decent guy, but I wouldn't hire him.

The question now begs: Zach, did you vote me down because you don't agree with me? Because I certainly didn't do anything of the sort to you.

Dude, you were already voted down when I saw you. I ain't mad atcha. To prove it, I've upvoted you to cancel it out (you can't change existing votes on News.YC currently). And don't forget to visit begthequestion.info!

Hehe, that's a fun site.

One of my favorite books -- can be a bit long at times, but the point is excellent nonetheless.

Zach, I don't believe Raph's looking for a job.

Good for him. I haven't heard what he's been up to since he was working on Star Wars Galaxies.

I believe he openly admitted his failures with Galaxies. A few of my former colleagues were quite close to the matter, and Galaxies was definitely an organization-wide failure. Raph was far removed from actual design duties when Galaxies started to croak.

Btw, Raph's got a Charles River-backed startup called Areae. It's doing some pretty cool things if you're interested in virtual worlding and web interaction.

If it involves story and gameplay, I'm interested. If it's just virtual worlds and interaction, then no. But I'll check it out, thanks for the tip.

Btw, danw, did you get this from reading my iminlikewithyou profile? :-)