This is a stunning collection of essays by one of game design’s deepest thinkers. Although at the subject level it relates to the process of designing games, for me its greatest value lies in its all-pervading expression of what it means to be a game designer. Indeed, I can think of no better book that demonstrates the difference between a game designer and a mere designer of games: the author is world class in his field, and reading this you can see why.
In this volume, Koster looks back at a number of key virtual worlds for which he drove the design, principally LegendMUD, Ultima Online, Star Wars: Galaxies and MetaPlace (which wasn’t so much a virtual world as a platform for creating virtual worlds). Their successes, failures and – in two cases – closures are described honestly and insightfully; the book is not called Postmortems for nothing.
Some of the content is already available in various forms online, if you can find it, but here it’s assembled, ordered and clarified. There is much original material, too; don’t think that this is simply a rehash of classic writings and presentations.
The weakest part of the book is not in its content but in its production. There are a number of minor typos that weren’t picked up, and although I’m all for historical veracity I don’t think that reproducing in paperback form documents with inline hyperlinks is necessarily a good idea (although to be fair, this only happens once).
Overall, Postmortems is a very impressive sojourn through the history of virtual worlds, from both contemporary and modern perspectives, which anyone in (or seeking to be in) the business of virtual worlds will find of immense value.
Five stars from me, no question.
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