Keynote Speakers

A professional game designer and frequent writer on issues of virtual world design, Raph Koster was the lead designer on the seminal online world ULTIMA ONLINE, which first brought online worlds to the mass market. Until March 2006 he was Chief Creative Officer for Sony Online Entertainment, makers of EVERQUEST, where he previously led the design of STAR WARS GALAXIES. His essays and writings on online world design include widely reprinted and influential pieces such as "Declaring the Rights of Players", "The Laws of Online World Design", and "A Story About a Tree". He is in demand as a speaker and lecturer on issues of online world design, particularly in the area of community building. He is a regular speaker at the Game Developers Conference, and is the maintainer of the canonical history of virtual worlds at his website, http://www.raphkoster.com. His book A THEORY OF FUN FOR GAME DESIGN was published in 2004 by Paraglyph Press and is used in several university courses as study material.

Katie is a game designer and director of the graduate Design and Technology program at Parsons School of Design. She has done game design work for clients like Microsoft and SIGGRAPH. Co-author of Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals and Rules of Play Reader, Katie is also a member of Playground, and a former core-team member of gameLab. She recently partnered with screenwriter/director Hampton Fancher on a project for Microsoft's XEN division to develop an animated storytelling experience distributed through Xbox Live, and has helped curate programs on machinima, the practice of creating animated films using game engines. She has lectured and published extensively on game design and game culture.

Title:

Limits of the Game: Hurtling Toward Bliss?