Star Wars has never been bigger or broader, and in the game industry few Star Wars games have had a greater impact than Star Wars Galaxies. This influential MMORPG entered development two decades ago, and now two of its leading creators are coming to GDC 2020 to tell the story of how it rose and fell.
Together, Playable Worlds chief Raph Koster and Certain Affinity VP Rich Vogel will be presenting a Star Wars Galaxies Classic Game Postmortem that promises to reveal key lessons learned and practical advice about large-scale social design aimed at building a strong community for games as a service.
This is likely to be a great talk for anyone with an interest in online game design or good stories, as Galaxies had a famously troubled existence, with a patch so controversial it made the New York Times. Star Wars Galaxies went from an MIT case study in how best to manage a community, to a byword for how to damage a customer relationship; and yet to this day the game industry echoes with talk about its crafting systems, social design, and procedural technology.
In this hour-long postmortem, Koster and Vogel aim to talk about the ways in which the game reached for the stars, from the nitty-gritty of its player-driven economy design, to the dancing Wookiees -- and also the wars it left behind. Don't miss it!
Next year GDC 2020 runs from Monday, March 16th through Friday, March 20th. This will be the 34th edition of GDC, and now that registration is officially open, you'll want to take a look at the (ever-growing) session schedule and your GDC pass options -- register early to get the best price!
For more details on GDC 2020 visit the show's official website, or subscribe to regular updates via Facebook, Twitter, or RSS.
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