Raph Koster's Postmortems book debuts on June 26, 20

Raph Koster’s Postmortems helps online game devs avoid past mistakes

Raph Koster has a lot to say about making online games, as he’s been working on them for more than two decades. His new book, Postmortems, debuts on Monday at more than 700 pages. And that’s just volume one.

Many of the essays in the book have come from his quarter century of writings and talks, though about a third of the material is completely new. The lessons focus on game design, online community theories, and candid self-evaluation from working at companies such as Origin Systems, Sony Online Entertainment, and Metaplace.

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Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.