Raph Koster is cofounder of Playable Worlds
Raph Koster is cofounder of Playable Worlds
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Raph Koster’s real talk about a real metaverse

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 9 min

Not many people can say “been there, done that” on the metaverse. But Raph Koster, CEO of Playable Worlds, has been making online worlds for more than a quarter of a century.

He gave a speech about what he’s learned from that experience at our GamesBeat Summit: Into the Metaverse 2 online event today. Koster has worked on online game worlds such as Ultima Online, EverQuest, and Star Wars Galaxies, and he understands the difficulty of interoperability, how people behave, the importance of creating standards, and the need to focus on fun.

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Written by

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.