Essays
These are full-blown essays, papers, and articles.
Presentations
Slideshows and presentation materials from conferences.
Interviews and Panels
Reprints of non-game-specific interviews, and transcripts of panels and roundtables.
Snippets
Excerpts from blog, newsgroup, and forum posts.
Laws
The "Laws of Online World Design" in various forms.
Timeline
A timeline of developments in online worlds.
A Theory of Fun for Game Design
My book on why games matter and what fun is.
Insubstantial Pageants
A book I started and never finished outlining the basics of online world design.
Links
Links to resources on online world design.
All contents of this site are
© Copyright 1998-2010
Raphael Koster.
All rights reserved.
The views expressed here are my own, and not necessarily endorsed by any former or current employer.
Platforms like OK.ru complicate the lifecycle of media. They are social spaces where context is communal and memory is curated by people rather than by a centralized feed. Rediscovery there is often social: an inside joke within a group of classmates, a link shared among people who lived through the original moment, or a newcomer’s curiosity that sparks conversation. These micro-communities can retrofit meaning, giving the belated piece a fresh cultural function — a meme, a rallying anthem, or a private liturgy for a small group.
There’s a darker angle too. Belated uploads can also be repositories of awkward taste or moments that belong quietly in drawers. Internet archaeology blurs the line between affectionate revival and problematic excavation. Not everything deserves retrieval; some artifacts reveal attitudes or contexts better left in the past. The ethics of rediscovery matter: who benefits from bringing something back, and who might be harmed? belated deshora 2013 ok ru
In the end, belatedness compels attention to context. It asks us to listen anew, to consider why something failed to land, and to decide whether bringing it back is an act of care, curiosity, or mere amusement. When you click play on a clip labeled “Belated Deshora 2013 — OK.ru,” you’re doing more than consuming media: you’re participating in a small cultural verdict about what from the past deserves a moment in the present. Platforms like OK
Belatedness is not failure. It’s a different form of persistence. When something resurfaces on OK.ru years after its first upload, it performs a small miracle of cultural survival. The platform’s architecture — friend networks, group pages, and algorithmic suggestions geared toward reconnecting classmates and communities — can turn private affection into public revival. A clip once lost in the noise can become a shared joke, a soundtrack for remixing, or a claim on identity for users who find in it the right tone for their present selves. The platform’s architecture — friend networks
