Last week, Raph Koster posted a lengthy article on his website in response to a request (via Twitter) for his “juciest game design posts”. Most of the article’s length is comprised of links to previous posts of his on a variety of topics, including his theory of fun, game grammar, game development proper, narrative design, games as art, game design in general, economies, communities…you name it. If he talked about it, it probably has a link somewhere in the post.

Frankly, I love how forthcoming Raph tends to be with his knowledge and his experience; his is (or seems to be) a strong drive to educate and inform. And his offerings are valuable for a number of reasons. For those here who are involved in design or remake projects, there will be some genuine knowledge and wisdom to be gleaned from his posts, while for those here who are concerned and interested gaming fans will be able to gain some insight into what game design actually entails, the better to understand why a particular developer chose to do a particular thing with a game.

I’d say “read them all”, but obviously that will take a reserve of time that many here won’t have. So if nothing else, look over the list of articles and take a look at a few of them, the ones that (by title, at least) jump out at you.