If the player wanted to be an adventurer, the logic went, then they should be an adventurer in an ecosystem that also included craftsmen, doctors, dancers, pilots and farmers. In the view of Koster and his team, an MMOG was a persistent world driven by systems that emphasised player participation at every level. Galaxies’ creative director, Raph Koster, had been a lead designer on Ultima Online. In its final form, Star Wars Galaxies was a mess of contradictory creative urges whose design and technological foundations had been stripped out from under it-but it was an ambitious mess, the type of game that players often ask for but rarely get.
The game’s scope could belong to an unlikely sounding Kickstarter pitch, so perhaps it’s little wonder that Sony Online Entertainment shuttered its Star Wars MMOG in December 2011.
