Koster attended
Washington College in
Chestertown, Maryland, receiving a bachelor's degree in English (
creative writing) and Spanish in 1992. The same year he became involved with
MUDs as a developer of
Worlds of Carnage, then in 1994 moved on to become implementor of
LegendMUD, where he was known as Ptah. He also played
MUME for a time. On May 10, 1992, he married Kristen who would later work alongside him at
Origin Systems as a game designer. In 1995, he received a
Master of Fine Arts in Poetry from the
University of Alabama in
Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and joined Origin Systems as the lead designer of Ultima Online. Koster was also the lead designer of
Ultima Online: The Second Age,
Ultima Online Live, and an unannounced and cancelled title until 2000, when he joined
Verant Interactive in
Austin as the creative director of
Star Wars Galaxies. Promoted to
chief creative officer in 2003, he relocated to
Sony Online Entertainment in San Diego where he spent three years primarily responsible for
business development. In March 2006, Koster left the company to work on
Metaplace which, at the end, was a social gaming platform for
Facebook games. Since 2013 he is an independent designer and consultant. Koster is a charter member of the
Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences, and a member of the
IGDA,
ASCAP, and
Omicron Delta Kappa. He is also a frequent speaker at game industry conferences such as the
GDC,
DICE, State of Play, and
E3. He presently lives in San Diego, California with his wife and family. In 2019, Koster and
Eric Goldberg founded a new company, Playable Worlds, focused on producing the MMORPG,
Stars Reach. ==Credits==