This new video game’s dirt sounds amazing

August 18, 2026 - 07:56

It was a quiet Monday morning in Los Angeles earlier this year when I got a stark reminder that listening to Raph Koster talk about video games is still one of the most thrilling experiences in the industry, even when the subject is something as mundane as digging holes in the ground.

Koster is a legend in the field, having served as the lead designer on the foundational MMOs Ultima Online and Star Wars Galaxies. That day, he had set up his latest ambitious project, the sandbox MMO Stars Reach, on a PC in a sunlit hotel suite. He handed me the controls, and I guided my character down to a rocky planet. My only tool was a terraforming beam, and Koster encouraged me to fire it at a cliff face.

The pitch was simple, but the implications were staggering. If I tunneled through the wrong spot, the whole thing could collapse on me. Why? Because the game simulates over a dozen types of soil with different pH levels. He went on to explain that there are roughly 200 distinct types of materials and minerals in the game, and they all obey the laws of physics. I could blast rock into molten lava, watch it flow downhill, and then see it cool into new formations. There was even a device called a chronophaser that let me fast-forward a rock's geological aging, eroding marble into limestone, then chalk, then sand. If I melted that sand, it would turn into glass.

This is the Koster experience. A cascade of wild, interconnected details from a man chasing a specific dream. Years ago, the legendary designer Hideo Kojima told me his holy grail was rendering the perfect sunset. When I asked Koster what his equivalent was, he had a great answer. He is not chasing light; he is chasing the ground beneath our feet, making sure that every grain of it feels real and reacts to the player in a way that is both surprising and logical. In Stars Reach, the dirt is not just a texture; it is a story waiting to be told.