Former Ultima Online lead designer and Star Wars Galaxies creative director Raph Koster says games like Animal Crossing and anime series like Sword Art Online are proof of a demand for more immersive games, and that's what he hopes to achieve with his new MMORPG, Stars Reach.
For the uninitiated, Isekai refers to an anime or manga that primarily focuses on its main character being transported to another world, dimension, universe, what have you. In Sword Art Online, to use Koster's example, the main characters are trapped inside of a virtual reality video game while their real-life bodies are in a state of suspended consciousness. If they die in the game, they die in real life, and the only way out is to essentially beat the game.
