Arden I Shakespeare virtual world launches...
Lyra
(quote)
Arden I Shakespeare virtual world launches with frank assessment of
its merits
Posted November 28, 2007 by Stuart and filed under Virtual worlds.
Edward Castronova has announced the official release of Arden I: The
World of William Shakespeare. The virtual world (well, Neverwinter
Nights offshoot) is based on the world of the Bard, with NPCs, quest
lines, tavern games and all manner of Shakespearian stuff, including
the play texts themselves. However, Castronova himself isn't exactly
talking it up:
"We failed to design a gripping game experience. As several of our
playtesters said, Where are the monsters? -- a good question to ask of
any serious-games initiative. We do have monsters, Shakespearean ones
even, but they are out in the woods somewhere, not part of the main
game experience. No monsters is a big problem for our larger goal,
which is to use virtual worlds to run experiments. No monsters means
no fun, no fun means no people, and no people means no experiment.
Back to the drawing board..."
Castronova is already working on Arden II: London's Burning, which is
more of a game with monsters and the rest, and with Shakespeare
featuring, but not being the sole focus. So why release the flawed
Arden I now?
"First, there continues to be tremendous interest in the basic
idea of building a virtual world at a university for the purpose of
research and education. Arden I splashes lovingly cold water on the
face of anyone who dreams about that. The research and education part
is easy, as you can see here. You can also see that fun is not so
easy. The second reason to release is to encourage other people to
build on what we started. If you want to take a traditionally-
conceived Shakespeare world and make it fun, please do. I think it
would be cool to see where others would go with it."
Of course, any industry - especially an emerging one like the virtual
worlds market - can learn as much if not more from failures and near
misses as it can from successes. For that reason alone, there'll be
plenty of people nosing around Arden I this week, I'm sure. Meanwhile,
Castronova's book 'Exodus To The Virtual World' is also being released
today.
Arden I website (via Terra Nova)
Lyra
(quote)
Shakespeare Game Much Ado About Nothing
Posted Dec 5, 07 2:03 PM CST in Technology, Culture & Society
Editor's Choice
(newser) -
Edward Castronova's Arden: The World of Shakespeare was supposed to be
a revolutionary academic experiment, a massive multiplayer online
world where players learned about Shakespeare while Castronova tested
economic theories on them.
There's just one problem, Technology Review reports: "It's no fun,"
says Castronova. Focused on research, developers produced a dull
game.
* Castronova's abandoning the game, releasing it as-is, devoid of
monsters or puzzles--but not the idea of academic MMOs. He's already
working on Arden II: London Burning, firmly believing that such
virtual worlds can be social science petri dishes.
Others doubt his methods. "It's very, very hard to make games in the
best of circumstances," said one game researcher, "and a university is
never the best of circumstances."
Source: MIT Technology Review
More Recommended Reading
You can download Arden here... if you really want to
Arden
A less disparaging feature on the game
BBC | Dec 5, 07
Castronova blogs about his disappointment
Terra Nova (blog) | Nov 27, 07
* Images (2)
Shakespeare Game Much Ado About Nothing
This photo provided by Arden shows Shylock, the Merchant of Venice,
dealing with a customer in the online game %u201CArden Source:
Associated Press
Shakespeare Game Much Ado About Nothing
The works of William Shakespeare become the basis of an academic
virtual world in "Arden." Source: Public Domain
http://www.newser.com/story/13368.html?rss=y
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> http://www.virtualeconomicforum.com/blog/2007/11/28/arden-i-shakespea...
Art Neuendorffer
> > (quote)
>
> > Arden I Shakespeare virtual world launches
> > with frank assessment of its merits
>
> > Posted November 28, 2007 by Stuart and filed under Virtual worlds.
>
> > Edward Castronova has announced the official release of Arden I: The
> > World of William Shakespeare. The virtual world (well, Neverwinter
> > Nights offshoot) is based on the world of the Bard, with NPCs, quest
> > lines, tavern games and all manner of Shakespearian stuff, including
> > the play texts themselves. However, Castronova himself isn't exactly
> > talking it up:
>
> > "We failed to design a gripping game experience. As several of our
> > playtesters said, Where are the monsters? -- a good question to ask of
> > any serious-games initiative. We do have monsters, Shakespearean ones
> > even, but they are out in the woods somewhere, not part of the main
> > game experience. No monsters is a big problem for our larger goal,
> > which is to use virtual worlds to run experiments. No monsters means
> > no fun, no fun means no people, and no people means no experiment.
> > Back to the drawing board..."
.................................................
Monstrous Adversary: The Life of Edward De Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford
Alan H. Nelson, (Liverpool University Press, 2003)
http://humilitypress.org/a_little_room/monstrous_adversary.htm
.................................................
> > Castronova is already working on Arden II: London's Burning, which is
> > more of a game with monsters and the rest, and with Shakespeare
> > featuring, but not being the sole focus. So why release the flawed
> > Arden I now?
>
> > "First, there continues to be tremendous interest in the basic
> > idea of building a virtual world at a university for the purpose of
> > research and education. Arden I splashes lovingly cold water on the
> > face of anyone who dreams about that. The research and education part
> > is easy, as you can see here. You can also see that fun is not so
> > easy. The second reason to release is to encourage other people
> > to build on what we started. If you want to take a traditionally-
> > conceived Shakespeare world and make it fun, please do.
> > I think it would be cool to see where others would go with it."
>
> > Of course, any industry - especially an emerging one like the virtual
> > worlds market - can learn as much if not more from failures and near
> > misses as it can from successes. For that reason alone, there'll
> > be plenty of people nosing around Arden I this week, I'm sure.
> > Meanwhile, Castronova's book 'Exodus To The Virtual World'
> > is also being released today.
>
> > Arden I website (via Terra Nova)
>
> >http://www.virtualeconomicforum.com/blog/2007/11/28/arden-i-shakespea...
---------------------------------------------------------
> Shakespeare Game Much Ado About Nothing
>
> Posted Dec 5, 07 2:03 PM CST in Technology, Culture & Society
> Editor's Choice
>
> (newser) -
>
> Edward Castronova's Arden: The World of Shakespeare was supposed
> to be a revolutionary academic experiment, a massive multiplayer online
> world where players learned about Shakespeare while
> Castronova tested economic theories on them.
>
> There's just one problem, Technology Review reports:
> "It's no fun," says Castronova.
> Focused on research, developers produced a dull game.
>
> * Castronova's abandoning the game, releasing it as-is, devoid of
> monsters or puzzles--but not the idea of academic MMOs. He's
> already working on Arden II: London Burning, firmly believing
> that such virtual worlds can be social science petri dishes.
>
> Others doubt his methods. "It's very, very hard to make games
> in the best of circumstances," said one game researcher,
> "and a university is never the best of circumstances."
>
> Source: MIT Technology Review
>
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Ay, now am I in Arden I; the more fool I; when I was at home,
I was in a better place: but virtual travellers must be content.
Art Neuendorffer
Lyra
(quote, excerpts)
FUTURE-MAKING SERIOUS GAMES
THE BEST OF SERIOUS GAMES THAT CHALLENGE US TO PLAY AT BUILDING A
BETTER FUTURE
Sunday, December 09, 2007
Learning From Arden: Serious Games Are Meant To Be Fun!
"Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this son of York"
Arden: The World of William Shakespeare ended a year of development in
October, with lots of lessons learnt, mostly that this is very hard to
do.
Its creator, Edward Castronova, an associate professor of
telecommunications at the university, wanted to use the world to test
economic theories: by manipulating the rules of the game, he hoped to
find insights into the way that money works in the real world.
Players can enter the game and explore a town called Ilminster, where
they encounter characters from Shakespeare, along with many plots and
quotations. They can answer trivia questions to improve their
characters and play card games with other players.
Multiverse was used for early production, after which they switched to
Neverwinter Nights. The world is hosted on the Teragrid.
Coming from Castronova, a pioneer in the field, the game was expected
by many to show the power of virtual-world-based research.
But Castronova says that there's a problem with the game: "It's no
fun."
While focusing on including references to the bard, he says, his team
ended up sidelining some of the fundamental features of a game. "You
need puzzles and monsters," he says, "or people won't want to play ...
Since what I really need is a world with lots of players in it for me
to run experiments on, I decided I needed a completely different
approach.
Part of the problem: it costs a lot to build a new multiplayer game.
While his grant was large for the field of humanities, it was a drop
in the bucket compared with the roughly $75 million that he says goes
into developing something on the scale of the popular game World of
Warcraft. "I was talking to people like it was going to be
Shakespeare: World of Warcraft, but the money you need for that is so
much more," he says.
Castronova also says that he was taking on too much by attempting to
combine education and research. He believes that his experience should
serve as a warning for other academics.
http://elianealhadeff.blogspot.com/2007/12/learning-from-arden-serious-games-are.html
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Lyra
>
(quote, excerpts)
The problem with Shakespeare in games: there ain't enough monsters and
puzzles, man
Plans to build a multiplayer game about Shakespeare have hit an
obstacle: the Bard wrote plays, not gameplays
December 7, 2007 1:48 PM
Seemed like a good idea: if you can't get the kids to read
Shakespeare's works, get them to play them. As virtual worlds.
And so in October 2006 Edward Castronova was given a $240,000 grant by
the MacArthur Foundation to build a virtual world with Shakespeare's
works. The first, he said, would be built around Richard III:
It's a story that has lots and lots of secret conniving and deal-
making and battles and political intrigue. And it's historical, so
that means it's really easy for us to take all the (usual) fantasy
(game) stuff like knights in shining armor and peasants and
woodworkers and they just fit right into "Richard III" right away. The
way we envision it is once you get this thing going, I'll have another
crop of students come in and say, "OK, what play are we doing this
year?" And we'll say, "Well, let's do a post-apocalyptic 'Macbeth.'"
There was even going to be an in-world currency:
It's going to be the Old English currency, which will be kind of
cumbersome to learn. But you'll learn something about what it was
like, so when you see a Shakespeare play and they talk about money,
you'll have a clue what they're talking about. But we're going to
start with a crafting economy: resources and harvesting and things
like that.
(Thinks: hmm, I'm sure people would love a virtual world where they're
counting in groats, and you have to multiply by 12 and 20 to make up
units.)
So Castronova and the team got to work and built the virtual world,
called Arden.
Unfortunately, while you might think that where there's a Will there's
a play, it hasn't worked out.
Technology Review explains:
Players can enter the game and explore a town called Ilminster,
where they encounter characters from Shakespeare, along with many
plots and quotations. They can answer trivia questions to improve
their characters and play card games with other players. Coming from
Castronova, a pioneer in the field, the game was expected by many to
show the power of virtual-world-based research.
But Castronova says that there's a problem with the game: "It's no
fun." While focusing on including references to the bard, he says, his
team ended up sidelining some of the fundamental features of a game.
"You need puzzles and monsters," he says, "or people won't want to
play ... Since what I really need is a world with lots of players in
it for me to run experiments on, I decided I needed a completely
different approach."
Puzzles? Monsters? Come on, there's the Tempest, isn't there, which
has a monster (of sorts. Well..) Puzzles? Er, Twelfth Night involves
trying to work out what gender other characters are, which is a pretty
common problem in virtual worlds, surely? And there's murders aplenty,
with loads of slitting from knave to chops - good grief, you'd think
he'd get an 18 for Hitman:Macbeth.
Come on - how should he have done it? Was the mistake in letting
people know they were in Shakespearean plots? And could games
companies um, borrow a few plots for some new games? (You could be the
dithering hero in Hamlet..)
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Comments
JoeH
Comment No. 823026
December 7 16:18
Edward who? :)
Shakespeare's works make awesome subjects for games. How can they
fail? You don't need monsters and puzzles. They should do an MMorpg
with hordes of Capulets and Montagues.
Offensive? Unsuitable? Report this comment.
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> http://elianealhadeff.blogspot.com/2007/12/learning-from-arden-seriou...