3pointD.com

The Shakespearean virtual world being built by Ted Castronova at Indiana University will run on the Multiverse platform, or so hears gamedev Raph Koster. Koster also links to a CNet story by Daniel Terdiman that sheds more light on MMO, which is to be known as Arden and is being built with the help of a grant from the Macarthur Foundation. Daniel’s interview with Ted goes into some detail about the characteristics of the massively multiplayer online game Ted envisions. Mystical bards, almost no healers, rare Shakespearean soliloquy drops, emergent governance entities — but no magical fireballs or storms. (Where’s our Prospero?) In any case, excellent stuff. It will be interesting to see what kind of research information Ted can wrest from his players (for that’s the plan).