IU receives grant to make 'much ado' about gaming

Educators have ensured Shakespeare's vitality by keeping his works a staple of literature curriculums -- often to the chagrin of students throughout the English-speaking world. But now, IU professor Edward Castronova is attempting to make Shakespeare more relatable: He's digitized the Bard's works and created an interactive Shakespearean world inside of a computer. \nA $240,000 grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is driving the project, called "Arden: The World of Shakespeare" after the Forest of Arden in Shakespeare's play "As You Like It." The idea for Arden came from Castronova, an associate professor in the telecommunications department and an expert on the economies of large-scale online games. Castronova also directs IU's Synthetic Worlds Initiative, a research center that analyzes and constructs computerized worlds, namely massive multiplayer online role-playing games like "World of Warcraft." \n"What we plan to do is have people encounter the texts in Shakespeare and ideas in the text at many points within a really fun, multiplayer game," Castronova said in an IU news release. "So without even knowing it, they gradually are learning more about the bard's work."\nTravis Ross, a graduate student studying information science, is the producer of the Arden project. \n"People will be immersed in this world and this game and they'll come back and say, 'Oh! Now I know why Richard III killed Lord Hastings,'" he said. \nGraduate student Rory Starks, who is studying immersive mediated environments, is the project's art director. He describes the world the Arden team is creating as a "Shakespearean dreamscape." Although the project is in the early stages of development, he said its developers have already brainstormed several features for players to use. He said characters will be able to try their hand at activities such as cooking and blacksmithing.\n"Players will be able to gather resources and build other in-game objects," he said.\nLinda Charnes, an IU associate professor of English who has published several books on Shakespeare and contemporary culture, is serving as a consultant on the project. She works to make sure that those working on the project accurately portray Shakespeare's world, including the kinds of food and medical treatments that will be available to players. Charnes said the team has not determined yet whether Shakespearean characters will appear in the project.\n"There will be characters like characters in (Shakespeare's) world," Charnes said. "There will be evil uncle characters. ... There will be disinherited sons characters. If it develops in the way I think it will, I think it has tremendous potential as a teaching tool that will be incredibly fun."\nAside from its entertainment and educational purposes, Arden will also function as a tool for social-science research. Since real people will play the roles of the characters within the project, Castronova and his team can tweak variables within Arden to test real-world theories.\n"We can begin to show these environments can be used for social-science research," Ross said, "We can use these worlds to test entire communities of people ... and that will be huge." \nCastronova, in a news release, related the games to "social-science petri dishes." He said that they are, in essence, "controlled environments for studying the evolution of macro-level forces of government, law, economics, sociality, learning and culture." \nRoss also said the Arden project could help the Midwest earn a spot in the competitive area of video-game construction, an industry dominated by the East and West coasts. Much of this potential for distinction lies in the hands-on experience that the project will offer to IU students interested in video-game development.\n"Hopefully, we can establish a technical foundation for getting a leap into the game industry," Ross said.