An Indiana University professor will speak to students about the future of video games and the process of building them.
The lecture, sponsored by Freshman Connections, will focus on "Arden: The World of William Shakespeare," a game being developed under a project headed by Edward Castronova, an associate professor of telecommunications at Indiana University. Castronova is part of the Synthetic Worlds Initiative, an Indiana University research center which focuses on immersive, digitally created worlds that allow online users to interact with the game and one another.
"The presentation should be very exciting," Melinda Messineo, associate professor of sociology and chair on the Freshman Connections planning committee, said. "It will be very cutting edge and will show how far video games have come."
The program is free and starts at 1:30 p.m. in the Arts Recital Hall at the Fine Arts building.
While games such as "Halo 2" or "Final Fantasy" focus on killing aliens and mythical creatures, Arden's aim is to allow users to have a fun experience while learning about the language, culture and time period of Shakespeare. The game is designed to allow players to travel and interact within the world of Shakespeare while simultaneously allowing researchers to record and analyze data.
Castronova is interested in discovering the connection between these online communities and interpersonal interaction among online users from an economists perspective and how they compare with real world human communities, Philip Repp, associate vice president of Information Technology, said.
"Castronova is an economist who also happens to play video games, and he has a very unique and intriguing perspective on how these synthetic worlds are mimicking the real world," Repp said.
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