Ludium 1: Conference on Synthetic Worlds and Academic Research, 10/01/05 Indiana University

What's a Ludium? It's an academic conference built as a live-action game. At this one, a mixed group of academics, MMORPG designers, and experts with funding contacts will compete to come up with the best ways to use avatars in university research. Anyone who reads this page knows that basic research using the technology of multiplayer persistent gaming will open countless new approaches to the exploration of human sociality. That's valuable in and of itself, but there are all kinds of spinoffs that advance the agendas of others. There's IP for businesses in this; information-spreading tools for foundations; policy levers for government. There are so many good research ideas that the question is not whether we should do anything, but where do we start? This conference will try to pick out the five best ideas and lay down, concretely, the pragmatics of working on them. Who benefits? How deep is the impact? What will this kind of work  cost? Who will fund it? How quickly will the results be available?

The people who will actually play this game of project development have already been selected. It's basically the Terra Nova community, plus some folks with expertise at organizing and funding large-scale research projects. But the ideas they come up with will be presented in an open forum, which may be of interest to many...

There will also be sessions on the judges' opinions, an awards ceremony (prizes!), and open discussion. People who attend the open part of the conference also get a copy of the post-conference report, which will summarize the findings. Thus the conference represents an opportunity for anyone with an interest in this area to mingle with the academics who can do the work, the designers who can build the tools, and the outside experts who might fund it. Not only that, but they will be able to take away research ideas that can serve as the core of their own game efforts, whether they be in academia, business, government, or foundations.

Beyond that, organizations have the opportunity to sponsor the event, as well as present exhibitions.

The spaces for all of these modes of participating are limited; we're only going to have room for 70 others (40 general, 20 sponsors, 10 exhibiting sponsors). Go to the "Attend/Sponsor" link at cssw1.org to secure a seat.

A clarification on nomenclature: 'live-action game' does not mean 'inside a video game'; it refers to a game played face-to-face. On the other hand, this will not be a live-action role-playing game. While many of us have LARP in our (shameful?) past, the only "thees" and "thous" at this event will be part of Monty Python jokes. No, the idea is to have an active, group-to-group competition that spurs both enjoyment and productive creativity.

Finally, a word on the future. This is a small conference and if it's repeated at all, it will always be small. But it's designed to scale up on the dimension of value, with a registration and pricing structure built to allow that. The world of gaming academia already has its huge expos and hired-speaker confabs. What we don't have is the small gathering with incredibly high value-per-minute. I'd like that to be Ludium's  niche. And to make sure it works, I intend to add only one thing to the formula: FUN. We're going to have a good time, and generate some fantastic ideas along the way.

Comments

[Riccardo Leone]

1.

I'm sure we all support it. As it's gonna stay among the main events of the third millenium, why not listing it on the left-side upcoming conference panel also? Just in case you guys overlooked that ;)
Best of luck from Italy!
Riccardo

[gus andrews]

2.

Uh, guys, the usual question -- what about younger scholars, the ones of us who are still in grad programs? As usual, $500 is a steep ticket price for us. And I would love, love, LOVE to at least be a fly on the wall at this event.

[Edward Castronova]

3.

It's a valid point. Let's put it this way: Most academic conferences happen because somebody is sitting on big pots of money and a friend says 'hey why don't you do a conference.' That's not the situation here. There's a need to do a conference, and the organizer (me) does not happen to be sitting on a big pot of money.

(/whine I only got tenured last year after spending most of my career in a zero-grant area of economics so I don't have the big money contacts that other people do and I just got to Indiana and they didn't give me an office for six months and, and, and waa waa waa)

Whatever. I decided let's forget the vanity conference model and fund this thing out of the interests of the community. That's a better model anyway. If it produces something good, it will happen. If it doesn't, it will die a well-deserved death, something I wish lots of conferences I've been at would do.

The problem is that any such system is unfair to people who don't have travel budgets. But note: the pricing structure is intended to allow us to fund these people, including poor but worthy grad students, in the immediate future.

Gus: I can't do it this year, but I hope to be able to get people like you into this thing soon, maybe next year if the format flies.

Now the burden is on you to produce some awesome work on the topic ;> .

[Matt Mihaly]

4.

Couldn't you have picked somewhere like the University of Hawaii or the University of the Cayman Islands to teach at instead Edward? ;)

--matt

[Edward Castronova]

5.

But to be on campus in late September... ivy-covered buildings, forested walkways, coffee shops and bistros, an interesting conversation at every turn...what could be better?

[Ian Bogost]

6.

Ted - congrats on getting the center off the ground and this conference going. It's quite an accomplishment.

The "ludium" idea is interesting (even if exceedingly high concept). As I understand it, the goal of the conference is specifically to identify research areas that might have "value and feasibility" -- i.e. that are fundable, and therefore fungible for some funding or sponsoring agency.

I'm wondering how this set of goals relates to the debate TL previously brought up here on TN after our scuffles at Other Players about seeking legitimacy. Where do you locate your research and the output of this conference or even your center in relation to this problem? Is there something "different" about synthetic worlds that aligns (or unaligns) such research with practice in a general sense?

[Dmitri Williams]

7.

Matt->Couldn't you have picked somewhere like the University of Hawaii or the University of the Cayman Islands to teach at instead Edward? ;)

LOL! Well, I will say that, outside of tropical locations, the two most beautiful campuses I've been on for setting are IU's in the Fall and Pepperdine in the whenever.

[Edward Castronova]

8.

The legitimacy discussion was about the tendency of academics to suggest that their research would help game design. I can state fairly emphatically that this conference does not intend to make any design innovations whatsoever. The purpose is rather to take current designs and apply them to a new use, university research. Designers would have an interest here because it's an opportunity to design for a different purpose; a new revenue stream, for the cynical. At universities, you can be creative AND get paid for it. There are still limits, sure, but it's got to be more rewarding than designing another EQ clone.