Ludium II Announcement

Details on Ludium II below the fold.

Press Release March 21, 2007

MAIN CONTACT: Kim Fatten, [email protected]

CONFERENCE ANNOUNCEMENT: LUDIUM II
June 22-23

Bloomington

Indiana

"Synthetic Worlds and Public Policy"

 

Bloomington, IndianaSynthetic worlds – million-player online environments with genuine markets, societies, and cultures – are exploding in size and significance. Real world governments around the globe are beginning to grapple with their implications in the areas of taxation, intellectual property laws, consumer rights, addiction, violence, and more. Should synthetic worlds be controlled by developers, or by governments, or both? What about the rights of users? What general norms should legislatures and courts follow? Most experts believe that decisions in the next few years will set the terms for these interactive spaces for generations to come. To encourage the thoughtful development of policy wisdom now, and to help prevent catastrophic policy mistakes in the next few years, the Synthetic Worlds Initiative at

Indiana

University

will focus its second Ludium conference on the topic of Synthetic Worlds and Public Policy.

Ludium II will bring together experts on virtual worlds from academia, industry, and government to play a live-action political game leading to an extremely serious, timely, and important contribution: a consensus Platform of 10 Statements answering the question "What policies should real world governments have with regards to synthetic worlds?" The hope is that this Platform will provide answers when legislatures and administrators wonder what to do in response to the critical public issues that will be raised by these unique social technologies.

 

The consensus Platform will emerge from the game CONVENTION that has been designed specifically to help disparate groups of people come to common understandings. The game, designed by Studio Cypher LLC, puts conference attendees in the role of delegates to a political party convention whose objective is to hammer out a common platform. CONVENTION’s incentives will lead the group to a set of policy recommendations believed by most participants to be important, sensible, and feasible. The rules of the game are available at

http://arden.blogs.com/swn/2007/03/ludium_ii_annou.html

Please direct comments and questions about the rules to Studio Cypher's Lead Designers Nathan Mishler ([email protected]) and Will Emigh ([email protected]).

After the conference, the consensus conference Platform will be published as an open letter, and sent directly to all major political candidates and officer-holders in the

United States

.

 

REGISTRATION for Ludium II will open on April 23, 2007. A Call for Participation will be released at that time. Because the conference is organized as a live game, registration is limited. For updates, check the Synthetic Worlds Initiative website at http://swi.indiana.edu/ludium.htm . Please direction questions about registration and participation to Kim Fatten ([email protected]) or Bridget Agabra ([email protected]).

 

We look forward to welcoming you at Ludium II.

Edward Castronova, Conference Chair
Kim Fatten, Conference Organizer
Bridget Agabra, Conference Advisor

Comments

[ErikC]

1.

Is there anyway the conference/game participation could be online?

[Edward Castronova]

2.

That's not in the planning, no. Maybe next time...

[tom abeles]

3.

Two days to come out with ideas of substance about the future of synthetic worlds?

If I remember correctly, in the volume, Synthetic Worlds, it is suggested, in a display of intellectual arrogance, that academics should play the role for Synthetic Worlds similar to that of Institutional Review Boards (IRB's)for experiments with human subjects.

I would suspect that the players of Ludium II will represent a cultural and economic bias rather than a balanced perspective and thus will be one lobby group trying to influence political candidates-if this issue is even on a politician's radar this election year

My highest hope would be that this would start the conversation and that a rush to move this into the public domain be considered as part of the event rather than as an outcome and that there be a time for thoughtful reflection once the heat of engagement has been tempered by the wisdom of time passing.

[Tripp]

4.

@tom abeles: I'm not sure what you mean by your hope that "this would start the conversation and that a rush to move this into the public domain be considered as part of the event rather than as an outcome". I'm not sure what you mean particularly by the "be part of the event" vs. an outcome. Could you elaborate, please?