We mentioned Arden, the university-design MMO, a few times; a working paper has just been released that looks at economic behaviour in MMOs using the game. The interesting thing here isn’t so much the fact that people replicate real-world behaviours online (in this case, they purchased less of an item when it was more expensive), but that it’s yet another piece of a growing literature explaining the utility of virtual worlds in actual research:
This month’s Wired has a look at MMO Arden: The World of William Shakespeare. Armed with a $US 250,000 MacArthur Foundation grant, Indiana University profession Ted Castronova and his students created the MMO, which as the professor points out, was “no fun” and “failed.” Castronova and his team and working on the game’s sequel. He’s learned from his experience and offers up these five tips on making academic games that don’t suck:
