This fascinates me as a design concept…but what a monumental challenge! Clearly, there’s a lot of potential here, but this seems to be a bit of a red flag:

He said one of the more unique elements of “Arden” is that the game will be seeded with Shakespearean texts, many of which will be the most valuable treasure players can find.

“If you collect the ‘To be or not be’ speech and then take it to a lore master or to a skilled bard, he can then apply the magic to your broad sword or you (could) utilize the magic in a battle situation to give you this massive (advantage),” Castronova explained. “So there (will be) this intensive competition to get the best speeches of Shakespeare in your play book.

“You’ve got to know your Shakespeare, but…if you do, collect these texts and you can just playfully kick butt the way wizards do.

He seems to be thinking - granted, at this early stage - of simply shoehorning Shakespeare into World of Warcraft, using it as a powerup. The question they should be asking themselves is ‘what do we want people to learn?’ and, most particularly, ‘how?’ Judging by the statement “We’d like to allow our players to learn something valuable, so that’s why it’s about Shakespeare”, I’d say the underlying goal is, in addition to the ’social science Petri dish’ concept he’s espousing, to teach random internet people about Shakespeare. So, what do you want to teach them? I’m assuming, because Castronova is a college professor, that he’s interested in teaching Shakespeare in the academic sense, which is to say first and foremost simply understanding what’s happening (parsing Elizabethan English.) From there, appreciating Shakespeare’s genius would be nice, understanding narrative structure and so on. Then, it’s always interesting to understand the context in which Shakespeare’s plays existed, the world they came from, and to examine why they, of all works (being very much the pop culture of 17th century England) have endured centuries of scrutiny and continue to be held in the highest regard today.

I’ve also noticed that my father, who has a Masters in English, seems to, among other things, have sponged up insane amounts of Shakespeare. We’re talking huge sections of the plays which he can recite from memory. I surmise, then, that even if rote memorization isn’t the goal of study per se it is at least a desirable outcome of constant exposure. And, of course, there are well documented cognitive benefits to memorizing long passages.

So, as quantifiable, measurable outcomes for a Shakespearian MMO, I submit the following:

1. The player learns how to overcome the barrier of Elizabethan English.
2. The player learns to peel back the layers, understanding the nuance, subtlety, playfulness, and meaning of the plays - in short, to appreciate the genius of Shakespeare.
3. The player comes to know by heart whole passages from Shakespeare.

With these goals framed, I immediately begin to apply my favorite brainstorming tool for games, role shifting. As described in the article, the player “can expect to trot around in 17th century regalia, buying ale in Elizabethan taverns and joining guilds aimed at toppling dukes and earls.” Presumably, if the player is toppling dukes and earls, he or she is playing as a commoner. So let’s see what else the player could play as, let’s shift roles around. Obviously, the player could play as a character from the play, and would have to then be tasked with correctly playing out their ‘part.’ There are myriad design problems here, but ignore them for now - we’re brainstorming, it’s not time to shift into analytical mode yet. What if instead the player played as the castle walls, the “set” if you will? Then the play would unfold in front of them, digitally replaying over and over again. The ‘walls have eyes’, as it were. To take this a step more towards something game-y, what if the player played as a ‘camera’ and their job was simply to capture the action as it unfolded, moving from location to location and trying to find the best angles to ‘record’ the play from? This has some interesting social implications design-wise, including the possibility of sharing and ranking these recordings in some sort of ancillary content ranking website. What if the players played as spirits, invisible to the autonomous ‘actors’ acting out the play, but were able to move freely in the environment and see one another.

This seems interesting, because it implies, to me anyway, that at some point the players would rank up to be allowed to inhabit the bodies of certain actors in the play for certain amounts of time, and be tasked then with playing them out. Perhaps the other spirits could vote on the accuracy, subtlety, whatever of the performance and this is how the player gains points. If we could, through careful structure and rule creation, create a community where new players were encouraged and nurtured by veteran players, or masters of Shakespeare, I can see this achieving most of our stated goals. Of course, that ‘careful structure and rule creation’ would be the great challenge of this design, and would likely take months of laborious design and testing, to say nothing of the crazy amount of content and technology that would need building before any kind of testing could even take place.

I see a lot of interesting parallels between this and the project we (Flashbang) are currently creating for Cisco, a teaching game for their salespeople. I wish Castronova and his team all the best, and look forward to seeing how this develops. I’d would love to play and learn in a living, breathing, participatory the world of Shakespeare. Mmm-hmm, yes I would!