Arden: The World of William Shakespeare

From June 2006 to May 2008, with funding from the MacArthur Foundation's Digital Learning program, members of the SWI built virtual worlds based on the works of William Shakespeare. Our objective was to build a world in which we could conduct social science experiments.

We met this objective, but not without quite a few restarts and detours. We found that it when we put too much emphasis on economic complexity, historical realism, and Shakespearean content, players did not enjoy our world enough to stay in it. We therefore could not conduct any experiments. When we focused on creating good gameplay, however, players remained in the environment for many hours, allowing us to complete the studies we had planned.

Along the way, we as a group learned a great deal about how to build large-scale entertainment software in the University setting. The eventual success of Arden happened because we developed a robust production method, from concept to design to coding to playtesting to final experiment.

Credits: The People Who Built Arden

We have finished our work with Arden and have released the software. There are two versions of Arden for others to use.

Arden I is our "Shakespeare Game". We created a village nestled in the countryside where you can talk to Falstaff, play cards with Nym, and ask Shylock about markets. It has a fairly complicated crafting economy. It has a Wheel of Fortune, complete with Fortune's Fool. It has a character who asks questions about Shakespeare and his plays; if you get enough right, you win a prize. In short, it has many things that one might want to see in a Shakespeare teaching environment. The problem is, Arden I was determined by our players to be, well, no fun at all. If you are thinking of building your own virtual world for education, collaboration, marketing, or some other serious purpose, you should download and experience Arden I to review an approach that, whatever its other merits, did not retain the attention of users.

Download Arden I here

Arden II: London's Burning is our "Fun Game." Here we created a storyline set in medieval London, a city on fire. A rebellion has broken out; players must race across the city, fighting monsters and ghosts, eventually choosing to help either the King or the Rebels. The story is based loosely on Shakespeare's Richard III, and players do interact with the characters in that play - especially the ghosts. Otherwise, London's Burning is a standard role-playing game.

We successfully conducted an economic experiment in London's Burning. The results are reported in this research paper. We invite others to replicate the study. You can do this quite exactly: simply download the game and run the experiment as described in the research paper. In addition to replication uses, London's Burning allows you to see what works in terms of embedding content like Shakespeare in a virtual world.

Download Arden II: London's Burning here

In order to examine these environments, you will need a to install a game called "Neverwinter Nights" on your computer. Full instructions for doing this are on the download pages.

Bioware, the company that makes Neverwinter Nights, generously supported our research by contributing client software. Our thanks go to them and to the MacArthur Foundation for making Arden possible.

We hope others learn as much from using these games as we did making them.