A MITH Digital Dialogue
Tuesday, October 31, 12:30-1:45
MITH Conference Room, McKeldin Library B0135
CALLING ALL GAMERS!
MITH currently has several research initiatives pending in the area of online gaming, especially Massively Multiplayer Role Playing Games (MMRPGS). MMRPGs such as Second Life and World of Warcraft create complex social, narrative, and imaginative spaces that have been the subject of important recent books by Edward Castronova and Henry Jenkins, among others. Far from merely idle pastimes, these virtual worlds, or simulations, manifest increasingly vexed relations to our own daily realities. Castronova has calculated that one of the most popular and longest running games, EverQuest, has a real world economy whose GNP places it somewhere between that of Bulgaria and Russia; Reuters, meanwhile, has just opened a news bureau within Second Life, where it might be expected to cover events such as a Suzanne Vega concert that unfolded entirely within that world’s virtual setting.
On Tuesday we are interested in talking with persons/players active in one or more of these game worlds. We want *you* to come and educate *us* about your experiences, we want to get feedback on our current proposed work, and we want to discuss the possibility of creating an interest group for those interested in discussing MMRPGs at some kind of regular interval.
Note: Jason Nelson’s appearance, originally scheduled for 10/31, has been CANCELLED.
Coming up @MITH Nov. 7: VIKA ZAFRIN (Brown University), “The Virtual Humanities Lab and the Evolution of Remote Collaboration.” View the complete Fall 2006 schedule for Digital Dialogues here:
http://www.mith2.umd.edu/programs/mith_speakers_fall_2006.pdf
Free and open to the public.
Contact: Neil Fraistat, Director, MITH (www.mith.umd.edu, mith@umd.edu, 5-5896).