Ludium II announced

The first Ludium was one of my favorite conferences ever: a conference about virtual worlds that was literally structured as a game. Now here’s the second one. 

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”

Synthetic 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 (Bloomington, Indiana, June 22-23).

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 attached to this email. 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