State of Play VI

State of Play VI is coming up June 19th and 20th, and I will be keynoting there and doing lots of Metaplace demoing.

I’m looking forward to this one — I haven’t made it to a State of Play conference since the first one, and it was incredibly stimulating. A great group of folks is gathering there this year, and the topics are nice and meaty: kids’ worlds, whether virtual worlds have reached a plateau, recent policy developments, and even government worries about terrorism. There’s also a Graduate Student Symposium where students will present their research.

Here’s the press release:

New York Law School Presents the Sixth Annual State of Play Conference

New York, NY (Friday, June 5, 2009)—New York Law School will host its State of Play VI Conference where participants will discuss the past, present, and future of virtual worlds, on Friday, June 19 and Saturday, June 20 beginning at 9 a.m. at the Law School, located at 47 Worth Street.

“We’re tremendously pleased to be running State of Play for a sixth time,” said Professor Dan Hunter, the Director of the Law School’s Institute for Information Law & Policy and organizer of the event. “As the list of sessions demonstrates, we’ve come a long way from the early days of the study of virtual worlds back in 2003 when we first ran the conference; topics that once had one presenter now feature whole sessions, and the range of voices speaking at the conference is so large that we now have to run multiple tracks.”

State of Play will bring together scholars, games developers, industry leaders, government leaders, entrepreneurs, artists, social scientists, and policy makers to set the agenda for the development and study of virtual worlds. Participants will focus on the rise of virtual worlds and multiplayer online games, and discuss whether these worlds have reached a plateau in their development. A related event, the Graduate Student Symposium, will feature 30 students from around the world who will present and discuss their research on virtual worlds, and receive commentary and criticism from the experts and industry leaders whose work has shaped virtual world studies.

“State of Play has been a critical event in exploring the intersection of virtual worlds, games, law, and the ever-changing dynamics between them,” keynote speaker Raph Koster, President and founder of the Web-based, social virtual worlds platform, Metaplace, said. “I look forward to introducing Metaplace’s unique approach of democratizing the creation of all sorts of worlds and exploring legal, policy, and business challenges Metaplace and other platforms face as we move forward.”

Panels will focus on an array of topics, including the challenges faced by public and private institutions in online environments; opportunities and efforts in learning and education facilitated by virtual spaces; the differences between youth-related virtual worlds and adult spaces; developments in the ongoing conversation regarding ownership of virtual property, tax, and regulation; and the special concerns of government in relation to terrorism, security, and money laundering.

For full conference schedule, panel descriptions, and speaker biographies, please visit: www.nyls.edu/stateofplay.

“State of Play digs deeper into challenging questions of virtual and real worlds than any other conference,” said New York Law School Professor James Grimmelmann, one of the seminal thinkers on virtual world governance. “The insights of the panelists at State of Play VI on how virtual worlds are and should be governed are carrying on a long and proud tradition established at the very first State of Play.”

The State of Play Conference has previously been held in New York and Singapore. This year’s conference is being produced in conjunction with the University of Southern California Network Culture Project at the Annenberg School for Communication and with support from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

About New York Law School
Founded in 1891, New York Law School is an independent law school located in lower Manhattan near the city’s centers of law, government, and finance. New York Law School’s renowned faculty of prolific scholars has built the School’s strength in such areas as constitutional law, civil and human rights, labor and employment law, media and information law, urban legal studies, international and comparative law, and a number of interdisciplinary fields. The School is noted for its eight academic centers: Center on Business Law & Policy, Center on Financial Services Law, Center for International Law, Center for New York City Law, Center for Professional Values and Practice, Center for Real Estate Studies, Institute for Information Law & Policy, and Justice Action Center. New York Law School has more than 13,000 graduates and enrolls some 1,500 students in its full- and part-time J.D. program and its Master of Laws (LL.M.) in Taxation program. www.nyls.edu