So virtual world academic guru Edward Castronova has done something absolutely marvelous and soooooo daring! His Center for the study of Synthetic Worlds (which is sooooo where I should be doing a doctorate because I’m so smart!) has created not a conference but a ludium! The way I see it (and I may be wrong here) is that these smart people are sick of just discussing what and if you can learn something from building and playing virtual worlds, they’re gonna see if the come up with something by playing themselves! It’s a fantastic idea and I admire Castronova for attempting it, as most of us understand that designing games ain’t easy!!! Wish I could be there!! Why don’t they give masters students bunches of money to travel to far away conferences?