Via Terra Nova comes word that work on Edward Castronova's Arden, a Shakespearean world, is winding down as alpha testing wraps up -- but according to Castronova, there's still a long road ahead. He's continuing work on the project, but with "an uncertain time frame."

Castronova had written at length about how the works of the Bard lent themselves naturally to virtuality:

In As You Like It , folks escape to the Forest of Arden to change their social status, their names, even their sex, prompting the forest-philosopher Jacques to note that “all the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players.” Meanwhile, after The Tempest drops off some real-world folk on a mysterious isle where everything is different and magic is king, its owner declares that everything is an image, indeed, that “we are such stuff as dreams are made on” (emphasis added)... All of these constructions make me think of avatars. That “real-guy-in-a-play” thing is the essence of the online experience. Going online makes everybody a Hamlet: it's not that we suddenly see the virtual world as so real, it's that we suddenly see the real world as so virtual, and the distinction vanishes. Voilà: immersion.

Although Castronova's ideas were solid and highly defensible, the process of building a virtual world may have been more challenging than he expected, even with the MacArthur Foundation aid that the project received in its first year. "It's been a bumpy road. We've learned lots of lessons, mostly that this is very hard to do, and especially hard to do in an academic context. I have new layers of respect for the world-builders out there," he says.

Still, he says, he will continue working with the project, "but there's no telling when there'll be anything to report." Castronova also indicated it might be appropriate to reduce expectations, theorizing more of a "small Dungeons & Dragons world with a Shakespeare layer," and not so much "World of Warcraft, but with Hamlet."

Definitely disheartening news for those who count themselves Shakespeare fans! Ah, the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.

[Via Terra Nova]