Edward "Ted" Castronova is a professor of media at

Indiana University Bloomington Indiana University Bloomington (IU Bloomington, Indiana University, IU, IUB, or Indiana) is a public university, public research university in Bloomington, Indiana, United States. It is the flagship university, flagship campus of Indiana Univer ...

. He is known in particular for his work on the economies of synthetic worlds.

Biography

Castronova obtained a BS in international affairs from

Georgetown University Georgetown University is a private university, private Jesuit research university in Washington, D.C., United States. Founded by Bishop John Carroll (archbishop of Baltimore), John Carroll in 1789, it is the oldest Catholic higher education, Ca ...

in 1985 and a PhD in economics from the

University of Wisconsin–Madison The University of Wisconsin–Madison (University of Wisconsin, Wisconsin, UW, UW–Madison, or simply Madison) is a public land-grant research university in Madison, Wisconsin, United States. It was founded in 1848 when Wisconsin achieved st ...

in 1991. In between, he spent 18 months studying German postwar reconstruction and social policy at universities and research institutes in

Mannheim Mannheim (; Palatine German language, Palatine German: or ), officially the University City of Mannheim (), is the List of cities in Baden-Württemberg by population, second-largest city in Baden-Württemberg after Stuttgart, the States of Ger ...

Frankfurt Frankfurt am Main () is the most populous city in the States of Germany, German state of Hesse. Its 773,068 inhabitants as of 2022 make it the List of cities in Germany by population, fifth-most populous city in Germany. Located in the forela ...

, and

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. From 1991 to 2000, he worked as an assistant and then associate professor of public policy and political science at

University of Rochester The University of Rochester is a private university, private research university in Rochester, New York, United States. It was founded in 1850 and moved into its current campus, next to the Genesee River in 1930. With approximately 30,000 full ...

, after which he became an associate professor of economics in the College of Business and Economics at California State University, Fullerton. In the fall 2004, he joined the faculty of

as an associate professor of telecommunication and cognitive science, later becoming a full professor and also the director of graduate studies in the department. His works on synthetic worlds and their economies, and on '' EverQuest'' in particular, have attracted considerable attention. His paper on Norrath, a fictional planet in the EverQuest universe,
Virtual Worlds: A First-Hand Account of Market and Society on the Cyberian Frontier (2001)
' is available on SSRN. It claims, for example, that Norrath has a GNP per capita somewhere between that of

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and

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, higher than that of

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and

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, and that a unit of ''EverQuest'' currency is worth more than the Yen or

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. He is one of four founders (along with Julian Dibbell, Dan Hunter and Greg Lastowka) of the game research blog Terra Nova. He also created the

Indiana University Indiana University (IU) is a state university system, system of Public university, public universities in the U.S. state of Indiana. The system has two core campuses, five regional campuses, and two regional centers under the administration o ...

Ludium game conferences which were built on the structure of a collaborative game environment. In 2008, he and his team finished work on a MacArthur Foundation-supported academic experiment in massively multiplayer online gaming, '' Arden: The World of Shakespeare''. They documented that people in fantasy games act in an economically normal way, purchasing less of a product when prices are higher, all other things being equal. This finding may open the way for future study in synthetic worlds of real economic behavior. Castronova said of the results, "Being an elf doesn't make you turn off the rational economic calculator part of your brain.".Final results for Arden project
In 2014, he co-authored a book with economic sociologist, Vili Lehdonvirta, "Virtual Economies: Design and Analysis", which consisted of information regarding research, design, and the creation of virtual economies, published by MIT Press. In 2018, he released a board game called ''American Abyss'', set in a second US civil war that erupts in 2040. It is a modification of the COIN game ''Andean Abyss''; it uses the same game mechanics and likewise features four factions, but here, they represent the

federal government of the United States The Federal Government of the United States of America (U.S. federal government or U.S. government) is the Federation#Federal governments, national government of the United States. The U.S. federal government is composed of three distinct ...

, American drug cartels and criminals, Antifa, and members of

National Rifle Association The National Rifle Association of America (NRA) is a gun rights advocacy group based in the United States. Founded in 1871 to advance rifle marksmanship, the modern NRA has become a prominent Gun politics in the United States, gun rights ...

and Tea Party movement. According to Castronova, the game's main message is that a second American Civil War would be a prolonged conflict with many casualties but no real winner, with Castronova writing "Nobody wins; it is a dumpster fire."

Papers

* * Castronova, Edward. "Virtual Worlds: A First-Hand Account of Market and Society on the Cyberian Frontier,
''CESifo Working Paper No. 618''
December 2001. * Castronova, Edward. "On Virtual Economies,
''CESifo Working Paper Series No. 752''
July 2002. * Castronova, Edward. "The Price of 'Man' and 'Woman': A Hedonic Pricing Model of Avatar Attributes in a Synthethic World,
''CESifo Working Paper Series No. 957''
June 2003.

Media

BBC News - Virtual gaming worlds overtake Namibia

Norrath Economic Report Now Available - Slashdot.org on Castronova's report

* ttp://tedxtalks.ted.com/video/TEDxBloomington-Edward-Castrono Video "Be A Gamer" TEDx (2011)

Books

* Edward Castronova. ''Synthetic Worlds'', University of Chicago Press (2005). * Edward Castronova. ''Exodus to the Virtual World''
Palgrave Macmillan
(2007). * Edward Castronova. ''Wildcat Currency''. Yale University Press (2014). * Edward Castronova. ''Virtual Economies'': Design and Analysis. (2014), With Vili Lehdonvirta ISBN 0262535068

References

External links