Arden, the world of William Shakespeare, and also of Edward Castronova who conceived the online experience, has been released last week, together with Castronova’s book “Exodus to the Virtual World”.You can play it here.Various press releases highlight in turn its educational potential, the power of virtual worlds as “theme” social networks, the power of interaction and play in learning and so on. The question on how much can virtual worlds fall into the category of “gaming” is still open.At first sight Arden might fall under “adaptation” rather than transmedial storytelling, but in fact the player is engaged in creating new subplots within the storyworld, so the whole experience is truly cross media. I just started playing, will update later.A post on Terranova by Castronova says that as an experience “it’s rather boring” (it’s just a quote!) and that several of the playtesters said “Where are the monsters?”Apparently the lack of monsters were badly affecting the game experience. The answer to that was to take back Arden I and release Arden II: London’s Burning, which was initially conceived as a game.(This would answer somehow the question if virtual worlds experience can be considered as “gaming”, and the answer would be a sound “no” - more debate to follow)So, what you can see now online is Arden I, boring, apparently (I didn’t say that), but of immense interest for the academic community.