Each year, new students from all over the world arrive on campus with a limited sense of the MIT lifestyle and experience -- until they suddenly find themselves in the thick of it. The dorms and living groups, which consider themselves to be distinctive cultural communities, are struggling to construct representations of their lifestyles through print and short online movies. Yet as students have been arguing, cultures are hard to describe in words and much easier to experience through practices. What if roommates could get to know each other online before they arrived on campus? What if we could provide students with a more immediate experience of what the departments and lab cultures are like?

MIT Ghost takes the idea of an open university to the next level, creating a customizable, persistent online representation of MIT and its various cultural communities that will operate much like massively multiplayer role playing games. The project is an initiative between Comparative Media Studies and MIT’s Information Services & Technology department, building the next generation of innovative academic computing services to make MIT cultures more widely accessible, especially to potential applicants and incoming students.

Online multiplayer games based around user-generated content, such as Second Life and Habbo Hotel, have shown real strength in capturing the essence of community and cultural identities in a stylized yet compelling manner. Taking inspiration from these games, MIT Ghost will provide basic core models of the campus and each of the residence buildings -- but students will use mod tools and APIs to adapt and extend those representations, using their own artwork and minigames to reflect the real or imagined experiences of life at MIT. Academic departments could similarly host events for prospective international students who lack the opportunity to visit campus before applying.

Imagine players worldwide navigating the Infinite Corridor, admiring innovative new buildings like Frank Gehry’s Stata Center, visiting labs, playing games in the underground steam tunnels, hanging out with students from various dorms, and yes, even putting digital police cars on top of a simulation of the great dome.

Project Status: Design, planning, and proof-of-concept development on-going, 2005.