IVANHOE: a game of critical interpretation
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This site contains documentation of important aspects and phases of the Ivanhoe Game's evolution to date:
- materials on its intellectual framework,
- records and discussion of games played,
- documentation of the design process,
- and archives of working notes
The Ivanhoe Game is currently under development by SpecLab as Web-based software for use in research and pedagogy. Ivanhoe is suited to any discipline in the humanities concerned with textual and visual hermeneutics. The game promotes self-conscious awareness about interpretation and seeks to encourage collaborative activity in fields such as literature, religious studies, history, and other humanities disciplines. Ivanhoe facilitates the imaginative use of electronic archives and online resources in combination with traditional text-based and visual research materials. The game's rules and conditions are adjustable to different player levels and interests, from secondary school classes to advanced projects undertaken by established scholars.
Ivanhoe was first conceived by Jerome McGann and Johanna Drucker in late spring 2000, and played in e-mail and paper-based formats. Since that time the project has been developed by a research team consisting of: Andrea Laue, Bethany Nowviskie, Nathan Piazza, Stephen Ramsay, and Worthy Martin, with additional assistance from David Patch and Geoffrey Rockwell. A prototype should be ready for use in late Spring 2002.