The Great Game

Here is a different take on the Lord of the Rings written by David Brin (who's uplift series is some smashing good scifi).

Now ponder something that comes through even the party-line demonization of a crushed enemy. This clearcut and undeniable fact. Sauron's army was the one that included every species and race on Middle Earth, including all the despised colors of humanity, and all the lower classes.

Hm. Did they all leave their homes and march to war thinking "Oh, goody, let's go serve an evil dark lord"?

Or might they instead have thought they were the 'good guys', with a justifiable grievance worth fighting for, rebelling against an ancient, rigid, pyramid-shaped, feudal hierarchy topped by invader-alien elves and their Numenorean colonialist human lackeys?

Picture, for a moment, Sauron the Eternal Rebel, relentlessly maligned by the victors of the Ring War — the royalists who control the bards and scribes (and movie-makers). Sauron, champion of the common Middle-Earther! Vanquished but still revered by the innumerable poor and oppressed who sit in their squalid huts, wary of the royal secret police with their magical spy-eyes, yet continuing to whisper stories, secretly dreaming and hoping that someday he will return... bringing more rings.

Adam Pasick has just been named the first bureau chief for reuters that has a virtual territory. Writing under the name of Adam Reuters (which is the name of his avatar) he covers the game world of Second Life and its one million in habitants (Link).

Just as a side note, Second Life and Project Entropia are the two game which seem to generate the most news stories. Both of which have clear economic ties to the real world, by which I mean there is no need for third parties to covert in game money to real world currencies. Many of the other games do provide conversion services. In particular, the great titan of online worlds, the World of Warcraft does not. In addition Second Life is much more free for then most of the other games. Allow participants to create their own material for the world.

I just stumbled upon this essay. It is incredible. If you want to understand the direction that media distribution is going, read it. oh, yeah and the title rocks.

Piracy is Good? How Battlestar Galactica Killed Broadcast TV.