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This week, I finally manage to connect with Jeremy Stratton and record another awesome episode of the show with him. Lately, our schedules have conflicted a bit, but despite that, it seems like he’s a semi-regular this season (and there’s nothing wrong with that!).

Anyway, the initial topic of discussion this week sort of veers away from the standard gaming discussions this podcast often centers around. Instead, this week we start off with the broad topic of micronations. Truth be told, micronations have fascinated me for a very long time, and they present a very interesting concept that makes you question what a nation is, what a community is, what a state is, how all of these things fit together, and what the minimum requirements for each are. There are famous examples like the “Principality of Sealand,” for example, and there are small towns or very small regions that claim autonomy and even have their own functioning government. In other cases, on the extreme opposite side of things, it’s just people having a bit of fun and claiming they’re a King or Duke and offering imaginary citizenship to others. But, where does all this end? How does it all fit together?

Jeremy brings up an interesting point about how you don’t have to have land and holdings in the real world, because virtual communities have existed for a very long time. He cites Second Life as an obvious example, but from there we talk about guilds and corporations in various MMOs, such as EVE and Age of Wushu. It’s a very interesting episode, in my view.

As always, I’d love to hear some of your thoughts on the topics discussed!

Music in this episode comes from the Age of Wushu soundtrack. 🙂

As always, you can subscribe to the show via iTunes or set up an RSS, but if you’d like an MP3 directly, get it here: GG 08-07: Micronations & Virtual Spaces (MP3)