Serra Anansi, the Senshelf and I have discussed this issue and we agree that it is important to stress that, contrary to the impression given in the most recent issue of The Primgraph, there is no connection between her estate of Winterfell and the novels of George RR Martin, apart from the bare fact of the name.
Indeed, Serra has devoted considerable time and effort into making sure that there is no connection between her estate and the novels, and we are profoundly sorry for giving a misleading impression.
Serra writes:
"In the beginning when I first planned on creating a group of islands in Second Life the plan was indeed to have a nation of Dark Victorian sims named Elysium ... but when I was told by the Lindens on the day of sim delivery that there was already a sim with that name I needed to re-plan very quickly. I couldn't come up with a new name that would fit the Dark Victorian theme so on a whim, which is very much my nature, I picked "Winterfell" for the first sim name and the region was to be named "Un Named Realm". But when people just didn't "get" the mystical and otherworldly feeling of the name "Un Named Realm" and were mostly confused, I renamed the entire region to "Winterfell". It seemed the easy and logical answer due to the popularity of the original island.
"My intention was never to infringe on Mr Martin’s story. To be honest I never thought Winterfell would amount to anything, but when I reached the first anniversary of Winterfell, I took a step back and looked at what I had created and how it had evolved over time. In a quiet moment of surprise and dismay, I realized that the natural progression of the realm had grown past my original idea for a single sim with a single castle on it called "Winterfell" and that I was treading in some potentially murky water when it came to IP rights.
"Between the cost to change the name of the realm, my customer base, the recognition that my Winterfell had acquired in its first year on the grid ... it's been a recurring and troubling dilemma balancing what Winterfell has become and what people envision when they think of the Winterfell of the George RR Martin books. So I resolved to make my Winterfell something very different than the George RR Martin Winterfell, so that there is no confusion about my intent.
"Over the years, I have tried to express the differences between my Winterfell and Mr Martin's Winterfell, and if you have read Mr Martin's books and then come to my Winterfell on the Second Life grid, the differences are astounding and very very hard to miss. I apologize that I didn't expressly say to this round of Prim Graph interviewers "please do not, you must not, refer to my Winterfell as the same as Mr Martin's Winterfell". I thought I had made the difference clear though my interview, stories and tour of the realm."
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And we apologise to Serra that we did not verify a final article with her that made this link – which was, in fact, written by Saffia (who should have known better). We want to make it completely clear that there is no connection between her Winterfell and Mr Martin’s novels – other than that many of us are great fans of both!
This notice will also be published in the next issue of The Primgraph.
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