Mountains on the Left, Ruins on the Right - Page 7
© Michael Martinez
In the end, the attempt to crush impure gaming design will only lead to a greater diversity of gaming innovation as the community learns to ignore Tolkien Enterprises. Whether they ignore the licensees as a result of the trademark enforcement is an open question. The best Tolkien purist gaming can only be set up outside of the licenses Tolkien Enterprises controls. No one will ever win a license for such gaming. It will remain a fringe activity, an illicit pipeline to the popular imagination.
In the end, this misguided attempt to enforce a trademark will diminish its value. Gaming consistently requires one thing from its players regardless of what system they use: the free use of their imagination. Sauron failed to control the free wills of his enemies and was finally overthrown. No one, not even the Tolkien Estate, will be able to control the imaginations of the gamers. They may find themselves as powerless and irrelevant as Sauron was, and thereby lose out on a lot of money. Revolutions are like that, and they are often ignited through the defiance of simple acts of repression.
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