Some of you will be aware that the acting roles in STÖMOL went to people in my friendship circle in Second Life. Making machinima is my hobby, and part of my enjoyment of this hobby is doing it with people I get on with. It’s also just easier to follow a learning curve as steep as that required of machinima when you’re doing it alongside friends who know you and are patient with you.

However, when STÖMOL was published online its function went beyond being just a private hobby and it took on an additional role as a piece of distributed media, along with all of the social responsibilities which go with that. One of these responsibilities is the representation of a racially diverse culture so that people from as broad an audience as possible can identify with the characters portrayed. This is something that science fiction has not done…