One of the wonderful things about Eve is that it is a sandbox where anything can happen. Most of what makes the game remarkable is down to the imaginative and innovative players this game often attracts.
One of the more controversial events is Hulkageddon a regular festival of suicide ganking when honest miners avoid undocking and bots die in droves.
The organiser until now has been Helicity Boson; the event also has sparked a carebear response called Griefergeddon organised by Mechanoid Kryten. She was interviewed on No Prisoners No Mercy recently .
Regardless of which side you take in these bun fights they are a perfect example of emergent player conflict and add depth colour and complexity to Eve. Helicity is also a member of the Python Cartel, a number of whom have added their own take on Eve to the blogosphere.
Helicity was permabanned today after he was involved in the leak of a CCP internal newsletter to the public and was rude to CCP staff on the forums. His take on it is here.
Eve is a game played by an adult community with intense and aggressive gameplay. It's a pvp game. Emotions run high. It also has a culture of strong language - the Bozocast podcast was on the extreme far end of NSFW but it's funny and lively. Scrapheap/Failheap Challenge, the Goons they all believe in explicit language. That's the culture, that's the community.
Banning Helicity for expressing anger in the language of gamers is just not right. People should be able to use moderately strong language. There was clearly no real life danger to the member of staff and I would be astonished if he or she felt genuinely unsafe. Please post on the Eve Official boards in support of Helicity and ask for the ban to be rescinded. Then we can go back to hiding from him :-)
Good for CCP. I'm sick of gamers thinking that it's OK to randomly threaten staffers who piss them off. Time that particular piece of gamer culture died in a fire.
ReplyDeleteProblem is the entire player base is acting like this. Seems unfair to single a couple of people out, plus there's the suggestion that he's not banned for his nerd rage he's banned for publicising an embarassing document.
ReplyDeleteLast night people staged a protest by entering the Jita hub en masse. Normally it has about 1500. Local population rose to 2500.
Can't agree with you here. DIAF is a perceived threat and should not be tolerated. If Helicity had just let it go it would have worked out, but he wouldn't.
ReplyDeleteFrankly my opinion would be that HB was too wrapped up in the game. He himself indicates this. Probably time to take a break. Enforced is necessary.
CCP did the right thing.
Gah! that should be 'Enforced *if* necessary'.
ReplyDeleteJust bear in mind that this is a company that tells its fans to harden the fuck up.
ReplyDeleteMy point really is a linguistic one. If one side is being professional and one side is saying diaf that's not fair. But CCP has a huge cross over with the player base. They recruit staff from the player base. Staff who leave often play and remain active and high profile in the community.
Possibly the lesson is don't try to act as if you're one of the boys with your players, you are the umpire, the judge, the arbitrator and the tyrant.
Yes to that last paragraph, Stabs. Someone has to be the "grown up", and it almost always has to at least be the devs. Getting too chummy with the playerbase is troublesome. Being honest with them is necessary, but devs aren't player friends, they are the high potentates of their worlds.
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