The word Trammel has enormous force with a certain section of the online gaming community.
Ultima Online was one of the first MMOs, arguably the first mainstream one. It was pretty popular. It had a very open ruleset as the developers made it without really knowing what to expect from their players. They had MUDs to look at and Richard Bartle had already developed his famous theory of player types but they didn't know if what happened in MUDs would happen in a 3D setting. They had earlier graphical MMOs to look at but the population in those was very small so it was hard to draw sociological conclusions from the way players behaved in them. So they went into the project wondering what they would find if they made a virtual world that was as unrestricted as possible, a sandbox full of possibilities. What they found was this:
Wolves eat sheep.
That trend, the intersection of the killer player type with the other player types dominated the game experience. Imagine you log on, chat with a friend, buy something from a crafter, admire some shiny armour on a very advanced player then get ganked robbed and corpse camped. You've met a socialiser, an explorer, an achiever and a killer, one each of the 4 Bartle types. Which one defines your experience of the game? The killer.
Now at first people put up with it but then a game came out where the sheep were safe from wolves and masses of players moved over. So in order to save Ultima Online the developers introduced the Trammel expansion, introducing safe play areas for people. And the word has been a curse in the mouths of aggressive pvpers ever since.
In Eve Online the sheep are guarded by a game mechanic of punishment. You're not actually safe in high sec but if you get killed so does your attacker. This is a loose deterrent to pvp that has worked very well so far for the game. High sec is generally safe but each player is likely to have an occasional moment of drama that keeps the heart racing and the game interesting. Sometimes people are very upset to be victimised in "safe space" but it's infrequent enough that the mechanic has worked to satisfy both sheep and wolves.
But maybe that's going to change.
There's been a growing interest in messing with people in high sec. Increasingly Eve corps have been interested in fighting people who don't want to fight. My impression is that pre-Goons people generally saw end game as big nullsec empires which is consensual pvp. And it's not just the Goons - Suddenly Ninjas have promoted ninja salvaging techniques, many corps do can flipping and camp gates around Jita to suicide gank afk haulers. There are two major alliances that just war dec as many corps as possible and camp Jita in the hope some targets will turn up. And of course there's Hulkaggedon, a festival of wolves ganking sheep.
It's escalating.
The Mittani, furious at making a tit of himself over a highsec carebear, seems driven to disrupt highsec. He seems to view nullseccers as a much lesser evil than anonymous high sec carebears. He's been banned for 30 days but will come back on 28th April spearheading a Burn Jita campaign. He and his admiring followers want to cause as much disruption to the carebear high sec playstyle as possible.
So what if they win?
What if they manage to begin the process of shutting down high sec carebearing?
CCP will look at the sub numbers and if they're sharply falling because carebears can no longer play as they want they may institute a Trammel. Make high sec totally safe. I don't see how they could do any different - they want Eve to be a game that allows multiple playstyles, not a game that only supports Killers.
Of course it's possible that a war on high sec will be so interesting it will increase sub numbers in which case it will make business sense to allow the carebears to gradually be replaced by hardcore pvpers. But how long will it be interesting to grief the sheep if the sheep all leave? This happened in Ultima and basically when the sheep all go the bottom rank of wolves become the new sheep and everyone ganks them mercilessly until they quit and then the next rank of wolves become the new sheep.
How feasible is it to shut down high sec? I would say that under the current mechanics it's very feasible. Disposable gank ships are very cheap and nullsec alliances are very rich. If they really went for it they could probably keep their entire player base in suiciding Tornados and Catalysts for several months. If they're organised and loot and salvage the wrecks to sell off for more suicide boats it could almost be self-sustaining, especially if they get some lucky big loot drops.
And of course if sheep leave then there's less sheep. If 100 sheep ganked a day it doesn't matter much if there's 20000 sheep but it's a pretty big deal if there are only 2000. There's a point at which a consistent number of ganks sustained over a long period will thin the sheep out. And of course new players would tend to want to be the killers not the victims.
To add to the complexity of the situation, the player council is likely to support and facilitate the suicide gankers rather than the victims as the hardcore veteran players who run for and vote in the council tend to be pvpers/killers.
I predict a Trammel for Eve in 2013. Areas where players are untouchable.
Wednesday, 4 April 2012
Saturday, 31 March 2012
Eve Online: just when you think things couldn't get any lower
The Mittani's real life address has been published on the internet. Someone responded by making a threat to go round and rape his wife.
Surely it's time to call the police. Does someone have to die before people wake up to the fact that this activity is not purely virtual?
Surely it's time to call the police. Does someone have to die before people wake up to the fact that this activity is not purely virtual?
Thursday, 29 March 2012
Eve Online: tackling discrimination
In response to a comment of Spinks' I've decided to push for a change in the way Eve players use the word jew.
Responses were negative, even outraged, with some extremely hate-filled.
The thread is now nuked after it got extremely nasty. Still I received several supportive posts and 40 Likes amidst all the rage it provoked.
I hope we as a community can clear our act up. It's only a matter of time before someone reports an Eve Youtube as a racially aggravated public order offence and the police get involved.
Responses were negative, even outraged, with some extremely hate-filled.
The thread is now nuked after it got extremely nasty. Still I received several supportive posts and 40 Likes amidst all the rage it provoked.
I hope we as a community can clear our act up. It's only a matter of time before someone reports an Eve Youtube as a racially aggravated public order offence and the police get involved.
Mittani - resolution
He's received a 30 day ban from Eve which makes him ineligible for the next CSM, the one he won with a landslide 10,000 votes. He's resigned as Chair of the current CSM. He also apologised both publicly and privately to the player concerned and sent him the contents of his wallet (10 billion isk).
I think that's pretty fair. Everyone does dumb things and in this case fortunately there were no repercussions. In fact the miner is probably a little bewildered by all the sudden attention.
The only stronger action that could have been taken was a lifetime ban or calling the police. I don't think a lifetime ban is appropriate because I think CCP is partly to blame. It's a really bad idea to mix public streamed broadcasting with a culture of getting paralytically drunk. As for the police that should be a matter for the victim, if he doesn't wish to press charges the matter should end there.
I'm sure too that The Mittani has learned a lesson and I hope he continues to enjoy roleplaying a villain without letting it cross over too far into real life consquences.
Eve is a brutal pvp sandbox with no safe zones (other than staying docked up). Highsec isn't a safe zone it's a pvp is punished zone. However it does attract a lot of players who are quite happy doing their own private introverted thing. Possibly the game could do more in the New Player Experience to help people understand the nature of the universe they're entering.
As for the Mittani I'm sure he'll continue to make headlines and I imagine he'll be Chair of CSM 8 if he's still interested (and if his wife lets him).
I think that's pretty fair. Everyone does dumb things and in this case fortunately there were no repercussions. In fact the miner is probably a little bewildered by all the sudden attention.
The only stronger action that could have been taken was a lifetime ban or calling the police. I don't think a lifetime ban is appropriate because I think CCP is partly to blame. It's a really bad idea to mix public streamed broadcasting with a culture of getting paralytically drunk. As for the police that should be a matter for the victim, if he doesn't wish to press charges the matter should end there.
I'm sure too that The Mittani has learned a lesson and I hope he continues to enjoy roleplaying a villain without letting it cross over too far into real life consquences.
Eve is a brutal pvp sandbox with no safe zones (other than staying docked up). Highsec isn't a safe zone it's a pvp is punished zone. However it does attract a lot of players who are quite happy doing their own private introverted thing. Possibly the game could do more in the New Player Experience to help people understand the nature of the universe they're entering.
As for the Mittani I'm sure he'll continue to make headlines and I imagine he'll be Chair of CSM 8 if he's still interested (and if his wife lets him).
Tuesday, 27 March 2012
Muddling gaming with reality: The Hungerford Massacre
This is quite a long time ago now so possibly not many people remember it. But I think there are parallels between recent events in the Eve community and the tragic story of Michael Ryan. One day he just snapped and killed 16 people (including his mother) and wounded 15 more.
At the time I was working for a play by mail (PBM) game. It was basically the same as an online game except actions were delivered by a postman rather than a near-instantaneous internet connection.
One of the other PBM companies had had Michael Ryan as a client. It was an immersive role-playing game and he was a keen player. In his last communication with the game before he snapped he was told to go out and kill.
The people running the PBM company were never charged but they felt devastated and gave up running their business entirely. I felt very sorry for them because I very much doubt there were any clues that they could have picked up on.
Did the game influence Ryan? We'll never know. It may have.
But Ryan's actions had huge consequences for the games masters who had been innocently involved. Everyone I knew who worked in the industry felt chilled.
Even when unforeseeable if, with hindsight, you find yourself in a position to wonder whether you contributed to something evil and horrific it will change you. It's not your fault but it will change you, that's just human psychology.
It's worth remembering that the people we play our games with are real people and that their lives and safety matters. If we get caught up in the narrative flow of our games to the point we lose sight of this we risk damage not only to other people but to ourselves.
At the time I was working for a play by mail (PBM) game. It was basically the same as an online game except actions were delivered by a postman rather than a near-instantaneous internet connection.
One of the other PBM companies had had Michael Ryan as a client. It was an immersive role-playing game and he was a keen player. In his last communication with the game before he snapped he was told to go out and kill.
The people running the PBM company were never charged but they felt devastated and gave up running their business entirely. I felt very sorry for them because I very much doubt there were any clues that they could have picked up on.
Did the game influence Ryan? We'll never know. It may have.
But Ryan's actions had huge consequences for the games masters who had been innocently involved. Everyone I knew who worked in the industry felt chilled.
Even when unforeseeable if, with hindsight, you find yourself in a position to wonder whether you contributed to something evil and horrific it will change you. It's not your fault but it will change you, that's just human psychology.
It's worth remembering that the people we play our games with are real people and that their lives and safety matters. If we get caught up in the narrative flow of our games to the point we lose sight of this we risk damage not only to other people but to ourselves.
Mittani update
His wife posted this:
[He will resign]^^ Just the chair, not the CSM entirely. Though I kinda want him to resign the whole thing. (But then I hate this game and everything associated with it.)
It was interesting that she added this:
I am continually grateful to my foresight in keeping my own last name. Bad enough when he gets stalked and people threaten to kill our dog.
Eve is real. Too real.
Further updates:
The jita scams have started:
Slaatibartfast > Hi, I'm a family member of a victim of cyber bullying who is currently in hospital following a failed suicide attempt. Unfortunately we have no medical insurance and will soon be forced to pull the plug. Please donate your isk now! Furthermore
And someone convoed the suicidal player in game. He's alive and well and hadn't paid any attention to Fanfest. He was happily mining and was wondering why loads of Goons suddenly turned up to gank him.
[He will resign]^^ Just the chair, not the CSM entirely. Though I kinda want him to resign the whole thing. (But then I hate this game and everything associated with it.)
It was interesting that she added this:
I am continually grateful to my foresight in keeping my own last name. Bad enough when he gets stalked and people threaten to kill our dog.
Eve is real. Too real.
Further updates:
The jita scams have started:
Slaatibartfast > Hi, I'm a family member of a victim of cyber bullying who is currently in hospital following a failed suicide attempt. Unfortunately we have no medical insurance and will soon be forced to pull the plug. Please donate your isk now! Furthermore
And someone convoed the suicidal player in game. He's alive and well and hadn't paid any attention to Fanfest. He was happily mining and was wondering why loads of Goons suddenly turned up to gank him.
Too meta?
Eve Online is famous for blurring the line between the video game world and the real one. It has a special website for Eve history and stories called Eve is Real. It has a history of players acting in peculiar ways as when a player attempted to cut the power to a rival player's house or when a Russian billionaire spent a small fortune on game money.
But the line has rarely been blurrier than this week when at Fanfest, Goons CEO The Mittani conducted his Alliance's official policy of harassing and teasing miners from the stage of the Alliance Panel. A drunken Mittani encouraged players to laugh at this player after receiving a reaction from him that he was suicidal.
Mittani takes the mic to give his presentation at 57.30. There's a joke going around about him being a LARPer and they've given him a wizard hat and he's getting into the spirit.
His talk is an explanation of why Goons play Eve. He starts off with a slide of a prayer that apparently a player actually used in the game to save his Eve alliance. In the prayer this person recognises that Jesus Christ intervened to save his internet spaceships.
He then posts a slide of a post written in atrocious English by a player extremely angry with what he perceives as Mittani's orchestration of a nerf on titans (the largest class of spaceship in the game).
It's his third slide, from 1.01 onwards, that's rather alarming. He introduces it by saying that "we're sure he's not dead."
OK so now I'm going to guilt trip you all. I want to read a little disclaimer before I read this post. He's not dead. We think. He might actually have killed himself but ... going to lie to you all and say that we're sure that he's not dead (he might have committed suicide).
The Goons encountered this player during the Gallente Ice Interdiction. He had 23 accounts all running Mackinaws and was farming ice. Ice farming is (when people don't harass you) a laid back placid pastime. Ice collects much slower than normal mining products. You only need to move a block once every 5 minutes or so or once every 10 minutes if you fit for cargo space. This player would have had a peaceful soporific game experience until the Goons started picking on ice miners.
So they ganked him, then they charged him 1.3 billion isk to register in a phoney protection programme then they ganked him some more. He wrote a heartfelt and very upset letter than The Mittani used in his presentation.
Since my divorce all I want to do is die and I've been doing that a lot in this game.
...
Sorry for making you mad at me. I'll leave you alone now and never enter your space again. I will be off looking for a nice quiet corner somewhere.
(They told him Amarr high sec was Goon owned territory and they were punishing him for trespassing).
OK, it's kind of appalling to read in text but I think this is the end product of a chain of events.
The Goon bandwagon has rolled along on the energy and humour of its leaders. All Goon CEOs tend to be eccentric and given to ever-increasing dramatic stunts to appease their fractious membership.
The Mittani in particular has been drawn into his alter ego as no one else has. He even gave up his job in a law firm. And he's been far more successful than other Goon leaders, becoming a recognised MMO expert, writing a column at Ten Ton Hammer and giving speeches including one at GDC.
So like many performers he's to some extent had to become the part in order to perform to the hilt.
Equally the miner clearly has problems separating in-game actions from out-of-game actions. He conflates people ganking him with his wife divorcing him, he seems to just see that as what people are like.
After the event CCP launched an investigation into The Mittani's behaviour. Possible sanctions include sacking him from the CSM or banning him from the game.
The Mittani has apologised. A little disingenously I feel, claiming that you were mean because you were drunk isn't plausible when the meanness is part of a slide presentation that clearly took time and forward planning to make.
Christ.
I feel absolutely ashamed of my behavior at the Alliance Panel. It's one thing to play a villain in an online roleplaying game ... But I am not that character in real life,
He's considering resigning from the CSM.
Perhaps it's time we started seeing game behaviour as not something hermetically sealed away from real life. Particularly with generations rising who have never not known online interaction you just can't separate the online space from the "real" world. It's all real.
It's been a harsh experience for both players. I have some sympathy for both of them.
To the miner I send my very best wishes and hope you feel stronger soon. I hope and believe it's just a dark patch you're going through, things will get better.
To The Mittani it's probably time to ease back a little. You've clearly got too sucked into the Eve narrative to the point where it's taking over. Just be a player for a few months, a follower, an eminence grise.
I also think it's time the Goons as a whole did some introspection. It's been a long time since a site was set up in the 90s to "mock itself and the rest of the internet". The internet is different now, our society is different. We're no longer separate from it. Something Awful isn't a cesspool of idiocy, people there really respect each other (sometimes at the point of a banhammer). If someone posted something suicidal in the SA boards they'd get mature and considerate responses.
However on Eve Online boards Goons are still posting things like:
Anybody who threatens to commit suicide over a video game deserves to be mocked.
You'd be banned for life if you did that on SA.
If you goons really want to represent Something Awful it's time to rethink. You are every bit as much to blame as your CEO, you drive your CEOs to act that way with your relentless and voyeuristic consumption of sensation.
But the line has rarely been blurrier than this week when at Fanfest, Goons CEO The Mittani conducted his Alliance's official policy of harassing and teasing miners from the stage of the Alliance Panel. A drunken Mittani encouraged players to laugh at this player after receiving a reaction from him that he was suicidal.
Mittani takes the mic to give his presentation at 57.30. There's a joke going around about him being a LARPer and they've given him a wizard hat and he's getting into the spirit.
His talk is an explanation of why Goons play Eve. He starts off with a slide of a prayer that apparently a player actually used in the game to save his Eve alliance. In the prayer this person recognises that Jesus Christ intervened to save his internet spaceships.
He then posts a slide of a post written in atrocious English by a player extremely angry with what he perceives as Mittani's orchestration of a nerf on titans (the largest class of spaceship in the game).
It's his third slide, from 1.01 onwards, that's rather alarming. He introduces it by saying that "we're sure he's not dead."
OK so now I'm going to guilt trip you all. I want to read a little disclaimer before I read this post. He's not dead. We think. He might actually have killed himself but ... going to lie to you all and say that we're sure that he's not dead (he might have committed suicide).
The Goons encountered this player during the Gallente Ice Interdiction. He had 23 accounts all running Mackinaws and was farming ice. Ice farming is (when people don't harass you) a laid back placid pastime. Ice collects much slower than normal mining products. You only need to move a block once every 5 minutes or so or once every 10 minutes if you fit for cargo space. This player would have had a peaceful soporific game experience until the Goons started picking on ice miners.
So they ganked him, then they charged him 1.3 billion isk to register in a phoney protection programme then they ganked him some more. He wrote a heartfelt and very upset letter than The Mittani used in his presentation.
Since my divorce all I want to do is die and I've been doing that a lot in this game.
...
Sorry for making you mad at me. I'll leave you alone now and never enter your space again. I will be off looking for a nice quiet corner somewhere.
(They told him Amarr high sec was Goon owned territory and they were punishing him for trespassing).
OK, it's kind of appalling to read in text but I think this is the end product of a chain of events.
The Goon bandwagon has rolled along on the energy and humour of its leaders. All Goon CEOs tend to be eccentric and given to ever-increasing dramatic stunts to appease their fractious membership.
The Mittani in particular has been drawn into his alter ego as no one else has. He even gave up his job in a law firm. And he's been far more successful than other Goon leaders, becoming a recognised MMO expert, writing a column at Ten Ton Hammer and giving speeches including one at GDC.
So like many performers he's to some extent had to become the part in order to perform to the hilt.
Equally the miner clearly has problems separating in-game actions from out-of-game actions. He conflates people ganking him with his wife divorcing him, he seems to just see that as what people are like.
After the event CCP launched an investigation into The Mittani's behaviour. Possible sanctions include sacking him from the CSM or banning him from the game.
The Mittani has apologised. A little disingenously I feel, claiming that you were mean because you were drunk isn't plausible when the meanness is part of a slide presentation that clearly took time and forward planning to make.
Christ.
I feel absolutely ashamed of my behavior at the Alliance Panel. It's one thing to play a villain in an online roleplaying game ... But I am not that character in real life,
He's considering resigning from the CSM.
Perhaps it's time we started seeing game behaviour as not something hermetically sealed away from real life. Particularly with generations rising who have never not known online interaction you just can't separate the online space from the "real" world. It's all real.
It's been a harsh experience for both players. I have some sympathy for both of them.
To the miner I send my very best wishes and hope you feel stronger soon. I hope and believe it's just a dark patch you're going through, things will get better.
To The Mittani it's probably time to ease back a little. You've clearly got too sucked into the Eve narrative to the point where it's taking over. Just be a player for a few months, a follower, an eminence grise.
I also think it's time the Goons as a whole did some introspection. It's been a long time since a site was set up in the 90s to "mock itself and the rest of the internet". The internet is different now, our society is different. We're no longer separate from it. Something Awful isn't a cesspool of idiocy, people there really respect each other (sometimes at the point of a banhammer). If someone posted something suicidal in the SA boards they'd get mature and considerate responses.
However on Eve Online boards Goons are still posting things like:
Anybody who threatens to commit suicide over a video game deserves to be mocked.
You'd be banned for life if you did that on SA.
If you goons really want to represent Something Awful it's time to rethink. You are every bit as much to blame as your CEO, you drive your CEOs to act that way with your relentless and voyeuristic consumption of sensation.
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