EVE General Discussion

I read the "Mittens and the Magic Cirle" blog, and it got me thinking ( http://www.johncartermcknight.com/blog/?p=1720 ).

This is the confusion between whether EVE as a game is played exclusively when you are logged in, or whether the game goes on outside of the magic cirle, 24/7, in real-world time and space. This is abundantly clear, because we have events like Fanfest, we have vegas meetups, I have beers with corpmates and alliance mates, and randoms who see me in an EVE shirt at the mall will talk to me for 30 minutes, and then I'll gank him in game and we'll have a laugh.

TheMittani, himself, has blogged that he plays the metagame of EVE more than the online game of EVE. As an Alliance head, exclusive of the CSM metagaming (eg, titan nerfs?), his responsibility and role in the organisation, and how he actually plays the game, is not to orbit and press F1, but to organise, socially engineer, politic and deal. The difference between Mittens and, eg, my Alliance heads on this matter is incredibly stark, and why I believe Mittens plays the higher-level game in a Machiavellian way....and why my Alliance has real problems its leaders will never overcome.

Perhaps this is why so many people despise Mittens; he wins without logging in.

It is clear that, especially as CCP broadens the accessibility of EVE, spreads Dust514 to consoles, and supports widgets and improved forum functionality on all manner of devices, people use Skype SMS alerting services, gmail SMS services and the like to send automated alerts to cellphones of POS attacks; the game get played as much when you are offline as online. The magic cirle is spreading, and it isn't so easy to pick when you are in-game or out

That said, part of what I find so great about EVE is that you can do whatever you want, act in whatever morally ambiguous way you want in game and walk away and be an honest, law-abiding citizen who doesn't cross the road against the lights. EVE has a very, very strong boundary to the magic cirle, which allows the most callous, even genocidal and murderous of acts to occur inside, and normal life to go outside, mostly unaffected

But exceptions happen, and we must be prepared to deal with these exceptions in an appropriate manner. There are several ways the in-game actions can spill over into out-of-game consequences which are negative;

For instance, Sudden Buggery ran an infiltration and AWOXing campaign against Greywolves corporaion. I was online with a guy on teamspeak who was playing EVE while long-haul trucking via IPhone connectivity. He wasn't just texting while driving, he was gorram mining in a hulk while driving. And so as I sat there, talking with this redneck about *******, ready to lock his hulk up in my "mining execquror" I thought to myself....what the crap happens if I AWOX his hulk and he crashes?

Secondly, there are limits to what I feel is an acceptable scam. We had a member who did, and still attempts, to scam people via getting hisec carebears to join corps, contract over expensive faction battleships or T3's for "transort to nullsec" then steals them. One way he does this is to get "suicide ganked". One guy, he fleeced for 1.5B ISK, and then the guy says "It's OK, I'll just go borrow my dad's credit card and buy another couple of PLEX and buy a new Tengu".

Now, that was where I drew the line. Yes, it's the victim's naivete, stupidity and credulity which lost him a Tengu and (I think) Navy Raven. Fair cop of the sausage. But, within the magic cirle, we can at least pretend that he made that ISK in-game and even though the nominal cost of the items at the time was US$120, one can steal them with a fig leaf of decency and log off saying "It's just a game.

But, to my mind, when you reasonably know your actions in-game are affecting someone out-of-game, especially when it is financial, physical or emotional costs, then that is where you should draw the line. Steal his ships once, you scammed a dude in a game, and that's great. But allow him to spend money he doesn't have so you can steal his ships in a game twice? THat's douchebaggery, and incidentally, I hound the guy who did this to this day, 6 months later, because he couldn't see the fine distinction between the two acts. Mostly, because he's an immature teenager who hasn't worked a day in his life and doesn't have a clue what $120 really means

Anyway, to sum up.

CCP is obviously going to have to consider the increasingly entangled 'magic circle' of EVE in-game and EVE IRL, and have a nuanced and thoughtful approach. EVE has, within its magic circle, a fabulous theatre for real sandbox, emergent gameplay, and a game played out as much on Teamspeak, on Twitter, on forums and in pubs and hotels as it is logged-in. The fact you can murder hulks in game and kiss your wife afterwards is the pinnacle of maintaining a magic cirle. I believe 99% of people would be able to get ganked by someone, scammed or suicided and have a beer with the perpetrator because it is a game. But it is also a game which can be played while logged off, for good or bad, and some people do take it too seriously, or do let if affect their lives and spouses and work

The recent example, with TheMittani, is not the sum of all these issues as I have shown. But none of this is CCP's fault, but sadly, it is their responsibility to ensure that YOU, the player, play responsibly - including playing the metagame. To me, when I know that something I have done in-game has affected someone out of game, I redress it, even to the tune of refunding stolen ships, with my own ISK, and sending the guy a mail.

Fin.

I would say that this is not an example of your friend not knowing where the line was - it's an example of the scammed person not knowing where the line was. Consider that the scammed person is likely to exhibit this behavior regardless of whether or not he lost the ISK to a scam, to titan PVP, or to a bad market investment. From a purely cold blooded point of view, even though I feel really bad every time I run across one of these people, its better that they spend that ISK on me than on someone else. Ultimately I don't view this as much different than someone who's addicted to any expensive habit - from cigarettes to alcohol to hard drugs. They are responsible for their own health and finances.

Hopefully the hard lessons that come from spending too much on any particular habit drive home hard enough to curtail such behavior in the future. And frankly, if someone like that is scammed entirely out of Eve it will probably turn out better for them in the future.



I think I covered this well enough in my blog post that I'm simply going to refer to it. We can discuss it here or there - your choice.

-Liang

That was not really a useful contribution to the thread.

-Liang

I suppose if all you're trying to do is provide context for why to have such a thread in the first place... ok?

-Liang

Wasn't trying to say you did. :)

-Liang

As far as the baser arguments went, he is correct in concluding tribalism blinds most of us as players to seeing the social lines as we cross them. Hence most EVE players without a metagaming agenda didn't bat an eyelash over Mittani's drunken gaff. On the other hand, you appropriately pointed out he was standing atop a great big pile of assumptions claiming that EVE was real and none of us can distinguish between the ruleset change in either reality.

Most psychologists are quite frank on the issue of whether or not people get off on the suffering of others and indeed the average person does to some degree or another. The gulf between in-game ganker and full-on sociopath, however is obviously extreme. You can't deny that there is no schadenfreude involved and no Id-service being done when we log in to massacre the space pixels of some other unfortunate player, especially not when we do it in the hopes of eliciting an authentically angry response. In the end though, the practice is simply an extension of trolling, and the ancient art of practical jokes.

We are genuinely amused by this game world and it's lack of a rigid set of rules, but much like the practical joker is an unlikely criminal, we have to accept that for the unfamiliar and uninitiated the practice of putting someone's hand in a glass of water while they sleep is going to be viewed as cruel and unnecessary by anyone attempting to couch morality in harmonious "societal," terms. Extrapolating the point, ie. "what if everyone did this?" Will always lend academics like Carter to completely miss the point (cheap amusement) and zero in on a perceived defect in this "tribe."

I'm also rather amused that he appears supportive of actual hackers who's griefing absolutely extends into "real life," but fears the moral decay brought on by similar activity in a virtual environment. Were there any hypocrisies worth harping on, that would have been the lynch pin for me.

tl;dr: We really are bastards who want to hurt other people's feelings, but he really offers nothing to support any of his further extrapolations and ends up making himself look absolutely foolish and not just a little bit mad.

That blame the victim stuff coming from a lot of the Mittens supporters is what worries me.

And your right no one cared until that Q&A bit. But the mittens backers keep ignoring that on purpose it seems.

Haha which one of you magnificent ******* was doing this in Obstergo?

What? Did you even read it? I did apply the same standard. Quoting my blog:




Which... is what I said.

-Liang

OfBalance, Trinkets - do you guys mind if I C/P your posts to responses to the blog article?

-Liang