Assembly Hall

With the recent uproar over the Alliance Panel's drunken escapades this year at Fanfest, I feel this is an opportune time to address the issue of in-game conduct and it's business

Personally, I found much of the panel Painful (in a train-wrecky way), mostly with TEST's leader's presentation. To be perfectly honest, I glazed right over Mitten's comments about the mackinaw miner, and didn't think much of it. If you've been on the internet a while, this kind of language is common and strewn throughout the great web; and anyone with an ounce of sense can see it for what it is -- childish, thoughtless (literally, without malicious undertone) 'insults' constructed by those who cannot, or will not, apply more than a few braincells to it's building

I will be frank with my bias -- I am a member of a CFC Alliance, and I happen to like Mittens. Now that that's out of the way, that kind of language is to be expected within EVE Online. It's just the nature of online gaming, and anyone with more than a few hours of experience playing online knows this. The internet is full of these kind of folk, and I'd venture to say that many of them don't, in their heart of hearts, mean anything of what they say

While the whole 'Kill Yourself' thing is considered by many jurisdictions as Cyber Bullying, many of you know just how dangerous that line of thinking really is. There is a line that continues to blur every day regarding what is Cyber Bullying. The very name of it belies it's existence as a construct of those who just can't let something go. They whine about words posted at their username, take it seriously, post youtube videos about it complaining about how much it hurt them, and about how it's sent them into a spiraling depression

These things never used to be an issue, and to borrow a phrase from modern gaming, the internet, unfortunately, has been casualized. It is now the casual user that everyone must cater for, censor for, and coddle. This is abhorrent to me, especially within EVE's context. The internet, this vast network of not only linked machines, but linked people, is easily the most important thing Humanity has ever created. We are able to share literally everything and anything. A vital part of this is bigotry, stupidity, and their ilk

We must know these things, see them, and attempt to understand them if we are ever to hope to remove them completely. Without knowledge, through censorship of this kind of madness, we bury our heads in the sand and pretend they don't exist. Growing up, as I am sure many of EVE's playerbase had, I was 'Bullied', made fun of, and occassionally assaulted. What did I do about these things? I LEARNED HOW TO DEAL WITH THEM and I became a better person as a result. I know how to deal with these kind of people, and how to communicate with them. Humans are mean, vicious creatures, but such labels are so heavily contextually based and subjective that there's no way to draw a clear line in the sand and sa

--------------------------------------------<---Do not cross this. It is indecent and offensive

CCP has created a sandbox; in my opinion, the most sophisticated of the bunch. We are allowed to control our own space, our own internet spaceship destinies. We came for fun, we stayed for the serious bidness. That said, the very character of the sandbox is at stake when political correctness gets involved.

That said, and wall of text aside, There needs to be an addendum to the current, or a completely separate ToS acknowledging the bigotry, the greasy, and the extremely harsh nature of EVE. Not to quell it, not to condone it, but to make sure that when someone gets involved, they aren't going to cry about it later and ruin this great experiment of EVE. It is a fundamental human right to speak one's mind, regardless of what that speech is. I hate to say it, but the vast majority of those who cry foul at things that offend them, especially when things aren't going their way, need to 'harden the **** up' and dealwithit

I refuse to let people who cannot disconnect themselves from the internet ruin this sandbox
I refuse to make this game so serious that we're worried about what we say or do
I refuse to condone any action that would somehow distort humanities true colours, because in doing so, you refuse parts of yourself

I simply refuse to do these things; and I would hope that the CSM, and their Chairman, would see it the same way, regardless of what they've said, done, or feel on the matter.

And here I was thikning this was yet an another rant about mittens remarks.

Seems like hes echoing my thoughts.


That being...the lines between greifing and verbal assaults/remarks are starting to blur a little to much.




Just how far is too far is the question being asked....


Supported.

I think the line needs to be between words and actions. If the Goons has followed through and the player actually received hundreds or thousands of mails suggesting he end his life, something would DEFINITELY need to be done. Even if the player doesn't take that seriously, coordinated harassment isn't allowed in real life and isn't something CCP should allow to happen to paying customers.

So a kid was mining one day, got ganked, and in a fit of rage and frustration let all his real-life drama spill over into the game world and said something about offing himself in a letter to Mittens (or some other goon who forwarded it). Mittens shared that and everyone had a good laugh. So far, no harm is done. But *IF* that kid had found himself suddenly under a barrage of stupidity...that's different. That's threatening CCP's bottom line. The more of that he gets, the more likely he is to quit Eve, possibly taking friends with him and certainly telling everyone he knows that the community is terrible. We need to be above that sort of behavior.

Remember guys, CCP is running a business. It's in their interest to protect their subscribers. Mittens endangered their subscription rate with his behavior, and that's something they have to consider. Nevermind the morality of it, Eve has never been big on morality.

Well said and very relevant to alot of situations we see in Eve. There should be a definitive line that you do not cross.

So it was the mittani who did it, and not every other alliance panel member save eve uni, (I remember, singing, murder, ransoming, stealing and failcascade graphs) did you even watch the whole thing. Or did you just read it from a 3ed party who hatted mittani long before he was on the csm.

i don't hate the guy, i just wish he'd not done it so publicly, if you go to other forums on MMO's etc, you find people who think Eve is nothing more than a spreadsheet game, or that its new player unfriendly, persuading them that this isnt true is hard enough, without people pointing the finger for other things, and the trouble is, is that no matter how well the others do, or how many things he has done that have improved things, which i agree with btw, the bad things always seem to take center stage over anything good that is ever achieved, the guy is effectively an Eve 'celebrity' if anyone else had done that it wouldnt have mattered, probably wouldnt even have been noticed.

I just love it when people obsess over mittens and completely miss the main point of the thread acting like a bunch of damned idiots.

LEARN TO READ PEOPLE...sheesh.

While I think it's pathetic that the Mittani is being made into a poster boy for the ugly side of Eve even after he realized that he crossed a line and has made amends, the situation begs the question as to why so many players in eve feel the need to be such complete asses? It's an internet space ship game. When did it become "Who can be the bigger ******* in space?" The apparent urge to one up each other in the free use of any racial and or sexual slur imaginable, the stupidly immature "harvesting of tears," does little to dispel the notion that Eve is nothing more than an online reservation for the chronically badly behaved. What is the point? As eve players we seem to be making up for bad game design with even worse manners. At the end of the day something is wrong when the scoreboard is populated by how miserable you can make another human being from behind the anonymity of an online game avatar. And as long as that culture dominates Eve will never be anything but a fringe galaxy with some pretty nebulae.


That having been said I hope the Goons and others keep up all their nefarious content creation, maybe they can just do it with a bit less crudeness.

I'm off to get my marshmallows I hear Jita is going to burn :)

Support OP

CCP, please don't let immature children ruin this game. If they can't handle a true sandbox with truly free and open interaction with other people, they should leave.

That's the whole point, isn't it? To make an open environment where player interactions make the world? Let us make our world.

Quoting myself from elsewhere a little:

A sandbox means you can play in it anyway you like and use the toys provided any way you like: there is no one way to use any particular toy or a predefined plot you have to follow. If you start to call other kids names and throw sand in their eyes, though, a kindergarten teacher comes and picks you up and puts you on the timeout bench, and no amount of screaming about how it was your sand and your free play time will not save you.

I think the line needs to be made very clear like this, in some newbie information bit: "You can do anything in the game except things that CCP explicitly forbids as exploits. If another player makes your ship explode, there is no party but other players you can complain to. You can be denied undock access, forced out of systems, etc. However, you are not allowed to say anything. Ridiculing other players, using racist/sexist/homopohic slurs, referring in a derisive manner to someone's real life situation or details, can get you banned. Please petition it if someone behaves towards you in a way you find unacceptable or if you believe someone is using a mechanic that counts as exploit. A CCP employee will determine if the behavior was out of line. Note that you will not be notified of the outcome, but that will remain between CCP and the player you reported."

PS. for the record, I am female in RL. I don't think this issue has much to do with genger. Having spoken to people whose OOC genger I know, there's both kinds in all groups of opinion (it's fine as it is, limit words but not actions, pls maek me WoW in space). Whatever you do, please for the LOVE OF GODS do not make changes in order to "appeal to more women" or "make the game more welcome to women". The last thing female gamers want is pink ponies and adolescents behaving in a phony way because they think women are incapable of understand terms like HTFU or DPS.