EVE General Discussion

I am a member of somethingaweful.com but I have never been a member of any goon organization in eve.

Thank you I am glad you were able to get through my malformed attempt.



More pictures. Noted.



The first two pages contain an introduction to a couple of models that could not be considered opinion really, or at least not mine. After that your on your own. If you have some risk aversion to the possibility of wasting any time, I feel you have made a wise decision and glad you were able to do so.



I like this answer to the question. One if the simple ways people initially approach the question about freedom is to ask about 'freedom from' and 'freedom to'.

Two of the earlier responses and this have me thinking about it in EVE and in general. At some point we encounter, suddenly often, the relative lack of structure in EVE. We are not told what to do, how to do it or even anything about why. I design and implement process that does something very similar to this.

BOOM! We are left there with no structure and only our own 'mental models', creativity and relationship to 'freedom' within the bounds of the game as we understand it... And we may not understand it all! For many people this may be one of the first times this has happened in such an explicit formalized way, certainly might be in their experience as a a gamer. Think about the structure of our educational experience. It is a wonderful thing about the game, in my opinion.

In the delivery of processes intended to do almost exactly this same thing, in the moment of 'What should I (we) do?', personally I almost never say 'Do what you want?' I might ask, 'How would you tell what you want?' How would you go about answering that question? What resources do you need? Aside from the same sort of deep structure that EVE provides, no structure is provided. It is up to the participant to generate all of that. The participant must not only address the question for themselves, they must also learn how to address the question and then how to generate structure consistent with manifesting such answers. This is a LOT to ask all at once for someone who is not used to this, and many of us are not used to it. To to do this it also necessary for me to be in this process myself, over and over.

It can and often does stimulate a kind of crisis to which we respond in all sorts of different ways. It is a kind of emancipatory process, or at least the possibility of that, in the face of massive institutional structures to which we have become habituated in order to simply function. It is a sudden confrontation with all of our own and inherited models about this. These exist, but we also carry them around in our heads. EVE in general and some of these player generated narratives makes this explicit. Some people love this, some people hate it and everything in between, but something explicit almost always happens in this invitation to participate in one's own life. We see this in game in relationship to the types of narratives I have been exploring, but it is also present in relationship to the game as a whole. In the process many people go through really hating me (probably not hard for you to imagine)... People get mad at 'EVE' in the process and post about that. People try to find someone else who will provide them structure or ways to enter into pre-existing structure to solve this, etc., etc.

One of the basic things is that the process often involves is story telling and narrative generation. So one way to consider the answer 'What do I do?' is to ask about story telling (narrative) and how that happens or is happening. EVE is this amazing container for generating both private and participatory stories. It is amazing really. That does not mean everyone does that or even wants to. Some people really might want something that requires almost nothing from them. EVE is also interesting because it puts people across this spectrum fully in contact with one another.

Personally I love this process and the reoccurring question, story telling and generation and this is why I am loving EVE... Even as a complete incompetent. I also love learning about this process and how we are as human beings in it.

I realize making, or attempting to make all this explicit, unpacking the stories and exploring, effectively or not, the dynamics that lead to them can just be un-fun for many people. For me, these things are already informing things in the game that are very, very amusing to me to do and take no SP, understanding of mechanics and such to accomplish. I am also enjoying the process of learning, or failing to learn the dynamics.

The density of complicated words and academic posturing paced into this one thread have nearly popped my brain.

(@_@)

I confess that I am confused by the TLA BFA. Perhaps because I am gerontologically challenged with regard to TLA's, FLA's and symbolized gestures I confess that I had to resort to the Urban Dictionary for reference. Though many, many of the definitions I found are applicable, I still could not make sense of it. So I decided to create what it must mean. I decided it must mean Bulls*** Finding Apparatus, though the use of the word 'sense' then seems redundant and 'tingling' implies that the apparatus in question is organic in nature.

I am also still chewing on the two or three longer posts that directly engage the question and really trying to understand the implication in terms of practice, narrative, player experience and result. If I were not engaged in that in a way that had the immediate possibility of altering my own play and practice my own BFA would be tingling.