EVE General Discussion

It depends more on the goon, than it does anything else. Just like you can't all the people living in a single city with the same brush, just because they all come from the same province, you can't paint all Goons in the same light. Some are decent fellows and ladies, some are rotten to the core, most you probably don't even realize are Goons unless you randomly check peoples' bios.

You sound pissed. I'm sorry to hear that a little bit of ignorance has become a jab in the chest for you. I will now go back to my hole and leave your little place of heaven.

In all seriousness, you should probably know that not everyone bothers(d) to watch the alliance panel or dig through years of posts.

"I've been trying to figure out why I have this mental alignment to hate the Goons."



From (a translation of) Aesop's Fables:

The Wolf And The Lamb

WOLF, meeting with a Lamb astray from the fold, resolved not to lay violent hands on him, but to find some plea to justify to the Lamb the Wolf's right to eat him. He thus addressed him: "Sirrah, last year you grossly insulted me." "Indeed," bleated the Lamb in a mournful tone of voice, "I was not then born." Then said the Wolf, "You feed in my pasture." "No, good sir," replied the Lamb, "I have not yet tasted grass." Again said the Wolf, "You drink of my well." "No," exclaimed the Lamb, "I never yet drank water, for as yet my mother's milk is both food and drink to me." Upon which the Wolf seized him and ate him up, saying, "Well! I won't remain supperless, even though you refute every one of my imputations." The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny.


Hope this answers your question.

(I can't believe parents don't read these to their kids)

If you want to understand the success and consequential fear the uninitiated have for goons, you need to understand that their leadership is more hard-working and autistic than any other. The only reason they're able to treat New Eden as their personal prison shower is because those selfless director level goons lay down the vast majority of their social life as a perfect offering to the greater goon.

Not really, we just have a lot of directors

Since I only have access to newbseye view I will offer that.

When you enter the game if you are paying attention you notice the Goon presence. I have played a lot of games that Goons are apparently in and they have never come to my attention in the way they did in EVE. So I started researching in the spirit of 'what the hell is that'? I read all the articles referenced here. I read all the criticisms and accounts of drama posted elsewhere.

The first thing I encountered was some of the assertions made in this thread about the us/them elitism and pubbie hate. Related to that was the phenomena of a community of players that came in tact, more or less, into a game with something about this dynamic already present. Gamers often seek to create this in games anyway. The primary distinction being a way of playing the game and efficacy associated with that play style, valued in different ways. It creates a kind of game within the game for them. The rest of game play is interacted with through this. Organizational skill and understanding for the mechanics of some sort are often the distinguishing factors, whether it is some elite team in fps, guild in themepark, etc. What is valued and how that is done varies greatly. The reasons for the 'other' being the ignorant, heathenistic, baby eating villains also vary greatly.

I got interested in the coming from SA part and started reading SA. I am a stupid old dude and parts of the culture are simply impenetrable to me. It is a culture however. I am now regularly active in about 5 threads and have read many others many of which contain a vast array of information and arguments on subjects directly pertinent to my work and the condition of the planet. Unless argument from authority and ad hominem, etc. are artfully and amusingly done, there is very little tolerance for these sorts of things. The attention span is longer than 15 minutes. People read entire books, articles and book length threads in order to participate in a conversation. I am now participating there as a result of EVE in ways that have so far been very useful to me, rather than participaning in EVE as a result of SA in a way that is useful here.

The EVE thread itself is not markedly different form a game thread you would find anywhere, from a self described group of players playing a game some specific way. They talk about mechanics of all the different parts of their game play, granted at a fairly superficial level given that it is pretty public. That private public split is not uncommon for any such group of players. Much of it is about people wanting to be Goons and variously getting advice, told to go away, various forms of hazing, etc.

Corey- your argument seems flawed to me. Goons are in fact part of the game. Is the game about inclusion, as you say? I don't know if it is about inclusion or not, but your argument is off. What it seems like is you just don't like Goons or the way they play the game. That is a different matter and completely your perogative. They create a particular boundary in the game that gives it meaning for them in various ways. So do you. In fact, Goons as other constitute part of your boundary condition n almost exactly the same way the 'pubbies' constitute an asserted boundary condition for Goons.

I also notice that they seem to have the most organized, emergent form of introducing new players to the game in the game. It seems better than CCPs, though Goonlets apparently use that too.

Personally I don't have much interest in joining, but this is because I am a Marxist: "I don't want to belong to any club that would accept people like me as a member". Groucho Marx telegram to the Friars Club.

Goons like to dig, and sometimes it works and they strike gold, and other times they hit a mound of scorpions and get all stung and run back home to dress their wounds. I suppose they are no different than any other alliance, bad apples and not so bad apples, but have not noticed to many good apples in goons as of late.

everyone who doesn't think they're a part is merely a pawn or target practice in the game of space thrones

Seems to me that a lot of the hate is like sour grapes?

Goons are the smug cool kids clique, no you can't sit at their lunch table. Unless you give them all your lunch money, then they will push you off the bench into the mud and laugh at you.

Which is pretty funny, really.

I just try to stay out of their way.

The OP seemed to be asking what the animosity towards Goons was all about. My post was a look at them through the lens of uproar and discontent that leads towards negative feelings for them.

The really interesting thing is the reaction to that opinion; they seem very unhappy and offended.