EVE General Discussion

Thank you :)

Also, what I meant was really what you are saying, too, I think: You cannot, and should not have to, expect that people are affected this much by things in a mere game.
And if you do not expect it, then it can't really be your goal either, right?

It's not neccessarily becoming upset that you've lost a space ship or pixels.

It's the realization that there are people who's goal it is to extract happiness by treating you poorly.

I haven't encountered any EVE griefing yet, but having come from a pretty hardcore game it'll be ridiculously hard for someone to make an impact on me. When I do encounter someone trying to upset me, I wont necessarily be "mad" that he's doing bad things to me. More like, I'll be "sad" that there are people like him who exist going through life trying to make others "mad".

I must say, I love the work you've put into that avatar. It looks incredibly well posed. I was going to suggest entering EVE-Portraits, but I've been gone too long ... it is no more.

As to what you say, I remember the incident a year or two ago between a maniacal miner and the leader of a massive alliance. One that ended with the burning of Jita and a veritable firestorm across the forums. It was an interesting cross-over.

I think there is one further element to EVE, that though we all know it and accept it, but perhaos have taken so for granted that we forget just how much it delineates this game from other MMORPGs, and how central it is to some of the issues raised here.

That is that in EVE there is still the inestimably valuable quality, that stuff actually can and does get perma-destroyed.
Whether it does, is a result of the interbalance of your own ingame behavior vs that ot others.
It quadrstically deepens the nature of player interaction in the game on a fundamental level that simply does not exist in other games.

While its easy to simply write that off glibly, especially from abstracted "carebear"perception as an annoyance and an element of the game some would rather simply have removed, it is axtually central to what makes EVE so engaging and vicarious.

If there was no such potential for other players to utterly grief, rob and kill the hell out of your characters, we wouldnt be having this disxussion at all, and infact many of us probably wouldnt even be here playing this game anymore.

Consider if everyone conducted themselves ingame by the exact same moral behavior they apply to themselves outside of game.
Its a sobering thought, and what drives to the core of this discussion. Hoe many of us really ARE that moral, absolutely, even out ofthe game? And again, how is it that we reconcile that difference?

My argument on that, is we all apply a degree of dehumanisation to each other. We dont really perceive each other as "real", nor really attribute each other the same consideration, dignity and respect we would if, for example all of us where REALLY capsuleers if this virtual universe was somehow to become real. We regard each other as abstractions, caricatures of people, reduced to stereotypes. And guess what else, we also do that to ourselves in terms of regarding our own ingame behavior.

This reduction of others, and ourselves, to something virtual, this literal "dehumanisation" is a reciprocal effect.
And the resultant moral laxity is in many ways none too unfamiliar to the results of other examples of dehumanisation.
When you regard other peoplemas less than human, when you regard them as anything less than entirely humnanand all that implies, conduct otherwise unthinkable towards them (and conduct in violation of ones own human dignity) suddenly becomes emminently possible.

I suppose there is a reciprocal and internal logic to that. At the same timemas we step outside of our conventional and mundae reality into the internal virtual reality od the game, as we are no longer entirely ourselves as we are in this world and limited by its constraints, when we leave that frame of context at the login screen and step into our Capsules, into a world of a different context, we comensurately also leave our frame of context for regarding other people, at that same point. As we become a virtual abstraction as embodied in the game, so does everyone else also become a virtual abstraction to us, in the game.

Fascinating, all of this. The potential of virtual realities, and what those do to the human psyche in its attempts to cope with an alternative context of reality.

We arent, biologicaly speaking "built" for this. Our communication has evolves for the overwhelming majority of our existance to be facilitated in person, with body language queues, volume and tone of vocal expression, possibly pheremones as well. The musculature of our faces is extremely complex and has one derived purpose, to facilitate communicarion with other humans. We have an immensly complex series of autonomic reactions which have no purpose except communication of emotional state, such as blushing or crying. Arguably, our whole and essential to co-existance capacity for empathy, also hinges on physical proximity. None of that is present in the communication we engage in, virtually, online.

All of of this, even this written language, is abstract. All of this, is essentially, inhuman. Even this post younare reading, does not actually exist except as a derived representation. Not a single letter here is physically tangeable. Even your understanding of what Im saying, is imaginary and exists only in the contextnof your own internalminterpretation of what I am attempting ro express, virtually, and abstractly, to you.

Yes, we're all capable. I agree. The Execution is demonstrated by executing the choice you made to lie and steal from other people in eve.

The execution is the same, in game and out of game.

I sit at my computer and decide to lie and steal from someone is exactly the same as standing in the middle of a shopping complex and deciding I want to lie and steal from someone.

Where you are when you choose to lie and steal doesn't matter, it's the choice that does.

Yea, but the objective of the game isn't neccessarily to capture others pieces. It's an option, but no where is it stated that doing so is a requirement. In fact, in this game of pieces, you can choose to never try to capture another person's piece. Playing the game in that fashion makes you a good person in the fact that at least youdon't try to ruin others games by capturing their pieces. Choosing to capture others pieces, since it is not a requirement of the game, means that you're the type of person who make the choice to capture others pieces.

I don't wish to accidentally assume something you did not mean to imply.

May you elaborate?

Yes but how is the person blowing up the pixels supposed to know what effect their actions in game will have on that person out of game?

The game is about shooting pixels.

Victory is often decided by surprise. A ganker can't exactly ask, "Hey if I blow your **** up are you going to get horribly upset in real life?"

No one wants their **** blown up but it is part of the game. Even the highsec ganker gets their **** blown up. But assuming that everyone should ask before blowing **** up in a game about blowing **** up is silly.

They don't know. They don't know for certain how people in IRL will react either.
I'm not sure why you bring this up though. Can you specify what point you are raising with this?


I agree, but again, I'm not sure why you raise this point, or what your point really is.

Who is assuming you should ask people if they mind you blowing up their **** before doing so?



Just my 2 cents, but stealing is the act of willfully taking from another person their property which does not rightfully (in whichever form) belong to you. I think you are mixing terms here. Are you trying to argue that it is not stealing if the person from whom you take it does not think of you as a thief for taking it from them? Cos if so, that makes no sense. That would just mean they dont care if you steal from them. Doesn't make it any less of theft, though.