EVE Information Portal

I like Mittens but I can see why they had to do this, especially with the story hitting the intertube press. Besides, he was being an ass.

It's just a shame that the panel is going to get changed, maybe neutered, simply because Mittens had to jump over the line to fuel his 'I'm a space masochist look at me look at me' ego.

Ah well, someone was always going to end up as That Guy. As for Jita... well, the place has needed clearing out for a while now.

All powerpoint slides for the presentation were run by a CCP employee to make sure no obvious nudity or sexually explicit content was present.


Even though this panel was billed as unfiltered by CCP, we expect public presentations to be courteous and professional towards others. ~ CCP Manifest and CCP Navigator


Obviously you guys dropped the ball big time. How can publicly boasting about causing sorrow and humiliation to others in-game be considered as courteous and professional towards others?

Anyone watching the video can see that the first 3 Alliance Ceo's conducted themselves in a professional manner and did the normal presentation as expected. They stated their Alliance history, political stance and goals mixed in with some humor. Very informative and fun.

The 4th presenter - No Holes Barred Alliance CEO - strayed away from the normal format even though he conducted himself in a professional manner. All I can remember about his presentation is posting players names singing their National Anthem for ransom. The posting of their names should not have been allowed. In fact, I view his whole presentation as nothing more than an obvious griefer boasting about humiliating others.

The last 3 Alliance CEO's were definitely in party mode and didn't give a crap about what anyone else thought. That right there should have sounded warning bells with the CCP employee overlooking the panel.

The 5th presenter - Test Alliance CEO - was definitely inebriated and should not have been allowed to participate. After viewing the video 3 times I still can't remember anything else about his presentation other than him constantly spouting foul language and generally being obnoxious.

The 6th presenter - Dirt Nap Squad Alliance CEO - was able to maintain a semi professional appearance and stayed within the normal format for the presentation even though he was in party mode.

The 7th presenter - Goonswarm Alliance CEO - definitely strayed from the normal presentation and reveled in displaying the sorrow he has caused others in-game. He was also in party mode but he wasn't inebriated like Test Alliance CEO. I view his whole presentation as offensive, not only due to the mocking of the various personal mail messages received, but also due to his unprofessional manner displayed by an arrogant and confrontational demeanor with constant use of vulgar language.

All in all I think CCP bears a portion of the blame for allowing this fiasco to happen. As a paying customer and community member of Eve Online, I am appalled and disappointed that CCP allows and encourages this type of behavior at an Official company function. I feel this panel gave the whole world the wrong impression about CCP, Eve Online and it's player base. Basically after viewing that video, it looks like this game is nothing more than an Internet MMO created specifically for players to grief others anyway possible.

I hope you take one simple consideration in to account when thinking about future fanfests and how this affects them. Make the needs and wants of the people who attend them a primary consederation. Don't ruin fanfest in order to cater to people who don't attend or just watch the stream. If you have to choose between the attendees and us, choose the attendees and stream only shows and events where your staff and products are in the spotlight and you have a tight control on the event. Show the more fan/party oriented events later, after you had time to screen them, or not at all.

The fanfest is there for you to show off your products and for your fans to party and get to meet the devs and other players. You can achieve both without live streaming every drunken party/event to the public. The important thing is that the people who went there can have fun in a relaxed and easygoing atmosphere.

Pretty much this. The point where this "grief for free" selling line fails is once you warn wannabe players that they are not provided any meaningful way to hand it back to the offender... so it's actually YOU will be griefed for free (and then laughed at). You lost your ship, your clone, your implants... all you can do is make him lose a ship (he got a hundred more in his corp hangar) and his implants (was a JC anyway), and that being very lucky and supposing they misjudged your ability to avenge your own death. Which rarely is the case; they targetted you precisely because you were hepless and can't bite back.

This is an outdated mindset; when EVE was small and young, griefing should be empowered to become a selling line, but as griefing goes on, telling your customers that they lost hundreds of dollars in stuff and must beat it because you as a company will not provide them the means to retaliate is bad policy. Because they will not give you nor anybody else another chance to lose stuff; they will just go to a place where their investments are safer or can be protected in some way.

EVE as a PvP game has been for long a dream African hunting ground where hunters are inmune to their preys; and thus EVE has developed a race of hunters who love shooting RPGs at sleepy zebras chained to a tree.

Maybe it's time to either loose some buffalos (the second deadliest mammal in Africa; the first one are hypos), or just allow the zebras to hire a hitman to go after the hunters.

Maybe then the next fanfests will have some interesting stories... on how "X" went from being wardecced to spend a dozen PLExes in bounties to pay for the obliteration of the corporation that messed with him, or how "Y" explain the so-sad-story of how a dishonored ransom ended up with his ass being shot everytime, everywhere, by a vengeful victim's hired guns.

Time to shamelessly plug some EVE: Retaliation

Fanfest is for players (fans) of eve online. Who gives a **** what other people think as long as the players are having fun. There was no outrage at the alliance panel. Everyone just clapped and moved on to find the next presentation / roundtable they were interested in.

Only days later when the "gaming" press took to running stories saying: "YOU SHOULD BE OUTRAGED", did CCP take notice. And that is goddamn lame. Marketing eve online as a unique "sandbox" game and CCP as a brave company who does its own thing, yet when there is bad press, they bow to mainstream demand and political correctness.

QFT

Look at the video again, you can hear people in the audience telling him to shut up. You can also see people leaving instead of staying to ask questions. They definitely didn't want to watch any more of their obvious display of arrogant drunken behavior. Anyway, I'm a player and a fan of Eve Online and as a paying member of this community I stand by my original statement in this thread.

Bottom line - Everyone should give a **** what other people think of this game, especially when it's live video stream with the main intention of bringing in more subscriptions. Plus the fact that all media press is invited to Fanfest by CCP to promote this game in a positive view. The last thing this game needs is to be represented publicly by unprofessional drunken frat boys looking to flex their EPEEN and revel in the misery they cause others in game.

To be honest this whole scandal is CCP completing their time in the wilderness of insanity and getting back to being the company that built eve. Last year they finally snapped out of the Incarna madness and put things on the right track with Crucible. This year they faced a situation where there was inevitably going to be a showdown about who ran Eve Online ... CCP iceland or Something Awful forums.

For a while now its been apparent that the game does have a bad reputation in the wider community press and community not just because its ruthless "core style" pvp, but because some of the community is regarded very badly for ooc griefing and harrassment. What this whole scandal has displayed is that its not the "Eve community" thats to blame for this stuff really, its the Something Awful community that has refused to integrate with the Eve community and keeps its own codes of conduct (or lack therein) above any notion of friendly camaraderie out of character with the rest of the game.

This came into pefect focus at fanfest where you saw a massive contrast between the warmth and friendships on display between most eve players and the Gianturco performance on the alliance panel as (then) CSM chair. I think its the first time its been so totally apparent that the problem with Eve's larger reputation amongst gamers is not "Eve" its the frat-boy SA crowd.

Now some companies would have been terrified of Alexander Gianturco and the 10,000 goons and failed to do what was right in his punishment. Some would have tried a horrible watered down mealy-mouthed compromise and tried to get away with doing little on the grounds of keeping the goon subs. But I think CCP demonstrated courage and independence and drew a line in the sand really that the huge majority of actual eve players will wholeheartedly applaud.

I pay my subs to be a member of the Eve Online universe and the gaming community of Eve online. Not to be part of Something Awful.

You do understand that falling on your sword is supposed to hurt, right?



That's called an awkward silence.

I, too, can see where CCP will take the panels - otherwise I wouldn't post^^

as I wrote in my long post - I had hoped that CCP might have been cured from its expansionist plans after last summer; that the company had recognized the value of its market niche and would focus on consolidating its finances through budget cuts for the foreseeable future instead of hoping for miracle growth.

they can try to tame fanfest and a year or two later they'll also tame the vegas meeting, they can rework their GM policies to be more active about behavior that is deemed socially unacceptable by "the public", they can try to attract the mainstream - but by doing so they will lose the bittervets and imo these are one of the most important ingredients to EVE's succes (they create content, hey give the game world a sense of continuity & history, they create the marketing materials that attract new players [such as the bpo scam I referred to above], ... and the genius of CCP's business model is making these people stay around by having clueless newbies pay their subscriptions)

I guess what I am really angry about is that the behavior shown by the mittani is commonplace in EVE - in-game and oog. Even that miner's tears have been posted 5 months ago on public forums with all the predictable comments and nobody gave a damn.
But now, just because some nvidia/sony reps and a few press guys sat in the audience, "the eve community" and ccp start pretending to play hello kitty online.

By catering to the whole media hysteria about "political correctness", "cyber bullying" (how is it different when it happens online?), taking the defensive/guilty stance by default when questioned about the evilness of computer games, ... we only make sure these topics stay around and keep getting reinforced.