Greedy Goblin

Monday, December 7, 2015

It's too early to celebrate!

The Mordus report will come tomorrow (it's a very nice one), because the matter of today is more pressing. There is a huge celebration on Reddit over the cancellation of the propaganda book kickstarter, funnily, mentioning me in the top comment. The joy is increased by the hilarious statements of The Mittani, who "apologized" for everyone else around him being failures. It is true that TMC and The Mittani Media suffered a serious, maybe fatal defeat:
  • Most importantly, they failed to get the money they wanted and the lack of funding will likely hit many of their future projects. Knowing how arrogant and narcissistic they are, they probably already spent it and now they have short-term loans with nothing to repay from or started projects they have to cancel.
  • They burned themselves with CCP. Several devs gave their faces to market that awful propaganda crap. They did it in the blind hope that this book will get new players. Instead CCP took awful lot of heat for openly standing with The Mittani in this disgusting plan. Never I've seen so many "CCP = CFC" sentiments. I'm completely sure that they'll be much more cautious dealing with TMC/TMM or even stop doing it completely.
  • They burned themselves with Jeff Edwards and with his writer buddies. Those people came in good faith, expecting a supportive and welcoming community and got hate instead. Now they look at The Mittani and ask "are these your friends?!". Please remember, while the difference between a TESTie and a Goon or The Mittani and me are obvious for an EVE player, for an outsider we are all "EVE nerds", and whatever a TESTie or even I do reflects on The Mittani in the real media space. Funnily, it works both ways, I had to explain myself a few times when I mentioned playing EVE as non-players assumed that I'm a friend of that horrible suicide-bully guy. This is most visible from the desperate tears of Sion that can be summarized as "without miners TMC you'll have no ships CCP ability to ever secure another author to write player stories".
  • They burned lots of Quislings for the project. While I always told that we must not hope PL or NC will do something about Goons, it was mostly dismissed as "tinfoil conspiracy". Now I only have to link this or this or the fact that the lead Goon propagandist is in NC. and people say "sad but true" or at least go silent.
I am not sure if they stand up from this defeat. I would be extremely surprised if they'd actually try to pull the propaganda book kickstarter in March. But "they" means "TMC" or "The Mittani Media" and not the Imperium. Let me ask a simple question: does a line Goon or SMA feels anything from all this? He still has his ships, his FCs, his paplinks, his ratting space, his ADM, everything.

Unless this media failure forces The Mittani to quit playing and get a job, or at least to be unable to pay FCs and directors, nothing will change for the in-game Imperium. While it's easy to think in terms of leaders, it's wrong. Scooter McGabe isn't out there to scam because he is directly ordered by The Mittani, but because he is a scammer. The tear-harvesting gankers also act on their own. The ratters who just want to get fat from their medium shield booster carriers also want to continue. The Mittani gave them a flag, gave them IT services and organization, but they aren't paid or forced to do what they do. They are the Imperium and while they are, the Imperium will stand!

I also have to address the "Gobbins Ruse" which got lot of spotlight for little effect. While I don't question that he made the Mittani mad, nor that we laughed hard, he didn't hurt the Imperium at all. If he didn't make up his imaginary coalition, PH would still evacuate Cloud Ring (PH fighting Imperium wasn't a reasonable option). The only difference he made is that The Mittani looked a clown by sending his minions to "fight that coalition" and they only found empty structures, instead of just sending them burn empty structures. Either way, the line Goons shot empty structures for paplinks.

The enemy is the Imperium. What they do is in them, not in the Mittani. He merely rides their wave and makes some money from it. To stop the Imperium, we must defeat the Imperium members, not TMC, not The Mittani, not Sion, not disband their alliance by a rouge director (just so they reform in a day) or whatever "great move". There is no great move. There is only the hard way: hunting down every single one of them, assimilate those who are just there for convenience and crush those who believe in the Goon way. Those who hope for a victory by some trick are like that idiot Bush standing behind the "Mission Accomplished" sign after Saddam and his formal army was defeated, ignoring that all the bad he did kept living in his followers who reformed under many names and kept doing worse and worse things.

We have not won yet! We'll win when the last structure exploded, when convenience-Imperium players found a new home and the hard core is banished to irrelevance.

Grr Goons! (Good example)

9 comments:

Andy knows everything. said...

"burned.. Jeff Edwards and... his writer buddies. Those people came in good faith, expecting a supportive and welcoming community and got hate instead."

Flooding people with hate when they interact with our community is bad for us all. The old books and amazing lore helped bring me into this game. I would love more books based in the lore of Eve. I'm not as interested in "plater stories" becoming a book. I fear the vitriol directed toward this author will make future authors hesitant. When outsiders or new players interact with our community and recieve hate, it is definetly not a time to celebrate.

Amarr-Zon said...

Agree.
I think, the average goon is there for convenience, not because he feels like one. This is clearly to see in the support of this kickstarter...
So, many of them have to be disturbed in their daily "work" over and over again, until they are no longer comfortable.
That's why I worked on my trading income and started supporting your project by donating to MoA.

Anonymous said...

burned.. Jeff Edwards and... his writer buddies. Those people came in good faith, expecting a supportive and welcoming community and got hate instead."

People who cant separate pixels from real life and have a hatred of other players so deep they will attack anything remotely associated with them are the true cancer of EVE. The fundraiser was poorly run but the wave of hatred from people is a far worse thing to have seen.

Gevlon said...

Jeff Edwards made a serious mistake not doing background check on Alexander Gianturco before signing a treaty. If you partner with an obnoxious man (the Fanfest speech wasn't in pixels), you shouldn't be surprised for hate.

Stabs said...

I think the "serious authors will now avoid us" issue is over-blown.

First Eve fan fic is actually really good. If you read or listen to the Eve Chronicles or any of the various bloggers like Drarckarn or Mike who write fiction the standard is high.

Next, from the sample we saw, the professional wasn't amazing. In particular the emphasis he put on pod mechanics didn't really fit with a description of Elo organising a battle for reasons Eve players instinctively know but perhaps find hard to say why.

Next fan fic doesn't sell because of the author. I own all sorts of tie-in novels: Star Wars novels, Star Trek novels D&D novels, Magic TG novels. The one thing they all have in common is that I was already a Star Wars/D&D/MtG fan first. I certainly didn't buy any because of the author (although I remember being delighted to notice that a Star Wars novel I was buying was written by Barbara Hambly).

Finally I wouldn't be so quick to write Jeff Edwards off. He's a naval veteran and those guys play rough. He came in, he got hazed. Kind of like a new sailor on a ship. If people think he will slope away feeling defeated I think they may be misjudging him. I think it's very possible he may become an Eve player and content creator because he got hazed.

Ryanis said...

"The only difference he made is that The Mittani looked a clown by sending his minions to "fight that coalition"".
I disagree: The Imperium only works because of propaganda ; if you break this propaganda, pilots will quit.

Gevlon said...

@Ryanis: absolutely not. The propaganda is already totally broken, proven by the fact that out of 40K Imperium members only 758 backed the propaganda book.

The backbone of the Imperium is CONVENIENCE. If you want to live in Nullsec, the politics be damned, the Imperium is your best call:
- good truesec
- very low chance of disbanding over drama
- very low chance of being evicted
- regularly created content to consume (Ganking fleets, ADM fleets, stratop fleets, SiG roams)
- low obligatory performance demand

Ryanis said...

Still, I disagree : the book is out of the game. Pilots don't care about it.
BUT, pilots are still convinced that "they are winning EvE" and they are good at the game because of propaganda.

About convenience :
- good truesec - true, but there are better way of doing ISK, propaganda just tell them there is no better one ;
- very low chance of disbanding over drama - true in GSF, not so evident in allied alliances ;
- very low chance of being evicted - true ;
- regularly created content to consume - except most of these fleet are boring ;
- low obligatory performance demand - again, true in GSF, false for the other alliances.

Take this post from THC (https://www.themittani.com/news/cloud-ring-war-spreads-lowsec) : "With no defenders other than the automated timer system and a few Griffin pilots, Cloud Ring soon fell to the Imperium[.]"
Line members (and probably a good part of new Eden) will think that they conquerred Cloud Ring with ease and got a bit of contents by the way. They will happily join next events.
I talked with some of them: they believe it.

Actually, SMA just grinded sov during 2 weeks, sometimes loosing 4 hours for an IHub while there were 300 people in fleet. Check reddit, they didn't find it fun at all.
Actually, they did not even succeed and required the help of GSF, FCON and a GM mistake to take last station.

... but stil, goons are proud of it because propaganda tells them it is.
Break this and they'll go away.

(yeah, I always talk about this, but I only talk about what I saw by myself)

Anonymous said...

What about acquiring persons like Scooter McCabe to help you bring down the Kickstarter Failed Coalition. They are scammers and thieves, if you bankroll them as agents with a big payday at the end why wouldn't they go for the bigger better deal?