Greedy Goblin

Friday, July 26, 2013

CCP Games and EVE community are not related

Jester wrote about the bitter departure of a podcaster. I've never heard of her because I never listened to podcasts. Reading a text is about 3 times faster than listening to the same text spoken. Also you can't scroll and search that easily, can't embed charts and figures easily. I think podcasts and "guy talking" videos are bad forms of media.

But it's not the point. She ragequit because of what CCP games did to the community: hiring Mintchip, not listing her podcast in some sublink of the official page I've never heard of and letting an inappropriate song into one of the broadcasts.

This is pants on head retarded. CCP games provides the physics of the game and not the content of it. EVE is a sandbox, content is created by the players. Raging on CCP for whatever the players do is like I was raging at CCP because Goons took SPLE-Y. After all CCP could just take down the node or give 10x more HP to our IHUB. They didn't. So they are pro-Goon. Ragequit! I delete my accounts and close my blog! And post an angry rant. Would it be idiotic? Yes, and she just literally did that.

CCP games is responsible for the servers being up, TiDi being low (they fail in that hard) and the game being free of bugs. They are responsible for the existence of the world we are living in. But they aren't responsible for the ways we live in it.

Leftist people often demand some government to solve their problems with competing people. CCP games should promote my blog, CCP games should teach the people to don't be racist, CCP games should stop Goons.

No. You should do these. It's not easy. But it's possible and when you succeed, you succeeded. I keep on flaming/blocking fleetmates who link filth or call game PvP raping, I keep on fighting for the inclusion of "carebears" to nullsec and for the defeat of Goons. I will not beg for CCP games to hold my hand and won't ragequit when they refuse to.

15 comments:

Unknown said...

What is the relationship between the creator of a specific ruleset and people who play by this ruleset?

Humanity has been wrestling with that very question for as long as it became aware of rules binding it's existence, the foremost of which relate to mechanics of death and legacy. Digging into this question lies at the foundation of pretty much all philosophical schools, whether they are religious or secular.

The podcaster in question took the appointment of Mintchip as an indication that the rules of the game has changed to something unacceptable. She then made a loud exit, undermining two years of her own work in the process.

I agree with that such behaviour is generally retarted. The only way you gain anything with such an outburst is if you time it well enough for it to resonate with a lot of people, who then stand up and go away with you. When this is not the case (and it clearly isn't in this situation), it is best to just cut ties quietly.

However, there is another side to this matter. When someone who governs the rules of your game changes the rules to something you don't want to play, you still need to cut ties.

Once you get the notion that what amounts to divine authority in a particular virtual universe is no longer adhering to rules that you can agree with, staying any longer means sacrificing your own time and effort for nothing (at best, at worst - for something openly hostile to your interests).

CCP Games is related to Eve community, because it governs the rules by which Eve community plays.

Gevlon is trying to circumvent the entire problem by saying something along the lines of "our world, our rules, CCP better just go sit in the backend where it belongs", thus essentially pretending that CCP is somehow not the equivalent of divine authority in Eve.

It definitely is a more fun position to take. It is surely a correct position to take when the divine entity in question seems to have been absent ever since it laid down the law (as many would argue is a case in real life).

How much this position applies to Eve-verse is up for debate. CCP is not exactly the absent god in Eve-verse. They can and do have their own agenda that they actively carry out.

Gevlon said...

It is rightful to quit EVE for changing the rules, like removing or nerf-destroying a certain ship class you liked.

But they did nothing such nor the ragequitter accused them to.

They just "failed" to install moral rules besides the physical ones. Let me elaborate: you don't need CCP to have a blog. Being on that list might drives you traffic, but you clearly don't need their permission.

I've never seen the clip with the bad music, neither I see any reason to look it up. Does it contain important data about spaceships?

Does having Mintchip (as DUST PR) somehow changes how spaceships fly?

Or simply: if I just downloaded the trial, do I need to know that there is a CCP Games?

Bobbins said...

Dani didn't just ragequit though she probably libeled Mintchip using what she herself described as rumours.
I am quite dismayed at CCP's response as her account should have been permabanned but instead she is been allow to give her stuff away. Why are the rules not been applied to Dani?

Lucas Kell said...

@Gevlon: "I've never seen the clip with the bad music"
If you've not seen it, why are you commenting. You are basically taking what other bloggers have written, then just recycling that with your opinion of what they have said.
The song in question was played as part of non ccp clip being played as part of the alliance tournament. It featured a song by a black rapper Dr Dre. While the music is not to everyone's taste, it was not racist or sexist to play it. It's a release song by a popular artist. I hate Justin Bieber, but I wouldn't freak out if a clip of one of his songs was played. CCP are not at all accountable for the overreaction of a fan.

The reason people dislike the CCP Mintchip hiring is because she is known to say she hate's the eve community, she is very new to the eve universe, yet CCP hires here as a liaison with the very community she hates. Understandably people question the hiring process if that is able to happen.

As for the fansite rejection, she was already an official fansite. She saw to clip and overreacted to it. Immediately following that she received an email saying she was no longer a fansite (which was due to some unrelated CCP error). The timing of these events caused her to finally decide to quit, and she's entitled to that regardless of how much we agree or disagree with her reasoning.

I disagree with her massive overreaction to every part of this, but at the same time I can see why she would choose to leave. In her eyes CCP has become something she no longer wishes to support. There's nothing "retarded" about choosing to quit when that happens.

Anonymous said...

Oh, don't be ridiculous. It's completely up to CCP to lay down the rules (including social ones) for their game world and to enforce them.

And, you know, they actually do lay down rules:
http://community.eveonline.com/support/policies/eve-tos/

So while IMNSHO Dani did completely overreact, please explain again what's idotic about raging at CCP for the perceived lack of action against players breaking those rules CCP themselves up?

Good for you, if you don't need or expect such rules to exist. But there is nothing wrong to complain when a game isn't held to its own standards.

Anonymous said...

Im glad they didnt play nwa in the background, that would be racist too.

Dr dre, really? He hasnt been controvertial since the 80s.

Unknown said...

I agree with everything you say here Goblin... except for one comment. CCP is not responsible for low TiDi - we are. If we didn't show up in 1000 pilot fleets there would be no TiDi. *grin*

Anonymous said...

This whole episode is nothing more than a tantrum. She is upset that Mintchip gets more attention than she does and is now playing the race card. Good riddance to drama queens, August 7th or whatever date it is can't get here fast enough.

nightgerbil said...

Thanks for the good laugh, I read through all jesters links too, poetic stanzs Blog etc.

There are some people I feel fortunate that I will never have to come into contact with and this is one of them. However can anyone answer the question "whats wrong with mintchip?" I've watched her videos for along time (since she played wow) and I just dont get the rage towards her?

She never got any of this abuse when she played wow btw. Is the eve community really that much worse?

Gevlon said...

@Nightgerbil: the average EVE player is dead certain that he is the most hardcore and skilled player among all MMO players, while his knowledge about EVE mechanics is worse than the WOW knowledge of a spirit geared warrior

Anonymous said...

@nightgerbil

For some it was less related to her videos, and more related to her statement about eve players.

For others it was about her amazon wishlist

For still others it was about the photos.

Some of us however realised she had been hired for dust, not eve, and don't get upset by pictures of people on the internet.

Unknown said...

@Gevlon

If you just downloaded the trial, you don't need to know that there is CCP Games.

But the ragequitter was not someone who just downloaded the trial, was she? She was a somewhat prominent member of the community. Someone important enough for her ragequit to warrant reactions from other prominent members. Someone who invested years of personal time and energy into building something in Eve. I find expecting a person like that to not know or care about CCP games is unrealistic at best.

Furthermore, you seem to limit the game to its mechanics. Morals don't exist in mechanics. Morals appear when you start considering the questions of "why am i playing this game?", "why am i expending the time of my life in this virtual world, when i could be doing something else in the real one?".

The question of why people play the game is as important to the game as the question of what the rules are. Perhaps even more so. This is a question which can only be answered in social terms, though.

Ragequitting is generally an idiotic thing to do, because the "rage" part of it generates way too much extraneous fallout.

The "rage" part is not the important part here, though. The "quit" part is.

Sure, Mintchip is unlikely to ever have any impact on Eve's actual mechanics. And if you think a game is just it's mechanics, then there really is not problem here.

A game is not just it's mechanics, though. It is mechanics interpreted and given meaning in the mind of the player. There is nothing inherently superior in Eve's mechanics over WoW's mechanics. Both are just interconnected systems of numbers. Only when applied to your personal preference of higher variance in gameplay and stronger emphasis on trade, Eve becomes better than WoW.

Mintchip's presence on CCP staff gave Eve (in my eyes, at least) some very unfortunate connotations.

Unknown said...

@what's wrong with Mintchip

I don't know anything about her as a person. I am only aware of her virtual personality.

Her virtual personality is pretty much an attention-seeking gold-digger. At least, that's my interpretation. Could be wrong, but it is what it is.

The fact that upon joining CCP she didn't change her virtual name (as has been the common practice) means that CCP would like to preserve continuity between her previous virtual personality (which i interpret as attention-seeking dysfunctional personality) and her role as CCP community manager.

I don't think i like that DUST's public face is an attention-seeking gold-digger.

Gevlon said...

@Maxim: the game is clearly much more than its mechanics. But CCP games only relevant in its mechanics. If the morals of it is problematic, it's nothing to do with CCP games.

Unknown said...

@Gevlon

If CCP Games was irrelevant outside of mechanics, then the whole Mintchip thing wouldn't be an issue to begin with.

I'd love it if game designers weren't relevant (and therefore weren't responsible) for stuff that's outside of game mechanics. Would make the job that much less of a headache :/

Then again, would make the job that much less fun :D