I think some depictions of this event, by people who are trying to cover the gaming industry as a whole, miss that there was a long history of disenfranchisement with a good chunk of the player base. Whether or not the disgruntled were represented those who blasted an indestructible monument as depicted on the right, or who pledged to quit immediately or in the near future in the wake of leaked CCP internal messages, an outsider can't really say, but to me it seemed like the end result of a long build-up, rather than something spontaneous.
What I've heard from many people is that EVE has exercised many changes to its core systems over the years in some areas, while wholly neglecting others, and in order to interest new people they've made moves, like Incarna, which not only took a step closer to having full virtual avatars for player characters, but also made moves expressly designed for improving the experience for the starting player, while different complaints from veterans aren't being addressed.
Many felt used. Crazy prices on virtual clothes (with talk of expanding these micropayments to fundamentally game-altering mechanics), suggestions that the architecture of EVE was used in part to test systems for other games, courting new players at the expense of lingering issues, all these things don't really sound that bad in isolation, but I think when you combine them in a community that, while diverse, has a lot of pride, the kind of pride you have in any group of hobbyists who feel that their particular pastime has a good degree of uniqueness and vitality, you get an explosion. The protests have been spectacular, but not surprising, especially since I feel that the tone and sluggishness of the response from CCP was probably what really caused all of these end results, not the silly monocles.
EVE's style of play is definitely different, in a large part because it is so player driven, with major organizations being built by player agreement, and rising and falling based on mechanics supported through these agreements. The players pledging to quit reminded me of this, strangely enough. While some people might just blast that statue, others knew if they were going to strike at the heart of the new threat they were going to have to give up on their game. Maybe some will come back, maybe some never really were going to leave, and I'm betting some will decide to slip quietly away rather than post it in the forums, but:
In the leaked email that was often quoted, it was said that they should pay more attention to what players did than what players said. So, after having said so much, they did, instead.
If there's a better way to listen to so many players, I'm not sure what that might be. Not just paying attention to player actions, but something that takes into account some level of player decision and planning rather than reaction and clicks. Direct democracy, with a prioritization of requests based on popularity, might work, rather than posting and hoping to be heard, or waiting for sanctioned representatives to express their desires-- though without an open ballot, which is hard to collate, I wonder what sort of strange entanglements that might cause without a huge internal architecture to aggregate player wishes into something resembling a plan. This blog, I think, is probably going to run into the same problem. I could depict these events in a way approaching coherence, but does it speak for every EVE player? Even a majority? Not likely.
It's impossible to escape the reality that this is a game, that these are paying members of that game, and that many are pissed (and I expect a backlash from players who want to work through it and keep playing, and still others who will just try to ignore the whole thing), yet as an outsider I can't help but look at this struggle as something much more fascinating than the practical part of my brain tells me it has any right to be. The more romantic side of me sees this as a glimpse at something larger that human beings are capable of in this environment of world-wide, instant connections. Or maybe these struggles are a hi-res, virtual mask covering the face of a very, very old conflict.
Log in to comment