Skip to main content

Want vs Is

The trickledown effect of interest that the most recent capital battle has generated around the internet is that people are asking about Eve as a game to play.  Beyond the "How do I get into that fight" part of the desire is the basic, "What kind of game is it?"

I'm not one to go on about, "this terrible stupid game".  That mantra must be beyond my doe eyed adoration.  In my little, simple world, when something is terrible and stupid I avoid it.  If I continue to play it obsessively it is not terrible and stupid.  Thankfully, subtly of language is beyond me so I like to take statements like that as fact from the author and then feel bad for them.

One thing that has always frustrated me about any review is when someone gives something a negative review because they wanted it to be something else.  If I want an orange and go eat an apple, I then do not score the apple as a 1 out of 10 for not being an orange.  If the apple presented itself as an orange then the score of 1 out of 10 is understandable.  However, if the apple advertises itself as an apple and I went and penalized for not being an orange the critique is unreasonable.  "This apple, that says it is an apple, is not an orange. I'm disappointed.  It was a delicious apple but it was not an orange and I wanted an orange when I selected this apple instead of the orange that I wanted.  1 out of 10 stars for not being an orange."

This happens quite often in Eve.  People give it a poor review for not being things it never said that it was.  I can understand disliking the control mechanisms.  As a fan girl I am obligated to say, "Give it a try anyway you'll adjust!" but I can understand.  It is not for everyone but it has to be appreciated for what it is in the first place.  I to was lost with the WASD lack but once I figured out how to move my ship everything else became absorbing.

Eve is also billed as a boring game.  Boredom is to broad of a category   I have days when undocking is hard because I have so many other in game tasks to do that my spaceship is secondary. Is this boring?  Is it not?  I don't know but it is part of the game.  I find First Person Shooters to be boring and they are packed full of action from start to finish.  Boredom is often about engagement and what someone is looking for.  I've seen many complaints because Eve does not have push button receive PvP.  Those people are often directed to RvB where they can have exactly that because the players created it.

As an easy method of slipping away from a complex question I get to say that the "What" in Eve is different for every player.  Then we get to say, "It takes a special type of person to play Eve," but really it just takes a person who has those types of interests.  What types of interests draw people into Eve and stick them there?

Well...in one hand we bring diplomacy, connections, player driven content, strategy, teamwork, spreadsheets, calculators, tools, economists, industrialists, strategists, chat channels, com channels, forums and in the other deceit, destruction, viciousness, serious business, scamming, manipulation, and the ability to press everything to its edge to see if it falls over it while we run away giggling while we have a deep economic discussion about the future fluxuations of minerals on the market and what that means for our production lines.

What led me down this rambling road was a corp theft(?) on the Dust 514 forum .  The simple and reasonable reaction by someone was to put a money cap and it solved that problem.  The reactions of Eve players are priceless.  From “Why” to the random announcements of personal responsibility and trustworthiness, please can have roles?

I once started to write a response to Nosy Gamer where he asked if Eve has changed him.  My answer was and is yes.  Eve’s descendants on Planetside 2 is one of my examples.  One of my co-workers plays planetside.  He is a member of something awful in a casual way but with planetside became more active.  Now he says pubbie and speaks like an Eve goon without ever having played Eve.  He has the right mentality for Eve just not the time with his other game commitments.  Yet, as he has played planetside the conversion has been interesting.  He plays with Eve players quite often and he can see the fleet tactics mirrored sometimes.  We have interesting discussions when we go out for lunch on our days off.  We only have each other to babble about video games so we try to use that time wisely.  But it isn't just that one place.  Eve players often run off to other games and play in their same social groups.  

This is not about the soft, cozy blanket of elitism that Eve players are often accused of when they venture into other games and state how ‘hard’ Eve is.  This is the subtle adjustments and changes that come from playing Eve.  I find myself often frustrated in other games that I cannot just kill people that irritate me. I have to remember that dying does not mean something most of the time.  I can go idle. No one knows I have all my gold coins on me.  Even if they do they can't take it.  Once that was normal but suddenly it was no longer stimulating that people couldn't take my things.

And that mentality of ours is enthralling to people if not appealing to deal with.  The reactions to the most recent battle and the entire reason it happened has gripped people. One thing that amuses me is how many people find Eve to be very readable if not playable.  I can understand that.  It really is a ridiculous pool of complex drama sided by ridiculous battles, pretty explosions and fantastic leaps of dark, human imagination.

Eve is a vicious game run by vicious words.  Sure, there are plenty of warm snuggly things that happen every day.  Yet, when someone goes, “Where are you doing?” and you respond, “Killing people” and they go “Cool good luck” it's not a gentle game regardless of the attempts to diminish what is happening.  Because the game is about people in the end.  If I am PvEing I say, “Shooting red crosses.”  That in itself is an unconscious but factual distinction.  I don’t ‘kill’ NPCs.  I even define them by their visual icon. 

Who would have thought, "Do whatever you want?" could be so hard?  That freedom to run about and do your own thing would be so unappealing?  Its result is that each person will have a different experience inside of the game world even as they do the exact same thing.  Game world is used a lot as a polite way to define the game life.  Immersive is another way to say, "Holy shit I'm into this".  Yet, it was with Eve that any last traces of being embarrassed about being a gamer melted for me.  When my supervisor asked why I was going to Iceland I told him that I was attending a video game conference, like when I went to Vegas.  He looked at me.  I looked back at him.  He approved my leave.

Comments

  1. "When my supervisor asked why I was going to Iceland I told him that I was attending a video game conference, like when I went to Vegas. He looked at me. I looked back at him. He approved my leave."

    I literally lol'd. I got much the same reaction when I told my co-workers that yes, it was technically my b-day weekend, but I was _actually_ going to Vegas for a game conference, I got a LOT of blank stares. lol. Oh well, it was fun and I'm hoping to get to do it again this October! :-D

    Save me a seat in the back and we'll make fun of shit "death by powerpoint" presentations together again. ;-)

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Maybe one day!

 [15:32:10] Trig Vaulter > Sugar Kyle Nice bio - so carebear sweet - oh you have a 50m ISK bounty - so someday more grizzly  [15:32:38 ] Sugar Kyle > /emote raises an eyebrow to Trig  [15:32:40 ] Sugar Kyle > okay :)  [15:32:52 ] Sugar Kyle > maybe one day I will try PvP out When I logged in one of the first things I did was answer a question in Eve Uni Public Help. It was a random question that I knew the answer of. I have 'Sugar' as a keyword so it highlights green and catches my attention. This made me chuckle. Maybe I'll have to go and see what it is like to shoot a ship one day? I could not help but smile. Basi suggested that I put my Titan killmail in my bio and assert my badassery. I figure, naw. It was a roll of the dice that landed me that kill mail. It doesn't define me as a person. Bios are interesting. The idea of a biography is a way to personalize your account. You can learn a lot about a person by what they choose to put in their bio

Taboo Questions

Let us talk contentious things. What about high sec? When will CCP pay attention to high sec and those that cannot spend their time in dangerous space?  This is somewhat how the day started, sparked by a question from an anonymous poster. Speaking about high sec, in general, is one of the hardest things to do. The amount of emotion wrapped around the topic is staggering. There are people who want to stay in high sec and nothing will make them leave. There are people who want no one to stay in high sec and wish to cripple everything about it. There are people in between, but the two extremes are large and emotional in discussion. My belief is simple. If a player wishes to live in high sec, I do not believe that anything will make them leave that is not their own curiosity. I do not believe that we can beat people out of high sec or destroy it until they go to other areas of space. Sometimes, I think we forget that every player has the option to not log back in. We want them to log

Conflicted

Halycon said it quite well in a comment he left about the skill point trading proposal for skill point changes. He is conflicted in many different ways. So am I. Somedays, I don't want to be open minded. I do not want to see other points of view. I want to not like things and not feel good about them and it be okay. That is something that is denied me for now. I've stated my opinion about the first round of proposals to trade skills. I don't like them. That isn't good enough. I have to answer why. Others do not like it as well. I cannot escape over to their side and be unhappy with them. I am dragged away and challenged about my distaste.  Some of the people I like most think the change is good. Other's think it has little meaning. They want to know why I don't like it. When this was proposed at the CSM summit, I swiveled my chair and asked if they realized that they were undoing the basic structure that characters and game progression worked under. They said th