Tech Presentations

The technology poster presentations covered a broad gamut from voice conferencing programs (mine) to an electric grand prix car. Over all the presentations went very well, with only a few minor hiccups. The largest issue that I think existed was with the time (or lack there of). Some of us never got to present to our TA (likewise I’d imagine some never got to present to the professor).

All of the posters that I saw where well made and very eye catching (hence the reason I probably noticed them). Although I will also admit that many (all but one) of the presenters that I visited were attractive females. As a side note, that method of trying to pick up girls seems not to work. Then again no method works that well for me. Anyhow, I digress.

But, regardless of the negatives, the whole project was a blast. All the presenters were competent and the attendees where polite and showed genuine enthusiasm.

Hello Walk Helipad

Not at all related to anything gaming, but interesting none the less. A helicopter touched down on the Hello Walk to evac a severely injured construction worker. The thing I found interesting was that when the helicopter started to touch down, everyone even remotely near the hello walk pulled out their phones to take pictures. Except for one guy; he had a Nikon with a telephoto lens. I assume he was with a newspaper, otherwise he was just lucky.

Traitor

Traitor

It’s official. I’ve switched back to World of WarCraft. I feel like such a traitor to EVE. I really enjoyed EVE, and the complicated nature of the game appealed to me. It took a lot of thinking to make it all work.

Unfortunately that may also have lead to its downfall. When I got busy with schoolwork, the last thing I wanted to do during my free time was to “think”. WoW offered a mindless solution to that. Also, no friends of mine played EVE with me, so it did get lonely. However, I’m now back playing with them on WoW.

And its fun too. For the first time ever in the game I’ve found a Guild that I enjoy. A guild in WoW is like a company in EVE, or an Outfit in PlanetSide. It’s a group of people who play together and help each other out. They have already helped me out in leveling two characters to the max level in game (something I never did before, because I got too bored prior to this return).

And we use Ventrilo to communicate. It does come in quite handy in situations where you need to give instructions or notify someone of something in a hurry and typing falls short.

So in following one friend, I’ve made several new ones. Some might scoff at these new friends, who I’ve never seen a picture of, but we know better; thanks to the miracle of hyperpersonalism.

Friends

I have no real-life friends tat play EVE with me. For about a month I had one, but he grew weary of the complicated nature of the game, and the ten or so different windows that you had to have open at any given time. This friend moved back to World of Warcraft. Honestly, I can’t completely blame him. I do miss the mindless play of that game sometimes. As I’ve said before, EVE actually takes a lot of excess brain power to play. WoW, however, tends to not be that way.

So I debate about going back to WoW. That would mean leaving EVE for a while, since I hate to have to be paying for two MMOs (I hate paying for one, but that’s beside the point). Maybe one day I’ll start PlanetSide back up too. This is a common theme for me, to switch back and forth between games. I tend to get bored doing the same thing over and over, a little variety helps keep me involved in the game.

www.eveonline.com
www.worldofwarcraft.com
www.planetside.com

Communication

So far as EVE goes, I’ve talked about WHAT we communicate. I’ve only briefly discussed HOW we talk. Yes, there is an in-game chat feature that lets people basically text back and forth or IM each other. However in a more hectic situation found in-game such as a battle, of if you’re just too plain lazy to type, the typing out of what you want to communicate can be frustrating to downright degrading to the playing experience.

To solve this, the game has a built in voice communication system. However, as with most games the in-game voice application is shunned. Usually lag skyrockets, and the game becomes unplayable. This holds true in PlanetSide and World of Warcraft as well. So, the use of a third party program is often utilized. The two that I’ve always seen used are TeamSpeak and Ventrilo. PlanetSide almost entirely used TeamSpeak while WoW used Ventrilo. This doesn’t always hold true though, as there is some spillover into both games. I haven’t actually figured out the distribution in EVE yet, as I haven’t progressed far enough into the game so that voice communication is a must.

The use of a third party program also allows the users to play games that normally don’t have voice capabilities built in, such as old yet still very playable StarCaft. Of course there are drawbacks to the programs. Ventrilo has a user fee for hosting a client that others can connect to (normal users are free, only the host “server” has a subscription) for any size party. A Team SpeakServer is free for non-corporate use or for I believe under 40 or so users. However, TeamSpeak tends to have a somewhat lower fidelity to it, and as such is sometimes considered an inferior program by some users (I personally have no preference, but the free aspect of TeamSpeak is very appealing to me).

http://ventrilo.com/
http://www.teamspeak.com/

Gold Farmers

Gold Farmers.
Every MMORPG that has some sort of “currency” in game has them. Gold farming is actually a legitimate business in some countries, usually China or Korea. At first thought, you might envy these individuals who get to play games all day. However, think a little bit about it. They grind all day doing the SAME thing constantly. They don’t play for fun. They can’t stop when they get bored or tired. The places they work at aren’t nice dorm rooms, or dens with plush chairs and refreshments or restrooms right around the corner.

Mentioning that makes my next musings seem… trivial and selfish.

Gold farmers (gold sellers, ISK sellers, spammers, etc) are found to be very annoying and disruptive to players. World of WarCraft has some of the worst. They implemented a “Report Spam” function in the chat window a while back. EVE has ISK sellers. ISK is the EVE currency (if you didn’t catch that right off). A main difference between gold sellers and ISK sellers is that the WoW GMs don’t always “kill” the spammer. They also have limited campaigns warning people to not purchase their products. EVE’s GMs actively hunt down the spammers and gleefully let all the players in that chat channel know when they take him down/ Additionally, EVE runs campaigns to actively discourage players from purchasing ISK, even to the point of running the little PR campaigns like those seen done by the governments during WWII.

Both games have made it “illegal” to purchase the gold/ISK from these sellers. The claim is that it disrupts the in-game economy. This is true to a point, until you realize that the farmers still made the gold in game, by doing what every legitimate player has to do. Most likely the biggest reason its illegal is because they are utilizing another’s work (in this case, either WoW or EVE itself) to make a profit.

Here is an article I had read some time ago.
--Eric
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/17/magazine/17lootfarmers-t.html

Online Identity

It’s true, I don’t really know any of the people I play EVE with. Nor do I know any of the people I play other online or multiplayer games with. Of course there is the exception if I’m playing with a real-life friend.

But who are these people? Are they “good” people? Or are they “bad” people? Are they male, or female? Are they who they claim to be?

One fellow player had this to say:
“If someone says they’re a guy, they’re a guy. If they say they’re a girl, they’re a guy. If they say that they are under 18, they’re an FBI agent.”

Despite this cynical view, often it holds true (except for the FBI part).

Ponder that.

Through the Tangents

EVE yet again becomes a chat room for everything except the game.

Recently all of us in “our” channel demonstrated how nerdy we all were. Starting at birdseed, we managed to progress through varying tangents about releasing birds on a fellow player, then killer birds with lasers on their heads on the same player after he made an off comment about one of the female players (nothing really bad mind you, just a play on something she said). Then I mentioned something about putting poison on their beaks that would only affect him. Shortly after that it turned to getting him addicted to the Spice. And Spice withdrawal and blue eyes. So began the discussion about Frank Herbert’s Dune and the entire saga. The female gamer said “The level of nerdiness in here pleases me. =) ”.

This is a good example of how people in computer mediated communication settings can progress through varying topics and subjects easily. This is a bit of evidence supporting hyperpersonalism, how people can develop online relationships that are more real and closer than face to face ones.

Rebellion Against Moderation

I hate to always talk about WuSE whenever I talk about EVE, but he is a most prominent character. This story begins in the default chat channel, which is monitored and moderated by the game publisher’s agents. As mentioned earlier, EVE has a more mature user base. A side effect of this is that EVE also has players who use more mature language (not that the use of mature language is any indication of maturity). Anyhow, WuSE made one too many off colored comments in the public channel, and the moderators threatened to disable his account. In response (and on a whim) he created his own private channel with the annotation “The REAL” placed in front of the default channel’s name. He proceeded to invite all the players from the default to his private (where there are no language restrictions), telling us he was “Rebelling against the Icelandic Overlords”. EVE is a game published by an Icelandic company, Crowd Control Productions.
This is just a good example of how people respond to pressure to conform, or to give up their right to speech (true it can be argued that the blatant use of foul language is offensive and hence not protected, but it goes deeper than that). Some people give in to it, while others rebel, and inspire others to follow (even if it is just to a private chat channel).

EVE and the troll

Considering how close the post is to the paper that is due in class, here is a small (edited) excerpt from that paper. It talks about a character that goes by the name WuSE. He is a bit of an eccentric character. However, he is still well liked within the channel (especially by those of us with a more cynical and dark sense of humor).

WuSE is a very adamant hater of trolls. EVE Online is rampant with trolls. Given the complex nature of the game though, many are legitimate questions by newbie’s. In EVE the difference between a troll and a newbie is whether or not they take the advice and don’t repeatedly ask the same question. If some one does troll, WuSE has no qualms about blocking them from chat. He also emphatically shouts “BLOCKED!” in chat. Donath (1998) again gives good descriptions of trolls, and also that it is best to not encourage them. However, he also mentions that people who expect trolls everywhere can unintentionally hurt legitimate questioners (p. 14-17). The shouting of “BLOCKED!” is also similar to Donath’s “Plonk!” to killfiling. The point of shouting it is to announce to the troll that you’re done with them (p. 21).

Newbies

Early in ones EVE Career you are placed in a starter corporation. Corporations are EVE’s versions of clans, guilds, or outfits. The game is actually very capitalistic centered. If it happens to be your first time playing EVE, then your new account and character has special access to a newbie help chat channel. All sort of people abound in this channel. More than one is actually an experienced player who has simply purchased a new account. But many more are genuinely new characters.

What is important in this channel are the moderators. They are either employees of the company, or volunteers that are very experienced with the game. Their job is to answer any newbish questions anyone might have. Another good thing about this channel is that many people have the same questions, so if you ask one, more often than getting a response from an ISD (the game helpers), you will get one from another player who previously asked the question.

And unlike other games, the moderators actually take action when they are confronted with rude, obnoxious players who troll or won’t listen. And spammers are dealt with quickly and decisively. The red text that they use in chat draws everyone’s attention and respect.

The Basics

This is basically an overview of what EVE Online is. EVE is one of the largest massively multiplayer games there is. It honestly has the largest game world, with over 25,000 players online at a single time (at non-peak times). Yes, its true that other MMOs such as WoW have more players total. But EVE’s beauty lies in the simple fact that there is only ONE “realm”. So all those players can interact with each other simultaneously if they wanted.

Such ability to interact provides a rich basis for events to spontaneously occur in game. This is also a key in the greatness of potential conversations between players.

The Beginning

This is going to become the home of my own personal thoughts and takes on EVE Online. Most of this will actually focus on how people communicate within the game. You might not realize it, but EVE has a very in depth and sophisticated chat tool.