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.