Raph's Website » EVE scandal a frame job?

EVE scandal a frame job?

May 30th, 2007 (Visited 7778 times) Tags:

It comes up all the time: the question of whether managing an online community is like governance. Whether the users are at least somewhat like citizens, and not just like customers, and whether the admins are effectively policymakers, and not just game developers out to make a buck.

It’s an interesting question with tons of ramifications. Indeed, Ted Castronova’s upcoming book, which I was lucky enough to get a manuscript copy of, is entirely devoted to the idea that the real world is going to learn a lot of lessons from online governance.

In the meantime, what we get is the opposite. It turns out that the latest allegations of corrupt administration in EVE Online may have been a deliberate smear attempt by a guild. CCP, makers of EVE, have posted an evidence trail that in their opinion in damning — the fact that there was a prior beef between the guild in question and CCP, the fact that somehow the story hit all Net outlets simultaneously right at the start of a holiday weekend…

I can’t judge who’s in the right on this. To me what is interesting is that frankly, it looks like the action of a political party against their opposition. But it’s not like EVE’s “government” can be toppled. The only real result from an action like this is effectively a scorched earth policy: “we don’t like how things are run, so we’ll destroy the game for everyone.” Of popular reactions like these are dictatorships made.

Edit: the drama continues with the guild’s response.

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

Scratchpad wrote on May 31st, 2007 at 1:31 am:

To undermine EVE Online and the credibility of CCP Games… More specifically, the objective of this scheme was to permanently paint CCP as a biased and corrupt company that favors a select group of players over the rest of our community. Raph cites this “frame job” in governance terms: do virtual worlds have much to learn from the real one? As I stated on Terra Nova, I don’t know the truth here, yet I’m sure that such maelstroms are only possible when players and developers entwine in a

Terra Nova wrote on November 30th, -0001 at 12:00 am:

as a lesson of the foibles of under-constrained folks (/edited nc). Update 6/2/2007 Links capping Topic-A from comments below: Steven Davis “”Unpopular Post #2 – Just Say “No” to Developers playing their own MMOs.”" CCP’s official response. Raph: “…a frame job?” Scott Jennings: “CCP Strikes back.” And as close to this chapter, Nate: “In praise of eve.” Topic B. I cite a few short essays and wonder the meta-question: is online gaming a profoundly geek activity?

External News wrote on May 30th, 2007 at 12:04 pm:

[...] EVE scandal a frame job? [...]

Terra Nova: Potpourri wrote on May 30th, 2007 at 5:50 pm:

[...] Topic A. Raph and others (e.g. Scott) are reporting the latest turn of this story. Perhaps “a frame job”, “a [...]

GoonSwarm vs. CCP: The Battle for EVE Online Continues wrote on June 21st, 2007 at 12:48 am:

[...] CCP. Everyone seemed to have an opinion on the matter, including some of the Internet's most prominent bloggers and news sites.Just as things were beginning to die down, the hornet's nest was kicked again [...]

t20 incident EVE - Web - WebCrawler wrote on September 8th, 2007 at 1:00 am:

[...] [Found on Google, Yahoo! Search, Windows Live] 4. Raphs Website » EVE scandal a frame job? Especially when those dev friends are leading your fleet into battle, as with the previous T20 [...]

Michael W. said on May 30th, 2007 at 9:46 am:

Ahh, Goonfleet (Denziens of the Something Awful community http://www.somethingawful.com ).

If CCP is Batista, then SA is Castro.

I realize Band of Brothers (the guild known to house many CCP employees) is one of the top Alliances in the game, so scrutiny is understanable however, If there ever was a group of psychotic gurrelia rebels it is the SA community. I say that with much love as I have many friends who happen to be “goons” however, this event is very much in line with their trigger happy actions in the past.

SA frequently inflicts DOS attacks on “enemy websites”. CCP’s allegations seem to be in line with SA’s behavior in the past http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Something_Awful

Staarkhand said on May 30th, 2007 at 10:42 am:

Claiming all your opponent’s arguments are motivated by a sinister purpose is even more in line with the latest political tactics.

It sounds from your post that you bought CCP’s assertion that the only possible motive is the destruction (by fire) of EVE/CCP. Hence the goons are evil, more specifically incorrect, and please won’t someone think of the children. Isn’t another motive to make the devs, you know, stop cheating? Which might actually be positive for the game and its community?

Azaroth said on May 30th, 2007 at 11:57 am:

If that were to happen, wouldn’t it have happened the last time this went on and they.. you know.. actually DID it? I don’t get how this improves the situation.

“Oh heck, the goons are framing us now. We’d better REALLY stop this time.”

Didn’t they stop last time this went on, anyway?

And if they didn’t, why don’t you just… quit playing their game? Quit giving them money, you know?

I suppose the problem with toppling a regime is that the nutcases required to do it would often be worse offenders themselves if they gained power. This is especially true in real life, but ESPECIALLY true with online communities. But ESPECIALLY true in real life… but ESPECIALLY true… well, you get the point.

Didn’t George Washington or someone suggest a revolution every twenty years? I think that’s a fantastic plan.

I could go on to say all kinds of things about people on the internet and taking things too seriously, stupid plans and how they rarely have an actual point to what they’re doing, how it’s even rarer that they have some kind of logical goal (the above stated “goal” would not be logical, but I could easily see them justifying it using a lot of those very same words), and how much of this kind of thing I’ve seen in the past.

But in the end, it’s just more people on the internet doing things that people on the internet do. Something like this is probably sparked off every 30 seconds somewhere on the internet. Anonymity makes people do strange things. Putting anonymous people into groups makes them do even stranger things. Give one or two of them a bot army and you have true pestilence. You certainly often fall very short of a group of geniuses with an airtight plan.

I wonder why these types of people don’t get some information, get an opinion, and get active in real life. If they put half of this effort into real world issues, they could actually maybe accomplish something worth accomplishing.

There would be no virtual laser guns involved though. Bummer.

Amaranthar said on May 30th, 2007 at 5:01 pm:

I really doubt this was a plan to topple CCP. Rather, what these types are after is to get people fired, gain some control through fear, and live large in fame through these actions. But if the game were to actually fold due to their actions, that would be something for them to boast about, wouldn’t it?

Raph, don’t you recognize this from earlier UO times reguarding a GM? I’m not sure about the story, never was, just things I picked up over the years, so I could be wrong.

PastorVor said on May 30th, 2007 at 6:02 pm:

Wow, looks like another… “your GM’s aren’t being fair so we are going to cry” incidences.
I have no clue whether the allegations are correct or not but I think most readers here will recognize the language in that “reply” as a typical userbase insurrection attempt.

If the GM’s have a policy in place for handling trouble they should not always have to justify their actions. Sometimes a GM does something because it “needs to be done” and explaining it to the users is either impossible or even just not desirable.

As for the “cheating”… hasn’t GM preferences always existed withing the genre?

Wolfe said on May 30th, 2007 at 11:41 pm:

Large cities hosts large revolts, or something. A good reason to avoid building worlds with gameplay for very large organisations.

Michael Chui said on May 31st, 2007 at 12:31 am:

Thomas Jefferson. I used to pine for that to happen in America. However, in learning more about the American Revolution, I’ve realized that I don’t want a revolution in the same sense he thought of it, which was a revolving back to what was good before. I’m not terribly fond of going back to the good old days.

Endie said on May 31st, 2007 at 1:18 am:

Um, the “prior beef” was that CCP was cheating and colluding with their friends in the alliance BoB. On CCP’s side, the beef with Goonfleet was that GF revealed several previous scandals, particularly that of T20, who was forced to admit a litany of offences.

So yes, there was “beef”, but it was based on the same thing.

PS If you think that goons are capabale of that sort of manuevre then you can’t have spent enough time in the SA of goonfleet boards. By my count we’ve had three leaders and two attempted putsches in the last three days.

Our latest version is to ask them nicely to stop favouring an elite few players – http://goonfleet.com/reply_to_CCP.html

Richard Bartle said on May 31st, 2007 at 1:32 am:

CCP aren’t EVE’s government, they’re its gods. Goonfleet is a government.

Richard

Rick M said on May 31st, 2007 at 11:11 am:

I think it’s somewhat of a shame that SA’s reputation clouds this situation. They have brought that upon themselves, of course, but in this instance I see CCP as the poorly behaved party. The Goonfleet reply in #8 above shows more maturity than anything CCP has shown thus far, in my opinion as a non-affiliated observer.

I don’t think there’s a right or wrong side here. Richard is right that CCP is a god to Goonfleet’s government, but there have been accusations of CCP siding with an opposition government (Band of Brothers) within the game. I believe there’s proof of that, although “proof” is difficult to ascertain, I suppose.

Richard, if CCP has shown favor toward one of the “governments” in Eve, and that government apparently has ready access to CCP if they need something done in-game, what does that blurring of the lines mean? Shouldn’t gods stay above the political fray?

I’d like to see CCP be more transparent about what’s going on behind the scenes. In a game like Eve, I think that transparency is absolutely necessary to preserve the integrity of the game. It’s easy to dismiss Goonfleet because of the SA reputation, but I think that’s unfair and likely to put CCP in a position of apparent collusion.

Wolfe said on June 1st, 2007 at 12:08 am:

So EVE has large swarms of hubris infested infidels?

When a player gets to the breaking point of frustration it manifests as an out of game conflict. The goal of the player will be to disrupt the activities of the target IRL, if the target is the dev team the actions are taken outside the magic circle. But with the option for the dev team to retaliate within the game, which may have interesting consequences.

Kormorant said on June 1st, 2007 at 3:36 am:

The latest allegations are nothing more than a storm in a tea cup engineered by the Goons, who have publicly stated their intention is to ruin the game for the “normal” player.

The T20 incident, where a dev spawned rare blueprints for himself, was the prior incident that CCP handled rather poorly. The anti Bob brigade felt that this meant all BoB were cheaters. CCP have learnt alot from that episode.

Much of the sourgrapes come from people too lazy to log onto the test server, freely chat with devs on irc and other arenas. The bitterness from the Goon brigade and allies directed towards Bob and co (and vice versa at times) is quite something to behold.

It doesn’t help that Goons via SA have regularly hacked websites. 3 times for the alliance I am with – they left nice messages. They have zero credibility within and outside the game. Finally other people are starting to find out what they are like…

A large one “shard” world like Eve brings many strong groupings with many different values that often conflict in the nastiest of ways… human nature at its finest.

Oliver Smith said on June 1st, 2007 at 8:32 pm:

The community of a an RvR game like EVE can develop a very tribal mentality. PvE games condition players to expect a one-sided progression over time – PvE games don’t evolve, so time and effort rewards you with lordship and mastery over the game.

If a group of WoW players can kill Mog every time with half the players asleep and one day he suddenly begins obliterating them no matter how hard they work – chances are Blizzard has tuned something.

PvP players have their mastery confirmed through their victories over less experienced/skill player groups. When they suddenly lose to another group of players they have to look somewhere to lay the blame, and the supposedly “neutral” developer is a natural target.

Stardust said on June 2nd, 2007 at 2:13 pm:

Credit where credit is due. The information came from Kugutsumen, not goonswarm. The “threadnaught” is a separate issue, but goonswarm did not get this information themselves, they just picked it up from Kugutsumen’s website. (Apart from the issue of a developer who joined Darkstar1 for 20 minutes)

You can’t win most MMO’s. You can win EVE, you can literally have soverignity over the map, and the most valuable resources in the completely playerdriven economy comes from the player-controlled areas. And, there is only one server.

This does give a cut-throat political climate in the game, one that the CCP developers pride themselves on actively partaking in. In the past this has lead to at least one of them showing more loyalty and priority to their game-friends than to their work ethics and us other lowly customers.

Cheating is one thing, but in a strategic game with one of the harshest ig losses and gains around, any information about coming features or game development, and the inner workings of the game system is more valuable than any one item or direct interference. In this situation, having developer friends is not the same as having developer friends in other games. Especially when those dev friends are leading your fleet into battle, as with the previous T20 incident.

Under the best of circumstances, the EVE forums are full of trolls, flames and accusations. Most people didn’t take much notice of this latest soap episode until the second in command in BoB posted this.

“And you are now complaining that we speak to these people, who are also our friends, about stuff in-game?
Do you lot REALLY think that the “top” people, Hillmar and Oveur etc, are party to all of this? Of course they’re not, this is their cash cow.”

I appreciate that things looks different from the sidelines, but at least put things in a fair perspective.

For the record, I’m an Empire-hugging carebear, to use EVE terminology, and have nothing to do with either side whatsoever.

For those who wonder who Kugutsumen is, he is the self-proclaimed spy who made the cheating dev incident from last year/this february public. Yes, he hacked for this information, but CCP did eventually confirm his allegations.

And IMO, the EVE devs are indeed gods, not a government. They are not adding new raiding mobs and dungeons to the game, they are supplying tools for the player-created political sides to hit eachother over the head with, and a lot of EVE players would prefer them not to pick sides. And if they have to, at least not the same side every time.

I read my post back and had to smile. It sounds so serious, but in a way it is – I am paying to play on something which feels more and more like a private emu server run by a group of people I don’t know, subject to their antics.

I guess they were very lucky that the goons make up such an easy target for ridicule that CCP can get away with not only slinging mud around themselves, but get outsiders to join in, while ignoring the issues at hand, no matter how irrevelant they may seem to an outsider.

dmx said on June 2nd, 2007 at 5:11 pm:

“”SA frequently inflicts DOS attacks on “enemy websites”. CCP’s allegations seem to be in line with SA’s behavior in the past http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Something_Awful“”

Woah! slow down cowboy.

SA has *Never* inflicted a DOS attack on an enemy website. It has been the target of a few however.

Please dont make stuff up. There website went down, due to aproximately 4000 players trying to post somewhat simultaneously. You cant coordinate 4000 ADHD nutters into a secret conspiracy without SOMEONE catching wind.

whats even more absurd is the group that made the allegation , Dark Star, is NOT a something awful team. That paper trail does NOT point to Goonfleet. Goonfleet just hosted the open letter on its webhosting.

Misunderstanding? Probably. Frame up? Categorically no.

dmx said on June 2nd, 2007 at 5:15 pm:

“”The latest allegations are nothing more than a storm in a tea cup engineered by the Goons, who have publicly stated their intention is to ruin the game for the “normal” player.”"

Man you guys have no sense of humor. This was just an angry joke by a goon blowing off steam after a big loss. All the goons got the joke. Taken out of its context, its verry damning. Except its not actually true.

Stardust said on June 7th, 2007 at 12:59 am:

This sort of ties in with the theme of this blog entry of governance and administration.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/07/arts/07eve.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2

“The kingdom is in crisis. After pledging to treat its citizens equally, the government stands accused of unfairly favoring one powerful, well-connected political faction. Many citizens have taken to open dissent, even revolt, and some are threatening to emigrate permanently.”

“So now, in a sociological twist, the company that makes Eve, CCP, based in Iceland (population 300,000), says it will tackle the problem the way a democracy would. In what appears to be a first, the company plans to hold elections so that players can select members of an oversight committee. “

EVE scandal a frame job?

23 Responses to “EVE scandal a frame job?”

Meta

Recent Comments

Categories

Tags

Recent Trackbacks

Archives

Twitter @raphkoster

Academics

Comics

Game devs

MMO devs

News/Forums

Other

Players