EVE Online Controversy: A Less "Clever" View

There's a protest going on in the virtual universe of EVE Online right now. Players are gumming up in-game trading centers and engaging in acts of protest.

There are also a number of online venues reporting on it:
PC Gamer: EVE Online Players Protest Against Monocle Prices/Microtransactions. Lasers Involved.
Escapist Magazine: EVE Online Players Flip a Lid Over Virtual Clothing
Kotaku: Furious Over Microtransactions, EVE Online Community Explodes with Rioting

Unfortunately, with this sort of reporting I don't think the message the players are trying to send is getting anywhere. The writers are too clever by half, and can't seem to be bothered to understand what the trouble is actually all about (or--they think their readers can't be arsed, so why bother explaining?)

I'm going to try to be a bit less clever and a bit more accurate, however. Hopefully I'll manage both.

Disclosure

I'm not an EVE player, never have been. I play and have played other MMOs, but not this one. I've got no connections to the devs, CCP, and I don't even personally know any players I'm aware of. I don't run a mag or site where I expect to groom CCP as a potential advertiser. I'm about as disinterested a party as you could ask for.

I found out about this from an article linked on Hacker News, and saw what appears to me to be a disconnect between the reports and the reality. So I decided to write this.

Dispute

OK, here's my interpretation of the deal.

CCP, the company behind EVE Online, has added the ability to buy in-game items with real-world money. This is already done in other games, so what's the big deal?

1. EVE has an internal economy based on player-developed content.
2. While bought items are presently for looks only, CCP has telegraphed that game-affecting items will later be sold.
3. The linkage between real-world money and game objects affects the value of the in-game money and objects.

In detail:
1. Players spend a lot of game time, paid for with game subscriptions, often multiple game subscriptions, to develop content which they can then reproduce and offer to other players through in-game mechanisms. Note that this goes beyond the usual "crafting" skills found in many games, it's more like the ability to fashion items in Second Life or a MUSH (as opposed to a MUD.)

By offering items chosen for their popularity to be offered by the game's developers, CCP is entering into competition with their own players within the game's economy. Even when the items offered are purely cosmetic with respect to gameplay. And in violation of their own earlier statements about their desire for a player-dominated game economy, issued to encourage players to generate content. Which expands CCP's game without CCP spending money to do it, in fact, players are paying to develop content for CCP. Now CCP is treading on those players.

2. Internal documents have been leaked and acknowledged which pretty well state that player sentiments and game atmosphere be damned, if selling game items brings in money, then the floodgates are open. The ability to purchase items will be expanded to include things that affect gameplay as well as purely cosmetic items.

Which means you can win the game (A) by playing, or (B) by buying yourself a brass ring. If (B) shows sufficient profit, then closing down option (A) to maximize those profits may well follow.

3. When the in-game, player-created, economy becomes linked to the ability to buy game items with real-world money, then the immediate effect is almost certainly going to be in-game inflation coupled with the devaluation of player-created content. This is true even for the purely cosmetic, even if an advance to sales of non-cosmetic game items never happens.

Basically players who create and sell in-game content are in the same position of business owners who have had the government enter their line of business. Doubt about the future of their product is created. The entity that controls currency and the business environment is not going to be subject to market controls like a normal competitor. All of the private company's investment in product development, marketing, corporate image, etc. is now destroyed.

The EVE situation is a bit less dramatic than the real world situation, but the analogy holds.

The Future

The players involved in the online protests are hoping to get either a reversal of the offending changes or a strong commitment to limitations to item sales from CCP that will reaffirm the player economy in the game.

From what I see, they aren't upset about the cost of cosmetic "vanity" items in the game. Though they may feel it's silly too spend the money, that's not their real beef. Treating it as if it is is disingenuous.

It's really about a company wanting to take a product sold to customers under one set of precepts, sold in a way to get customers to invest deeply in the product in both money and time, then change the rules suddenly to support a different business model that undermines those precepts--while trying to act as if it's otherwise to avoid losing the customers who are paying today's bills.

The only real hope I see for the protesters is if the real-money sales fail to support themselves. If the upset player choose not to buy items themselves, and convince enough of their fellow players that they shouldn't buy as well, then they'll probably get a hearing from CCP. Otherwise, the money from monocles will speak more loudly than they.

I especially welcome comments from EVE players on this article. Am I understanding the comments I'm seeing in your forums correctly?

Oil Skimmer Obama

Add a new nickname to the political scene. Alongside "Schoolbus Ray Nagin" we now have "Oil Skimmer Obama."

Senator George LeMieux has brought it out into the light in indisputable fashion, the President has made himself as much an obstacle to dealing with a disaster as Mayor Ray Nagin did in the disaster his city suffered. In fact, he's done worse. At least Schoolbus Ray didn't keep turning away schoolbuses after allowing his own fleet to be flooded out.


No matter what the President says about the value of oil drilling and offshore oil production (which he appeared to support with political actions taken just before the BP oil spill), we have a big spill now. It's possible to deal with this spill. The means for doing so are proven and in hand. But he's stood in the way the whole time, first through inactivity then through outright opposition.

Check out the Senator's page for the details on the oil spill response.

Tip O'Neill Caused the Gulf Oil Spill!

The latest news that Halliburton was involved in the terrible oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico stops too soon. Naturally, The Atlantic uncovers half the story, then they stop once they find they've twisted the path to find the answer they like.

Trying to blame the Great Satan Halliburton for causing the oil spill is just too silly for words, but the usual crowd of fools have bought the fairy tale and are spreading it faster than oil on water.

Of course, there's no blame to the group that's supposed to be over seeing the process. It's all Halliburton, Halliburton, Halliburton. If the Minerals Management Service (so-called) had all the data, why did they approve this operation?

Always an excuse, never an explanation. Liz Birnbaum, head of the MMS.

Fortunately, it's all easily explained as Bush's fault, as Secretary of the Interior Salazar demonstrates. Or Cheney's, what's the diff?

The government's response to the oil spill was quick, says Janet Napolitano, once they decided to get off their duff, three or four days later, and decided to start looking around to see if they can find the car keys and cell phone and stuff. So they could start making speeches and threats to BP.

Fortunately, the government is prepared. They've got a doughy white guy pre-positioned in the MMS's Gulf Region all ready to be set up for a fall if there is any public outcry against the government. Obama: "It's not my buck!" Napolitano: "We've been all over this, and besides, the buck never got here!" Salazar: "Don't look at me!" Birnbaum: "Keep looking, I'm not going down."
Lars Herbst: "Huh? Uh-oh..."

Fortunately, they can keep following the thread back. Another chunky white guy, Tip O'Neill, was behind the Federal Oil and Gas Royalty Management Act, emphasis on the "Royalty", which put the MMS in charge here. So blame the dead guy. If that doesn't stick, prepare a public confession ala 1984 for Mr. Herbst.

Volcanic Ash Jet Fighter Gap? Try a Rocket!

Now the news has discovered that not only have commercial aircraft been grounded by the Iceland volcano's ash cloud, but military aircraft are, too. Amazing minds they must have...

There is a solution, if only we had some ready--rocket fighters don't take in air, so they can fly fine, except for a bit of windscreen fogging, perhaps.

Paint over the damn swastikas and get the Rocket Planes on alert!

Millions into defense and where are the rocket planes when you need them? Somebody tell the politicians that this is the 21st century, already!

The Iceland Ash Cloud-Bad, Bad Planet!

Satellite Image of Iceland Volcano Ash Cloud, April 2010

This is what comes of living on a planet with poor eating habits. One minute you're just getting the air clean thanks to your anti-aerosol and pro-electric car regulation, the next minute your ill-fed planet lets loose a real trouser-burning bit of flatulence and there's more pollution in the air than has been released by all of mankind.

If it's not Iceland, it's the Philippines. I blame the diets rich in fermented fish.

Of course, it may be a good thing all those airplanes can't fly, right. After all, they create man-made pollution, unlike the Earth, which produces nice, sanctimoniously acceptable Earth-friendly pollutants that live in harmony with nature and the Great Cycle of Whatever.

Visible light image from space. That diesel soot you see at the bottom is Mother Earth living in harmony with herself.

It's very funny that so called scientists here on Earth decide that we're destroying the atmosphere with aerosol cans and fire extinguishers filled with chlorofluorocarbons (which, as it happened, saved many many human lives each year, particularly in data centers and aircraft). The ionosphere, in fact. A layer of the atmosphere which they've yet to show a way in which things down in the troposphere, where we live, interacts with in such a way as to get the CFCs from down here to up there.

There are two events well known to make the troposphere interact with the upper layers of the atmosphere, as it happens. Especially powerful hurricanes and volcanoes will do the job. They're about all that has the power. Sure, plenty of scientists claim that someday we might find scientific backing for what are presently bold-faced (ahem) assertions, that is that CFCs down here ruin the ionosphere, as do other pollutants that they have decided to popularize, focusing on human sources which are pretty well completely insignificant compared to what the Earth is up to all the time. But the fact is they'd have to be far more subtle than the well known and currently measurable interactions known today.

All Ur Air Pollushuns Belong to Uz

The fact is that the folks who push the clean air crap (as opposed to any clean air reality) want you down here fretting over fly-speck counts rather than living your life in a free and comfortable fashion. They know that the stuff close to you--like your aerosol cans and car--look a lot bigger to you than they really are in the greater scheme of thing. They use that against you to convince you that, as an enlightened and thoughtful individual (you are an enlightened and thoughtful individual, aren't you?) you want to make sure that you don't leave things dirtier than you found them, that you don't want to be the flutter of the butterfly's wing that brings the whole Earth's ecosystem crashing down after four billion years of loving care by Nature. So you need to circumscribe yourself.

Hairshirt life has a certain appeal to it. Otherwise even hermits in the desert wouldn't subscribe to it. But it doesn't fix anything when if comes to reality. It's a withdrawal from reality, and a surrender of any control or power over the larger situation. Which is what the present powers that be desire. They want you wasting your time working on how to save a milliwatt while they run your lives for you, keep you busy, and push you another step, or another mile, down the road to slavery.

Don't forget to touch your forelock as your eco-superiors ride past.

X-37B: So Secret it Ain't

It seems somebody's decided that there's something sinister and secret about the X-37B Spacecraft. Yahoo! News has dubbed it a Mystery Space Plane and even Fox News calls it a Mystery Space Plane with a Mystery Mission.

OoooOOOooooh. Creeeepy.

The X-37B Being Prepared for Launch
On Orbit, It Will Creep Out the Easily Duped

Not So Secret, Really.

Actually, this thing's been in the works long enough that its uses are pretty well known. But that doesn't sell soap or get internet clicks. Check it out:

Operationally Responsive Spacelift

Near Term Manned Space Logistics Operations(See the section on reusable logistical vehicles.)

Exactly why it should be such a mystery that the military feel the need for a reusable, quick-to-launch system is a mystery to me. The Shuttle is on its way to retirement and the military's been kicked off its manifest since the Columbia disaster. Current boosters like the Atlas and Delta vehicles are not quick to launch, not reusable. The ability of other nations to knock out satellites is already here, and that means there's a need to be able to field replacements quickly, especially since the military relies so heavily on satellites.

X-37B in Orbit, Stealing Ur Megahurtz

But mysteries sell, it appears. Even when it takes holding back well known information to create a mystery, as the idiots in major media outlets have done here.

If you'd rather have information than mystery, keep reading:

Operationally Responsive Space
Responsive Space
FAST Program

Of course, if you think we ought to hinder our own defense by keeping it difficult to get to space, you can go back to your regularly scheduled conspiracy theories...

Sleek White Exterior, All the Better to Read Your Mind
Tinfoil hats, ON!

Polish President's Air Crash: Watch the Money

The crash of the Polish president's aircraft is a terrible tragedy. The loss of life, and of such people, is a terrible thing for the families involved and for the nation of Poland.

Polish President's Web Site
Warsaw Web Site
(English Version, note: different content)


A wide variety of conspiracy theories are already making the rounds. So far, it appears to be nothing more than poor judgment on the part of the pilot. Attempting to make a landing in fog under such conditions is suicidal, perhaps there was something he thought he knew or that he could find out by doing what he did. If the thought was spoken, the audio tapes on the black boxes will let us know. Otherwise, we may never know.

The conditions of the flight and the landing attempt were unusual enough to be a breeding ground for conspiracy theories. You've wonder about the passenger list for the Polish aircraft when it crashed. Major corporations won't put so many of their eggs in one basket. Why did the Polish government do so? Not risking so many of their top government officials in one aircraft had to occur to them. Why did they go against such practices?

There are the theories of Russia's involvement. Russia has undertaken some extremely aggressive tactics in foreign relations lately. It's hard to see where there was a place for that here. It's bizarre that Russia's news is already pinning blame on the Polish president. President Kaczynski's record is against him here. He did order a pilot to attempt a risky landing sometime last year. There's no publicly available evidence at this time to suggest that that's what happened this time. Given the outcome of last year's outcry against him, it's possible he learned his lesson.

An opinion from a Polish Member of Parliament

It's hard to see how this could have been anything but a tragic accident caused by a pilot's poor judgement. There is one thing to consider, if you're looking for a conspiracy...

It may be worth keeping a tab on the finances of the pilot's family for a while. The pilot's actions, to all appearances, are foolhardy to the point of being suicidal. Perhaps there was more to it. Perhaps there was an offer made on the off chance that an opportunity would present itself. The nature of that offer?

Let's just say that individuals in potentially compromising positions take the saying, "Worth more dead than alive," way too seriously.

Watch the money.


Goodbye President Kaczynski and company. Fare thee well.
Poland, stay strong, stand firm. Your sacrifices will not be forgotten.

The Embassy of the Republic of Poland to the United States:
http://www.washington.polemb.net/

Poland's Tragedy is Our Tragedy

April Fools, It's the Census!

The ads for the census are really something else. You're shtoopid enuf to think nobody can figure out what public services are needed without it, right? That's what they're saying. Nobody can count cars on the road, count riders on buses, lay new pavement, if the mighty oracle of the Census does not speak first.

What a crock. It may be true for government that they refuse to provide for public services until they're beaten over the head (like government-collected figures could ever be used for that purpose!), it being so much more interesting to spend all that taxpayer revenue on kickback inducing projects, vote-buying feel-goodism, and photo-ops. The census doesn't get money into any district, though.

What it's supposed to be is a way of apportioning seats in the House of Representatives. End of story. What it has become, however, is a data-mining operation for the social engineers in the government who want to keep you off balance, under control, and fully milked of everything they can take from you to buy somebody else's vote (or maybe yours.)

April Fools, America! Your "selfless" servants are here to rule you from the other end of the leash.

Oh, and let's not forget what a fantastic opportunity this is for scammers to trick you by pretending to with the Census. April Fools! We stole your identity! All ur bankz belong to us.