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?

Footloose, yeah. Hollywood has Alzheimer's

I really feel sorry for today's youth. Heck, I haven't given up being a youth just yet, so count me in for some of that pity.

What do they get for movies? Re-makes of Footloose, Private Benjamin, and Red Dawn. More computer effects, blander performances, whoop-de-doo. At least back in the 80s these movies were new. It's not like we didn't know what we were going to get with Goldie Hawn joining the army, but at least we weren't watching an "updated" rehash of it. Maybe this time Private Benjamin won't be so girly or something. Who knows or cares?

This is cooler than Hollywood's latest production of Footloose

The worst part is that while these flicks are filling theaters, today's young crowd won't get to experience schlock like Laserblast and Yog. How uninspiring is it to know what you're gonna get when you walk into the theater every time? No highs, no lows, just regurgitated pabalum. Ewww.

Even the bad ones were entertaining. Not intentionally, usually, but hey if there aren't any bad ones how can you appreciate the good ones? How many titles was Laserblast issued under? I saw it twice, under a different name each time, both times as a second feature, which came up first in line because of my movie watching schedule. I got to find out just how witty my friends were in that movie. We had to sit it through to see the main feature each time. (Barbarella and Zardoz, now that you ask. It's not like we went to see Doctor Zhivago or something.)

Why is the 80s the magic period for movies, anyway? Plus, if you must do remakes, why not take a sleeper that never quite made it outside its niche and file off some rough edges, make it something everyone can love? Or pick the ones where the technology wasn't quite there to support the story back then, give it the treatment it deserves.

Because the whole point is being risk-averse, of course. I know that. The point isn't to make good movies, the point is to min-max dollars out of people's wallets.

Personally, I'm all about making sure these things are all failures. The first one was good enough. Heck, I've bought some of these 80s movies in 3 formats now. I don't need a remake. I'm ready for the theaters to be empty echoing caverns while I'm at home in front of my big screen, eating popcorn made in any kind of oil I care to make it in, with candy and soda that doesn't require a second mortgage.

But if I hear there's a remake of Food of the Gods or Them, maybe I'll go have a look. There's plenty of schlock out there that really could use another look.

Luddite Security: Blame the Victim

A student makes a motion sensor out of some electronics and a soda pop bottle. What happens? The school gets evacuated on a bomb scare.

A college girl peps up her sweatshirt with a blinky LED circuit. What happens? She's surrounded by 40 armed security guards, ready to kill her.

Somebody accidentally leaves their electronics project on a seat in mass transit. What happens? The train and station are evacuated, and outside roads are blocked during the investigation.

And let's not forget the 2007 Boston LED blinkenlight bomb scare. Fortunately, the two arrested had charges against them dropped, but not before lots of Bad Stuff happened to them.

Star Simpson's breadboard LED circuit was treated as a "hoax device". As if she was trying to create a bomb scare. Security misinterprets the device. Rather than approach her and ask, they immediately assume she's a suicide bomber because of things they are imagining about her. Their imagination turns out to be wrong. This was not a spy thriller movie with the bad guys walking around with movie-style exposed wire and battery bombs strapped to their body. But Star is responsible for their Luddite imaginations. In fact, as stated in the article, they're "shocked" that someone would walk into an airport like this.

Yeah, we're all supposed to imagine the same stupid things you do, rather than our own things--like how much fun it would be to have a blinking LED display on our clothes rather than a screen-printed swear word.

At the evacuated school, rather than find out the story by talking to the kid, they called the police. How many opportunities were missed to get the real story from someone known to the people at the school, with a known home address, at a school that claims to promote technical creativity? Those opportunities were cast aside so that the horrible soda bottle with wires could be examined by a police robot. Woo-hoo, your tax dollars at work!

Then, rather than admit it was all nothing they had to go looking for trouble. The soda bottle wasn't a bomb. It wasn't even dangerous. But maybe there's something we can use to justify our stupidity at the home! Search the home and look for something that might look like a bomb from the movies! Then we're the great heroes, not Luddite fools.

So, after the fiasco caused by the school administration and police at the school, they go running off to invade the kid's family home. Cause? The kid didn't have a bomb, but he had electronics, which, like, you know, are part of a bomb so we got to find the rest of the bomb. That we conjured up out of our imaginations in the first place.

Wonder why all kids can do is play video games? How do we treat youngsters who like to make things for themselves? Build up a breadboard, get 40 cops pulling guns on you. Build up a homespun project, get the police searching your house, looking for an excuse to justify their own over-reaction. Go back to your Playstation, Billy. And don't let me catch you taking out the screws, either.

Don't scare the idiots. They'll make you pay.