The author of the Gaming MoD blog sent a very passionate view on the whole SuicideGate ordeal. In the aftermath of the whole “damage control / it was a joke / the Wiz doesn’t really care / HFTU He shouldn’t even apologize” load we have seen, the TL’DR couldn’t be more fitting; A reality check is due for all EVE Online players, not just GoonSwarm Federation.
View: [Eve] Is it right?
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As the title suggests today’s entry concerns Eve Online. However I’m going to take a break from my usual, light-hearted self-centred efforts and put my serious face on. Allow me first however, to present some harsh truths about Eve before I carry on.
See, Eve is a game that is dearly beloved to me. Has been for nearly four whole years. Within that game lies just about all types of person – loyal friend, to scumbag scammer; long-term allies to lifelong shitheads. A lot of people lie, cheat and steal within Eve as, I’m regularly reading everywhere, they can’t do it in real life. Makes me wonder what will happen if the world ever truly goes to shit – will everybody’s inner douchebag appear? As a reflection of what humanity harbours deep within itself, Eve is a dark and frightening place for someone who believes that rose-tinted glasses are the only way forwards and that everybody wants to help each other.
For years I’ve tried to play the game my way. Helping others where possible, supporting my friends, and stalking my enemies with a loaded set of guns while trying to keep out of people’s faces and be as neutral as possible – a former alliance of mine was trying really hard to get into 0.0 and form New Switzerland, we were that neutral. I have a set of strong morales in real life and this carries through into the game. I have no desire to grief anybody and nor do I have any intention of being a dick about things. My way of having fun conflicts with the vast majority of Eve, but thankfully I have enough knowledge of the game and enough PVP nous to get by more or less intact. It’s probably the main reason my neutrality gig never quite worked out as I will never compromise my morals in order to get a competitive edge over somebody.
Keep that moral blah-blah in mind.
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Now last weekend, CCP Games held their annual Fanfest gathering in Reykjavík, Iceland. It’s a big event for the Eve community whereby lots of people that play internet spaceships go get drunk and listen to a lot of upcoming plans for the game(this year’s focus being DUST 514, an upcoming FPS on PS3 that directly links with Eve) and see people they wouldn’t otherwise see. And for those that can’t make it, there’s a HD TV feed that can be purchased over the course of the weekend to watch the event live.
One such feature of this weekend is an Alliance Panel, whereby a few people from various alliances cock-slap people in each other’s faces about what they’ve done in the last year, why they’re mighty and awesome and other stuff like that. Some are quite funny, others are yawn-inducing – but credit to all for getting up on stage in various levels of drunkenness and having the balls to speak in front of a room full of strangers.
This year’s Panel was being graced once again by The Mittani, grandmaster of Goonswarm. For the second year running he has been elected chairman of the Council of Stellar Management(CSM), a player-elected council of players who go to Iceland every now and again for a free holiday, and also act as a go-between betwix players and games developers. They listen to the players, take their ideas on board and tell CCP what we want, where CCP is going wrong, etc. To CCP’s credit they actually listen to some of these ideas(part of the reason why the latest expansion, Crucible, was so good) and the chairman, The Mittani, is widely credited with both unifying the CSM and pushing CCP for transparency and improvements both with the company and the game itself.
And this year’s panel was basically a chance for the rather ego-centric Mittani to flop his cock about in a mighty fashion about how not only had he been re-elected as chairman, but also the first CSM member to break the 10k votes margin.
As he took the stage, this guy – the leader of Goonswarm, and still leader of the CSM – began his powerpoint presentation. From what I hear it was quite amusing, I haven’t seen the video yet but that’s because I’m not sure I want to. Part of this involved his alliance coming up against a guy with 22 accounts, and repeatedly ganking him. For those of you reading this, in Eve when you lose your ship there is no restart button – it’s gone. Part of this is the reason why so many people are put off Eve. Hey guys guess what, if you crash your car you don’t get a fucking restart button. It’s about time it was removed from a game. But I’m sidetracking. From what I can make out, the guy with 22 accounts wasn’t a combatant and just sat there mining ice, a commodity that can be easily sold as after refining it’s used for multiple purposes. Once his livelihood was gone, the guy was quite upset it would appear. He claimed to have had a rough life in recent months, dealing with a divorce and depression amongst other things. He was also scammed out of about 1.3bil ISK, which in RL terms is about… £60? I’m guestimating.
After the scam he sent this mail to someone, and this someone forwarded it to his boss – The Mittani. Who put it into his powerpoint presentation. And read it out for the crowd to mock the guy with him.
So now it looks like you still gank me and I work hard to keep going in this game. Sorry I am very mad that was more plexs for my guys. Yes I can make that back easily mining if I could mine. Now I will just get popped by you guys no matter what, and 400mil is nothing. That is like 3 maybe 4 hours mining for me. Sorry it is hard when I have had own alliance members send people out to gank me. Now I fell I have been suckered into giving away 1.3 bil isks.
Since my divorce all I want to do is die, and I have been doing tha tallot in this game.
I am sorry I did not understand. I am just sick and tired of sitting here allone and having to play with myself. Everyone that I have helped out in this game and in real life just takes what you have and that is it. Never to hear from them again. l I am getting tired of everything. It was nice mining ice while it lasted took my mind off everything. Even though some people may say I am a bot I am not. I run all 22 accounts myself it is not easy but it keeps me sane.
Sorry for making you mad at me. I will leave you allone now and never enter your space again. I will be off looking for a nice quiet corner somewhere.
See, after the presentations are over there’s a Q&A session with all the guys who made a presentation. One such question went forwards to The Mittani.
Questioneer: Just something about the guy with 22 accounts. I think he moved to the Drone Regions and now he’s got kicked out of there as well.
The Mittani: Incidentally, if you want to make the guy kill himself, his name is The Wiz. Its “T-H-E SPACE W-I-S”. He has his own corp. Find him.
Now take a step back, everyone, and read that again. Someone just encouraged a room full of people – and many more hundreds watching at home via the live stream – to find this guy and make him commit suicide.
This has caused much anger amongst the community, many blog posts appearing to discuss it. One of the main news outlets within the community has exploded with traffic here.
Not surprisingly The Mittani’s crew are backing their man; it was just a harmless joke. Sure, a harmless joke that was planned for a powerpoint presentation. Planned in advance. However everybody else seems to be against him and calling for him to stand down from office.Some are saying The Wis was lying about it all and was attention seeking, and all this was brought down upon himself by himself.
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| Eve Online: Damage Control Unit. Mittani Edition. |
The Mittani appears to be repentant and has since apologised both to the players and The Wis. However in the direct aftermath when there appeared to be no consequence to his actions, The Mittani didn’t give much of a fuck. It’s only now since presented with the possibility of losing his long-fought-for position of Internet Somebody that he’s coming out fighting tooth and nail to save his position on the CSM.
My thoughts on this as soon as I heard about it? I was enraged. A lot of the arguing about the shit “joke” comes about because the guy was drunk and made his presentation as head of Goonswarm, not as chairman of the CSM.
Personally I don’t give a fuck who it was that gave that presentation. Some things you just do not joke about with a fellow human being. If The Wis was making it up and it was a cry for attention/help, then chances are he was genuinely depressed.
I should know. I suffered quite badly with the fucking illness for many years(why, I refuse to go into) and it made me alienate many people that I once considered close to me. Even today I’m still trying to rebuild the bridges I burnt and I still suffer from depression. It doesn’t just fuck off and leave you. It haunts you and your actions for years. My girlfriend has been a tremendous aid to me as have the few remaining friends I have left and there are still days I want to throw it all away. I even changed, from an extrovert who rarely stayed indoors to being full of anxiety about silly things like answering a telephone or starting a job at a new workplace. Throughout this however not once did I think about killing myself. In fact the main reason I call myself Master of Darkness on various places across the web(including this blog) is because that’s what I had to do to conquer the depression. I embraced it full-on and enjoyed being miserable. It helps me to see that there is always a sunnier side to everything and that there’s no way in hell that things could be as bad as that ever again. And if it does then I’m mentally better prepared for it. I mastered my inner darkness.
But despite my online handle – MoD, Versuvius Marii, Former NC, ManicMadMan or disbelievingfate – I am the same person throughout. I have no persona to hide behind, I am who I am.
I don’t give much of a shit about the excuses behind it. Some things you do NOT joke about. And if the guy is genuinely depressed which it really does sound like coming from my own experiences, then this is the last thing he needs.
Eve Online – a reflection of humanity in its darkest moments. And yet I’ll continue to play as out there somewhere within New Eden are other like-minded people who don’t tolerate bullshit like this. There aren’t many of them and I’m fairly sure that when Eve players find out about this post I’ll be trolled quite harshly for my opinions. But I don’t care. The subject of depression is a touch personal for me and I’ll willingly breach my neutrality to take a stance against insensitive pricks like The Mittani who’s only really out to save his own skin from this point on – the damage is done so it’s probably too late. I hope he gets his position of power stripped from him and I hope that the more people hear about this, the better. We should be helping those who are mentally weaker than ourselves, not publicly mocking them and encouraging our friends to make the sufferer kill themselves.
- MoD
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Eve's a game about grudges, is it not?
ouch
"We should be helping those who are mentally weaker than ourselves"
Survival of the fittest…. Instead we have come to a point where more gobshites roam this planet then a few.
How will we cull the human race if the quantity of people on it continualy grow without allowing their own stupidity to reduce the populous?
All said and done… I hope the wiz is in good form…. (Bah, I am weak, cull me!!)
So we can't make joke about depression because you had it yeah? okay.
How about 'die in a fire' diaf? Why are you not mentioning the hundreds of people who use that daily in the game? even CCP sound wave said it on eve TV
i would bank that more people have lost loved ones in house fires and alike than some pathetic case of the 'poor me's' , and yet this is used so widely its become a meme.
Feeling strongly about something that has effected you is easy, and doing so means nothing, standing up for something you feel is wrong despite having not being effected by it,. now that's the mark or a true cause.
it hypocritical fools like you that make the world a bad place,. the only reason you care about this is because you can relate to it,…. you sir are pathetic, its best you don't go outside and answer the phone
" if you crash your car you don’t get a fucking restart button".
but in RL there aren't many people who are on the road looking for your car to crash into, are there?
EVE devolved into a dumb pew-pew fest, most of the time with no reason other then seeing something explode.
I have long felt that most players are disconnected from their normal concepts of good and evil while playing. That is a shame. There IS virtual karma, and one does not need to be a Mensa candidate to see it.
Let's say you get griefed while mining… in a barge you have no chance of fighting back, you are being ganked if you like it or not. Does that anger end there?
No. You shut down Eve and go kick your dog. Or wife, or kids. Or your anger can lead to bad judgement too. Some might get drunk or do a drug or two; others might get in a powerful car and go out speeding.
Bottom line is we are all affected emotionally by things that happen in Eve. Most people can seperate the two worlds, but some people, for many possible reasons, can not.
There IS virtual Karma. Props to the OP for an honest and engaging article.
(Now I brace for the swarm of downvotes that inevitably come after speaking truth on Eve 24).
You obviously have never seen the PvP Hulk video…. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndWUlntJ58U
i'll give you a plus man. I work with the severely depressed and mentally ill, and know too well of what you speak. Mittens is trash
Oh mighty MoD, hail! I too know about depression, as I buried my younger brother just 3 months ago.
I am still working through it. I know how tough and cruel this world can be as I watched helplessly for 21 days as he slowly and painfully died. Eve can be just as cruel. I use Eve as a kind of therapy to work out my frustrations. If some asshat ganks your Mackinaw, you go grab your Brutix and pound him to scrap, leave him in a pod to sslloowwllyy make his way home. That is how you deal with a gank. Not whining in a mail to their alliance leader crying about it all. You then open yourself to ridicule. Mod, you and Wis need to man up! If you 2 can't, then go back to Mom's house, plug in the pacifier, slap a diaper on your ass , then crawl into a crib and stay there. And for God's sake, realize that this is a game, and if you can't handle Eve, then there is no way in Hell you can handle this society we live in. Freakin' grow a pair!
An interesting article for sure.
However it doesn't change the fact that EvE is a game, yes it often brings out our darker, destructive scamming bastardry, because there are no consequences for being an asshole, I should know I am one hell of an asshole.
All this boils down to is the politically correct bullshit that we have been seeing for a long time, it was a joke at the end of the day, yes I agree in bad taste however grounds for a 30 day band, I hardly think so. I can't stand Mattini,however in his defence, he did apoligize and step down from the CSM.
On another point, he never actually said kill himself in real life, he merely stated where to find his ingame character, and ofcourse we all blow each other up and kill each other ingame.
it wasn't a joke, it was apart of his presentation…. how would you feel if you spelled out your handle and told all his retard minions to hunt you down?
Wait, i'm sure you'll be ever clever and say "more pvp for me" and hide how shitty it could make someone hobby and escape from stress that eve is for many people
It's just a game.. yeah.
Mittens pre-prepared this for a presentation, any argument of alcohol is gone, so I'm sick of hearing that even mentioned. Some people actually play this game (amazingly to me, even being a miner) 12 hours a day. A game does then become your life. I was once laid up with two full leg casts, and remember my days of playing Diablo II all day, so I can sort of understand these people… lol.
When a person invests so much time in a game like eve, one where you have many eve friends that you mine, fight, and fart around with, these EVE friends slowly just become… friends. There's a reason why games like eve and sites like facebook are clearly bad for your mental health. I know it, but damned if I keep playing it.
And when someone has 22 accounts, and they actually PLAY them all, even someone like idiot mittens should realize they are heavily invested in the game. This is a sad thing, yes, but this emotional investment would make me easily believe a game event like losing all your ships would cause devestation, in game and out. This life isn't special in any way, because mmo's are packed with such people, especially during hard times like this. So next time, just say, "go get some help" and carry on. Not "hey everyone drive this guy to suicide" or "HTFU fag" just move on.
Making fun of depression doesn't make you look cool. It makes you look pathetic.
MetaGaming at it's best.
yeh baby
I think even though it is a game…… online persecution of players is already garnering court cases with cyber bulling and sucides(the student in US who is facing gaol for harrasing the gay student who sucided)….and here mittani actually wants players to go and harras that player even more to "kill himself". Joke aside.Being "its just a game" quotes, and all the players saying man up…seriously it went beyond gameplay when it became a powerpoint and was brought into the real world for everyone to pick on this player till he did real world harm to himself. Whatever is wrong with "the wis" is not our problem…..whether we agree or not its a problem….but promoting this bullying is stupid childish and would not be surprised if someone brings a charge against mittani…he really should know better.
yah
Except if The Wis was lying about it and not serious. Then he's done a legal wrong. Considering he's still alive, and apparently playing eve still, makes you look foolish.
Considering this is the THIRD suicide related event to happen in eve, in a month, but the only one that achieved this level of attention you can start finding that perhaps the community is either deeply depressed or considers saying they are suicidal to be a correct jest.
Or you can blindly attack without pulling back to look at the facts while calling people you don't approve of idiots. Maybe toss in a /smugface name.