The Value of (In)security

I got to reading a bit of the forum thread for the SVT ballot dev blog.  There are some wonderful quotes such as "TEST vote, please ignore."  (I love that.  Sorry TEST.  It's just funny, in a dark sort of way.)  There is the usual tinfoil hat-ery going on, even though null blocs didn't sweep the elections.  There is the important idea that no voting system can represent people who cannot vote.  Most interesting to me is the sentiment that null bloc candidates are bad.  I'm not a null bloc guy, and don't currently want to be one.  But I don't understand the sentiment.

Sharing time:  I've had the fun experience of talking with a wide range of Eve players, with some serious conversations with people from all areas of the game aside from WH space.  But I've dipped into that area enough to know a thing or two about it.  There seem to be a few major types of players.  High sec carebears, in the bad way.  High sec carebears in the "I can't be bothered with that paranoia" camp.  Low sec FW.  Low sec Pirates.  Null players.  Give-no-shits pvpers.

Out of all of these groups, one particular mindset intrigues me.  A particular quote comes to mind.  The context first: On my industrial character I was explaining offhandedly that I was going to have a chat with a Goonswarm player, and I was rather excited to see what was going to happen.  I knew very little about the upcoming conversation aside from broad strokes, and was just interested to hear a new perspective.  The pilot I mentioned this to said "You shouldn't talk to goons."

The player who said this is not a bad player.  In fact he is a great asset, and knows a lot about the game.  But (and I am assuming this) he has bough into the "Null/Goons are Bad" mentality that probably most of the non-goon players have.  Being in a new corp on my industrial character, I have been reintroduced to the high sec mindset that low sec and null are dangerous, and people who live there are bad.  These assumptions blanket a large number of players.  Some rightfully so, some for no good reason I can fathom.  Yes, low sec is more dangerous to a usual resident of high sec than just ignoring the orange and red systems.  But it's not instant death, and low sec can be a shockingly fun place to fly around in, chat in, and generally mess around with.

So where is this going?  In the forum posts on the SVT ballots there was a lot of talk and inference that null bloc candidates would ruin the game for high sec players.  While I think this is categorically false, I think it also shows an interesting lack of perspective.  There is, simply put, a lot of game mechanics that do not work or exist in high sec, or only work in neutered ways.  Without the perspective of low and null sec players, the CSM would be worse!

Here a few things most HS-only players will never or very rarely encounter:  Cynos, Capitals, many POS functions, player-driven industry infrastructure, non-targeted warp disruption, smart bombs, most black ops functionality, the finer points of aggression and crime watch, anything related to sovereignty, bridging, most forms of pvp aside from ganking, POCOs, and many other topics I am forgetting.

Those are huge chunks of the game.  Some of them have real impacts on players who only live in HS, even if they do not realize it.  At this risk of sounding like an elitist or apologist, many of the mechanics I mentioned above also require more planning, investigation, and critically thinking through the mechanics before actually engaging in something, compared to running missions or mining in high sec.  One cannot simply cyno anywhere and hope to survive.  Managing crimewatch is easier than it was, but still requires a certain understanding beyond "Wait for the other guy to shoot first".

I am also confused as to what the alternative would be to a CSM with a healthy dose of null representatives.  All High sec players?  No offense to my empire allies, but that sounds like a bad recipe.  If Eve is to have the conflict and tension that it needs to survive, we need people on the CSM who understand the finer points of what is used to create player conflict, and the mechanics by which that conflict is negotiated.  If no one blew up ships, Eve would become a very lonely,dull, and economically sterile place.  After all, asteroid minerals, salvage, and meta modules gathered in high sec have to be used for something, or those items will lose any real value.  I doubt those NPCs are really helping ship turnover rates in New Eden all that much.

And hey, if all the null sec players bitch and moan about some idea while everyone else is silent tune your ear to understand why the moaning is happening.  CSM 7 had, at my count, at least 50% null candidates.  Not a peep was heard from them against the moon redistribution.  That alone may cause more "strife" for null sec than anything since player sov space was created.  You might even think they supported it...  So for any carebears in high sec who think null candidates are killing the game, null sec CSMs may just have fought for a huge change that will help keep your goods in demand come this June.

Man Makes MMORPG Mad

I'm going to piss people off with this, so if you don't like that, you can stop reading.

The Mittani got drunk at the Alliance Panel at Fanfest, made some very poor comments about suicide, and now is getting railroaded all over *gasp* the Eve blogoshpere.

Players (Human Beings) in Eve use terms like "rapecage", "rape face", homosexual slurs, racist slurs, and probably some things I have never heard.  Players in FPS games hump dead opponents.  Duke Nukem talks about sexual acts on amputated body parts.  "Gamers" have a lexicon that would make a nun burst into holy flames due to proximity.  This is insensitive and childish and immature.

This is also the state of online gaming, the internet and locker rooms in the United States, and I would wager in the world at large, in the bored male demographic.  What Alex Gianturco said was something I assume he regrets, but was nothing even remotely beyond the pale for gamers to hear.  This incident speaks more to the sad state of discourse in the greater gaming community at large, and if anything should a be point for gamers to rally behind.  Not to rally against one drunk guy, but to rally against all gamers who use such terms in any context anywhere.

If you want to get indignant, call, email and riot in every game you play against anyone who uses such terms.  Report every incident of any offensive language you encounter.  Stop using it yourself.  But until you can say you have never told someone to die in a fire, you've never drunk the tears of another player, and you've never done anything that could have made someone angry or mad or depressed, please spare the world your righteous indignation at one example of an otherwise pervasive trend.

Quickie Update - CSM Endorsements

Real Life and Eve Corp issues have dominated the last few weeks of my down time and will continue to do so, hence my apparent fall of the face of the earth.  That said, I wanted to get my CSM Votes/Endorsements on the record. I have three votes, and here's how I cast them:

Hans Jagerblitzen

I listened to many podcasts, read many blogs and posts, and Hans is my favorite amongst many good candidates this year who seem to be using the logic of a rising tide lifting all ships, as opposed to focusing on one or two pet areas.  But he was the most outspoken and eloquent, and got my vote.  He also found my blog, which means he was looking rather hard for people to ask to vote for him.  I hope he works as hard at solving issues on the CSM and his campaign seems to promise.

Seleene

Love him, hate him, he knows CCP, he knows how to work with them, and he isn't afraid to call CCP out on things.  I am voting for him because I think he brings a little "insider understanding" to the CSM side of the table, and he can still comport himself well when talking about various issues.  I particularly liked his responses on the last Voices from the Void debate.  Which brings me to:

Two Step

As has been said by many, Two Step turned an alternate position into a full position just by giving more shits than he was expected, or even needed to.  If you haven't seen Two Step talking, posting, interviewing, or being generally available, please do not vote - you are not paying attention.

Interestingly, I was initially not going to vote for any incumbents, figuring most will easily make it back in.  But after listening to Trebor, Two Step and Seleene on Voices, I realized they all deserved another round because they already understand the CSM - They already work together, and the show was less of a debate as opposed to each member explaining what they had done, and what the others did to help.  That speaks loudly to me, and I support all three.  But I only had two votes left, so them's the breaks.