Friday, June 15, 2012

Interpretive dance

     Since the goon derps, or more accurately, mittenz, declared that causing shit is so much fun, he's thinking of sponsoring the 100 million per 10 miner kills event, indefinitely.  Actually though, it's only T2 boats like hulks and mackinaws, because those are the ones they get 10x the 100 million bounty on in profit from tech sales.  Not surprisingly, non-ADHD players, who don't mind mining, think this blows chunks and are complaining loudly about it.  I believe, that is warranted, but mining types need to understand what they are up against though.

     Since lil Alex shot his mouth off in Iceland, mining-type people have been quick to pull bits and pieces out of the AUP and EULA in attempts to justify their positions in the same way that CCP did to ban the asshole for a month, and it's no news flash who that asshole is.  Problem is, trying those justifications from a player position is never going to work.  CCP did that because at that very time, they were trying to hype DUST and sell the idea of it and Sony to the gaming world.  Some big mouthed player rep attempting to get other players to try to get a fellow player to commit suicide, is bad PR.  Bad for sales.  Bad for getting new players on board, even for a free console game.  CCP likes the notoriety their game has produced and generates.  As far as the bottom line goes, so far, "notoriety" is paying the bills just like "popularity" would and it's still printing their accounting books in the black, so it's all good.  In the MMO world, they're the sort of the dangerous guy that it's cool to "know", but not really to talk to much.  In the MMO world, there's not much news aside from updates.  In Eve, most of the news is generated by or from the players, either from actions inside the game, in the meta game, or from updates that don't cut the mustard.  Controversy in the news is CCP's bread and butter when it comes to Eve, so when there are big rip-offs, scams, battles or general uproars in the player community, that is good Eve press.  "12 man mining fleet gets ganked for billions in high sec" is good game PR.  "12 man mining fleet drains a 9 belt system in record time" doesn't mean shit to CCP.  At the same time, all the negative player related press may be great for notoriety, but it isn't great for getting new, non-griefer players interested in electronic spaceships.  It's actually fairly shitty.

     At the same time, CCP is well aware of the player types and roughly how long their fuses are.  The ADHD griefer types who take all their problems from the real world and like to bring them in game to bully other players, especially in un-armed ships, have relatively short fuses and short attention spans.  When they lose the ability to cause shit, or get their electronic adrenaline shakes, even for a short period of time, they leave.  Miners, industrial types and likely even a number of mission runners have much longer fuses.  They're more patient players and their fun doesn't come from adrenaline fixes.  If they lose the ability to play their style of game in a more open game like Eve, it'll take them a lot longer to get pissed off enough to leave.  CCP knows this.  Unfortunately for players that aren't assholes, you aren't only up against the assholes and CCP, but you are up against your own nature too.  For anyone that can sit there and mine for hours, run around checking on and setting up BP activities, or doing PI, or even running missions, that takes patience.  The kind of patience that acts FOR CCP when it comes to the point where a "carebear" is pissed off about the assholes in the game.

     So, in a game that is run by a company that favours the behaviour of short attention span assholes, and is also conveniently the final arbitrator in player conflicts, they will do the interpretive dance and favour the news makers, the assholes, over the patient players who will take a lot more shit than they should.  CCP tosses the "patient" players a bone every once in a while, like art or graphics updates, or like the new mining barge proposals.  Even the patient players have a limit though and i guess time will tell how well CCP juggles the griefer's ADHD and the "carebears" patience.

2 comments:

  1. As someone who suffers from ADHD, I find your post extremely offensive and generalizing. I don't think you should refer to people you don't like as people who actually have to deal with a real illness. Frankly, I think you should take this post down, or at least edit it, and issue an apology to people who, like me, struggle with the ignorance of people like you.

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    1. Well, I DO have pity for people with "real illnesses" (not including "illnesses" that MOs play up for big $$$ on drugs). ADHD is nothing that some mental effort and a decent diet won't fix. I too was diagnosed as a poor, little "victim" with ADHD, but it turns out all I needed was some mental effort and a healthy diet. Oh wait. I just said that. ;)

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