Mittani messed up and specifically called out a player and named names. He apologized, and the player in question didn't kill himself.
CCP didn't go out of business and DUST514 is still planning on being released.
The most annoying part of this? The overdramaticized polarization of the event. You either have people that want Mittani's head on a stake or apologists defending him.
More people have probably come closer to considering suicide from being forced to listen to DNS' annoying voice and constant need to hear said voice the past two alliance panels than Mittani being a dick.
But oh no, this guy recently got divorced and was depressed so he used EVE to fill the void created in his life. Welcome to most of the player base? That might sound insensitive and this may be a generalization, but I think its safe to say for a lot of people, the amount of EVE time they spend logged in directly relates to how their real life is going.
This post has kind of strayed from the Mittani topic, he crossed a line, i'm not arguing that, but I do think the larger issue is what kind of game EVE tends to be for people. If you want to blame anyone, blame CCP with their "EVE is real" campaign. EVE isn't fucking real. Its a damn video game and people forget that. Its a video game where you're not guaranteed a fun experience when you log in. Being space rich in game means absolutely nothing in real life. The only thing more unhealthy than escaping into a virtual world because real life sucks is expecting other people to change their play style because of your already bad decision.
If you were playing company baseball and you talked to the other team's captain before the game and asked him to let Geoff from marketing get a home run because he's having a rough time at home, would the other team's captain be an asshole for not allowing this? No. Because by doing so would compromise the integrity of the game. Sure its just a game for fun, but whats the point of playing a game if you're not actually going to play the game because you allow external factors into play.
A lot of people will probably read this and get offended saying that i'm being too emotionally detached, but this is because they're too emotionally involved.
tl;dr EVE may invoke a much broader range of real emotions, but that doesn't change the fact that its a game. The amount of time you spend playing the game is real, but that decision was yours to make. Expecting other people change what they do because of your poor decision making is just asinine.
What made me lol was the fact that everybody and their fucking brother in the blogosphere felt the need to write a :walloftext: blog entry about it, as you said, for or against.
ReplyDeleteI enjoy talking about Mittens from the aspect of "an interesting psychosocial case study" (more psycho than socio, unless you add -path to the end of each, then it's all even in the wash lol) ... but really, people took it to the "ohnoez it's like those kids on facebook and people post mean things about them and they go and kill themselves because of mean facebook posts" level...
\o/ "white knights" and "slacktivism" ftw or some such shit.
I suppose Widdershins is right and I truly AM a moron, because Mittens "humor" is well outside my grasp... :-/
I dunno bro. I think that Mittani did fuck up pretty bad, but at the same time there is definitely media sensationalism at play. In the end, the issue was decided on the net impact and escalation, rather than the event itself.
ReplyDeleteI just want things to go back to being about internet spaceships.
Agreed. He tripped over a HUGE "social faux pas" issue OUTSIDE the game community, and once that got out, you stir up the slacktivist machine, you'll endure the worst criticism and flaming possible .... for 32 seconds til something new catches their eye lol, but till THEN....it's hell to pay.
DeleteI keep telling people it's going toward :totallysafehisec:, that writing has been on the wall since I started playing 2 yrs ago.
Only with things like Panelgate and well, now Mittens has decided to slam Jita... again, not that I disagree, but I think he's giving the bears the ammo they need to finally push for a truly, FOR REAL consentual-PvP-only "truly safe" hisec. I have to question: deliberately?
After all, the Goon motto may be "We're not out to ruin THE game, we're out to ruin YOUR game," but.... what if Mittens has decided it's time the Swarm go find some other MMO to roflstomp around?
Were that the case, it's very well likely he would deliberately do things to undermine CCP, and give everyone else a nice big "FUCK YOU!" on his way out the door. After all, he's no longer King of Space, and it's not "his game" anymore, so ... why NOT ruin it?
Just a line of thinking I've had the past cpl days.