Ragdoll Metaphysics: Good Grief, The Victory Of Eve's Space Goons
Something Awful's Eve Online wing, GoonSwarm, has claimed what will likely go down in internet history as its greatest victory. It was an event described in a Metafilter headline thus: "It's as if Apple dissolved Microsoft".
That's an incredibly accurate diagnosis of the events of last week. Thanks to a brutal betrayal of trust by an Eve player, the Something Awful superpower has used the game's strange organisational mechanisms to take their arch-rival's name away from them. Band Of Brothers (BoB), once the most feared of alliances, is now gone for good. The Goon victory wasn't a great battle, nor a tremendous war brought to an end. Instead it was an inspired defector that led to the dissolution of one of Eve's most significant brands. It was a classic instance of underhand warfare tactics from the real world: sabotage by a traitor, trashing vital infrastructure, and leaving the gates of the fortress unlocked.
So what does it all mean? And how did it all come to pass? What it means is that upwards of several million man hours of work have been instantly obliterated, and a relatively peaceful region of Eve Online has been plunged into fresh war. The equivalent real-world costs are almost incalculable, given the sheer number of factors involved, and the thousands of people who have contributed to BoB. But it's safe to say that we're talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars in virtual investment put at risk.
The opportunity for the Goons was provided by one of BoB's most senior members, who played under the moniker of "Haargoth". He had became disillusioned with his alliance, and was ready to defect. Band Of Brothers, one of primary super-powers of the Eve galaxy, are a formidable opponent, and have already done harm to GoonSwarm on several occasions. At the time of their dissolution they were embarking a new, all-out campaign against Goon space.
The size and wealth of BoB meant that they were tough to take on with brute force. They were (and remain) a military giant backed by a rich industrial superplex, operated by thousands of individual players. Their entrenchment in the region of Delve meant that they were almost invulnerable on their home turf. They had been pushed back their once before, and had savaged their innumerable enemies in the process. In the months following, BoB had begun wreaking havoc throughout the Eve universe, with the stated aim of causing as much damage as possible. Harrgoth decided he'd had enough, and that he was going to defect to BoB's enemies: GoonSwarm. He contacted their leaders in order to do so.
That moment must have seemed too good to be true for the Goon leaders. Haargoth could not only steal a large amount of money and equipment from BoB's coffers, he was also in a position to disband the alliance wholesale. An alliance is made up of corporations, which are run by individual players. As a director of BoB's executor corporation, he could elect to not pay the bill which kept the alliance running. Once unpaid, the alliance would disband. The Goons had it all planned, with a placeholder corp ready to snatch the name for themselves. All that, it turns out, had catastrophic consequences.
It seems odd that something as immaterial as the name of an in-game organisation should matter, but Eve's territorial wars have a system in place which relies heavily on this imaginary organisation. It really is as if Apple were able to stop Microsoft from using their name. They might still have all the staff, and the tech, and perhaps even the buildings they work in, but the brand, and all that it entails, would be gone. In Eve this means a drop in sovereignty.
Sovereignty - the name given to faction control of a region - within star systems and constellations, can only be established by an alliance. The longer the alliance maintains sovereignty over a constellation, the more defensive options are open to it, and the harder to attack it becomes. BoB's long-term sovereignty in Delve meant that it would be a tough nut to crack for an attacking force, and therefore barely worth worrying about. Now though, with the BoB name gone, their long-held fortress region of Delve is suddenly, totally, vulnerable to assault. It's a region in which BoB have built up their space empire assets to an astonishing extent, over many years, and that's all now at risk.
Eve Online is renowned for its "meta-gaming" -- that is, all the crazy crap that takes place outside the game, from forum propaganda to scams, to offline spying, virtual currency trading, and hacking. In a game which is based most heavily on the interaction between real people - via economics or combat - the most interesting events are often social ones.
What is most interesting about Eve is that the social can have massive impact on the events within the game world. Haargoth's dislike of his wingmen created an opportunity for treachery and sabotage that has no obvious parallel in any other game, and the likes of this can perhaps only be found in the real world.
Of course Haargoth's action is quite unlike the scams and spying that have made Eve famous, except for one thing: all these activities remain safely within the realms of legality for the game. As long as there's no hacking or otherwise exploitative behaviour, the cruelest of griefing is okay by Eve.
The disbandment of BoB might have caused massive heartache for thousands of BoB players, but it was all within the parameters of Eve Online. And for Goons - who have long dreamed of destroying their nemesis - it is an occurrence they could barely have dreamt of, a validation of their approach, and their philosophy. They had, at last, destroyed the oldest and most powerful alliance in Eve.
Right now BoB's legions of enemies are closing in on Delve. Thousands of players with a score to settle are piling into the fortress, tearing down former BoB structures and trying to break the giant once and for all. BoB has already reformed as "Kenzoku" or "Ken", and is fighting to hold onto its territory. But the shield of long-developed sovereignty is gone, and BoB and their allies are significantly outnumbered. Already 400-aside fleet battles are kicking off in the former BoB heartland. What happens in the next few weeks could decide the balance of power within Eve for years to come.
What's in a name? In Eve Online, it could be the keys to entire existence.
[Jim Rossignol is an editor at RockPaperShotgun.com and the author of This Gaming Life, an account of the life of modern videogames and some of the people who play them. Ragdoll Metaphysics is his Offworld column exploring and analyzing gaming's vast world of esoterica.]
Previously:
Ragdoll Metaphysics: Memories of 2003, or Why We Need Planetside ...
Ragdoll Metaphysics: Soap Opera & The Sims - Offworld
Ragdoll Metaphysics: 2008 And The Indie Renaissance - Offworld
Ragdoll Metaphysics: Ten Things That Made Me Glad To Be A Gamer In ...
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VoxExMachina
#1 – 4:20 PM February 11, 2009
This is the kind of thing that I'd love to see more of in MMOs, actually. I realize that you can't have a destabilizing event like this without years of stability, but I'd love to play an MMO that traded more on IC defections, skulduggery, and betrayal than on grinding, quests, and crafting.
How do you motivate this kind of player behavior in game?
ThermobaricTom
#2 – 4:37 PM February 11, 2009
Well with Eve they created that kind of behaviour by actively ignoring it. Could that work in other MMO's? Maybe along side the RP and PVP servers they could have a AG "anything goes" server, which uses a much lighter banhammer.
I know the goons would enjoy any game that let them create their own drama.
ChibiR
#3 – 4:47 PM February 11, 2009
Whoa. Thanks for the detailed rundown (especially for people like me who didn't know anything about the way Eve Online operates)!
BlackTiger
#4 – 5:10 PM February 11, 2009
This would be much more interesting if Goonswarm actually ever stood for anything.
SA is nothing but a festering Hive... Er, Yeah. Swarm, if you will, of Griefers. That just *happens* to be an acceptable business plan in EVE.
Goonswarm didn't really do anything here - It was really all about the defector. It isn't Goonswarm so much as the others who are swooping in on the wounded BOB that might put them down.
Marshall
#5 – 5:46 PM February 11, 2009
This is why Eve is really the only interesting MMO going these days. SWG had this kind of action going on, but SOE didn't have a corporate culture that was willing to commit to a challenging and realistic experience for players.
Joel Johnson
#6 – 9:51 PM February 11, 2009
Jim, you make me feel like I've experienced five years of condensed drama without having to actually bother playing. Which is a compliment.
markmarkmark
#7 – 11:16 PM February 11, 2009
Blacktiger - if your opinion of SA is that it must be because you are one of the groups they see fit to grief - but as a goon I must say they tend to choose targets who deserve derision.
SC_Wolf
#8 – 5:27 AM February 12, 2009
The thing that gets me about the whole story is that the defector initially was merely dabbling with an alternate character and only made his choice to fully sell out his former compatriots after the other side point blank told him, "We're not really recruiting you, this is just a scam where we take your stuff and kick you out."
Despite that, he still felt that was a better situation for him to be in than what he was getting at his previous position, even with being so high up in the power structure that he essentially had the keys to the kingdom.
Chris L
#9 – 7:48 AM February 12, 2009
I agree with the sentiment that more online games need this type of dynamic. They all CLAIM to be massively multiplayer, but there really isn't any meaningful faction versus faction interaction on a massive scale. There's no reason that in World of Warcraft the Horde couldn't attack and claim Stormwind as their own for at least a while, but Blizzard prefers to control the overarching story rather than allowing the players any real ability to affect the world.
Strophe
#10 – 9:00 AM February 12, 2009
Chris L,
Interesting point. I'm an avid WoW player, but as far as affecting the world around you goes, WoW is closer to a chat room than a sandbox. Blizz wants it to be fair, and fun for a vast range of people. Evidently, that sells.
EvE's model seems to take risks that WoW simply doesn't bother with. I feel like that's why EvE has a relative cult status and WoW is considered mainstream, easy-to-like, and fun-for-the-whole-family. Is this description out of line?
PeterNBiddle
#11 – 9:39 AM February 12, 2009
This boils down to who writes the epic saga of the world... in WoW, Blizzard does, and they do a good job of it. Their story lines are are funny, clever, intelligent and inspiring. I ran the Barman Shanker quest something like 40 times solo before it dropped - that was good story telling.
I haven't played eve, but it sounds like they let their players tell the story, which produces drama like this. Not everyone likes crowd-sourced material, but when it works (as it seems to have worked here) it works BIG. No doubt everyone intimately involved will remember this for years... Grandpa will tell his grandkids stories about the day "The Traitor" ruined BoB.
Eve goes deep while WoW goes broad.
Warhammer Online tries to bridge the gap between the two. I love the RvR aspect of it - that's why I play. Overall I'm enjoying it, but I'm finding that I would prefer something which keeps the RvR (PvP) but skews the narrative more wildly one way or the other (I'm inclined to say towards eve). That would wind up being a more compelling storyline for me to participate in.
Tensegrity
#12 – 11:24 AM February 12, 2009
@11 I don't play WOW so take my comment with a large pile of salt, but soloing a quest *forty* times, well, unless it is "Ground Hog Day: The Game" that sounds like seriously broken game design.
Is the quest exactly the same all 40 times or does it somehow play out differently each time? Is it necessary for the story or is it uber loot? If it's for optional loot then I guess no one is twisting your arm to subject yourself to that.
Finchypoo
#13 – 11:41 AM February 12, 2009
I was going to say something about that too. I can't think of a game where I would play any part of it 40 times. I played WoW in beta and found it severely limited in its ability to make it feel like anything matters or anything changes. After I kill all the snow leopards in an area shouldn't it become overrun with boars, now free to multiply due to no natural predators? nope, the snow leopards just respawn. That's a weak example, but I found it descriptive of the entire WoW experience.
mjfgates
#14 – 12:42 PM February 12, 2009
Eve generates a huge amount of cool meta stuff.
'S got beautiful spaceships, too.
Now, if only the GAME part of it didn't suck so hard.
Cosmonaut Zero
#15 – 1:56 PM February 12, 2009
A system that allows one person to disband the entire alliance with no group approval or waiting period is kind of an issue in and of itself. Honestly, calling a vote of directors simply makes more sense. A company IRL doesn't dissolve because one person on the board of directors says so, it doesn't even dissolve simply because it's losing money or bankrupt. I'm all for the more out-there aspects of Eve, but this is unnecessarily unrealistic and illogical.
There's still some skepticism in the now-ex-BoB community that Haargoth was actually involved in the defection, and it wasn't an instance of hacking. He was apparently supposedly away on personal business at the time, and GS has failed to provide any evidence the player was actually involved (the ventrilo records are dubious at best), and he has failed to come forward and claim responsibility decisively.
If it's real, cheers to GoonSwarm for the coup. It's crazy shit like this that makes Eve what it is. The level of player control over the game world that Eve affords is something that MMOs are uniquely suited to. It feels like a waste of potential to run the same 40-man raids over and over. At that point you're not really playing an MMORPG, you're playing a regular online multiplayer RPG. There's no massively involved. I'm not saying that WoW is a bad game (although it's certainly not my bag), I'm just saying that there's so much more interesting things you can do with a large online community, such as games like Eve, or Ultima Online in its heyday, with user-created towns and Origin reps leading game-changing events, etc.
Grenoire
#16 – 8:15 PM February 12, 2009
Well, we've got two pro-GBC (ex BoB alliance) fud comments now, and showing how fascinating and truly real the drama coming from this is. The game begins to encompass the haunts of the players as well as their enclaves, it draws in their friends and excludes others.
That's not to say Eve is a great game, it sucks individually. But, maybe the reason that these cyclopean social events, a large war upset or turning a key figure, are able to come to pass is that each player is a nobody, and that in game there is very little you can actually do. Other MMOs make everyone a hero so the true story of the players is already told.
Anonymous Anonymous
#17 – 10:28 AM February 13, 2009
There is no doubt that Haargoth did this himself and his account was not hacked. Claims to the contrary are wishful thinking from the BoB types who are (understandably) very upset at the turn of events.
I should add though that the article's claim that the name was the important part isn't really true, the important part was the sovereignty loss that incapacitated the cynojammers, and particularly the tremendous morale boost it gave to all BoB's enemies. The thousand-ship battles going on now _could_ have happened without this backstab but it would've been a lot harder to motivate everyone involved. This seems to have forced everyone involved to reveal their cards, and ex-BoB is coming up lacking right now, as seen in their inability to repulse the invasion at any point. Last year they _were_ able to repulse it.
(Also I would argue with the claim that BoB went rampaging everywhere causing damage after the first Delve invasion. They attempted rampaging and lost multiple critical battles in a row. That's why they're not in the north anymore.)
Anonymous Anonymous
#18 – 5:21 PM February 14, 2009
"They had been pushed back their once before"
Pushed back THERE.
KriticKill
#19 – 1:50 AM December 20, 2009
People talk about why this isn't applied to an mmo like WoW, but that is really kind of ridiculous. WoW is designed as a linear progressive mmo, running dungeons, collecting gear, crafting items, doing quests, etc. You could put that dynamic into WoW, but then it wouldn't really be WoW anymore. Everything would have to change. For instance, Alliance raids Thunderbluff. We assume that that would mean Alliance also controls Mulgore and possibly Barrens. What would happen to the Tauren starting area? And all the low level Tauren quests? They can't be turned in until the area is retaken? What if its never retaken? Do I ever get to turn my quests in? There would have to be a lot of questions to answer. Ultimately WoW is dynamically designed to be extremely stable, so that it feels comfortable for casual, or inexperienced players. Eve is the polar opposite. Its designed to be fluid, punishing for careless or reckless players, and ultimately a hardcore challenge capable of dishing out severe, lasting setbacks even to experienced veterans. Not every player wants that kind of challenge, and most companies don't want to produce a game that sacrifaces large groups of potential players for particular dynamics. In that regard we see the quality of a company like CCP. They would rather produce a great game that a moderate sized niche enjoys, than they are producing a mediocre game that a huge group of people people will play.