A Gaming Manifest

PREAMBLE.

This month’s Blog Banter comes from Drackarn of Sand, Cider and Spaceships as coordinated by Seismic Stan of Freebooted.

“A quick view of the EVE Online forums can always find someone complaining about being suicide ganked, whining about some scam they fell for or other such tears. With the Goons’ Ice Interdiction claiming a vast amount of mining ships there were calls for an “opt out of PvP” option. 

Should this happen? Should people be able to opt-out of PvP in EVE Online? Should CONCORD prevent crime rather than just handing out justice after the event? Or do the hi-sec population already have too much protection from the scum and villainy that inhabits the game?”

POSTAMBLE!

In all the MMOs I’ve played, I’ve never put much time into PvP. Sure, it’s more “thrilling” than PvE because human AI will always best computer AI (sorry Skynet), but for the most part leveling and advancing in those games was always tied into the PvE content. If I was playing an MMO for long enough, something about that game’s PvE sparked my interest to a degree where I was ok with the tedium of the content to resist PvP because I valued advancement over conquest.

In EVE, there is no place for completely consensual PvP.

Let me say that again.

There is no place for completely consensual PvP in EVE Online.

I say that not because I think there should be some arbitrary and ironclad adherence to the setting. Sure, the harsh space metaphor for human existence is quite well developed and makes for an IP that spurs the imagination of any true sci fi enthusiast (thanks Tony and crew). Heck, carrying that justification paradigm into personal gameplay is fitting and somewhat compelling. “I lost my ship because life is hard”. “I shot you because you need to learn that things are inherently unfair”.

Non-consensual PvP heightens your sense of danger via impending loss. That’s a very satiating gaming experience that is so rarely found outside EVE Online. Maybe at some chess grandmaster tournament or something. Pulse pounding. The sweats.

However, the reason I would never change PvP rules to be “consensual” is based on something deeper than the probability of personal “loss”.  

I argue for non-consensual PvP because it breeds human trust.

With the “EVE level” of impending loss on the line, players are inherently drawn to other players. More specifically they are drawn to “other players they can trust”. Their investment in the game universe and all its parts, being heightened because of “danger”, demands a greater level of investment protection. The relationships that players build and interactions they have are always overlayed with some level of emotion—whether that’s trust, anger, fear, camaraderie, humor or something else. Those that play EVE, think about it… think about the voice chats and text chats with fleet members or with enemies. Think about them in and out of game. It’s just different. Why? Because non-consensual PvP introduces that one kernel of struggle, for lack of a better word, into every situation.

And that makes all the difference.

Shared experiences create history. They become a narrative that thrusts participants into a specific, memorable place and time and they provide us a larger context for our own existence.

Hundreds of thousands of threads of co-created memories have mixed into a grand history of the single-shard EVE universe. Individual decisions, no matter how small, have all been woven together in the context of cause/effect and win/loss of EVE, create a compelling, shared story that is at once intimately familiar and unretractably shared. 

So, for me, consensual PvP always ends up creating an environment of safety. That bubble, no matter how molecularly thin, means that the battles within are shielded from the need to rely on your fellow pilot for a shared cause. Without consequence there is no risk. Without risk there is no reliance.

Freezing others out of PvP means denying yourself the content that makes EVE more compelling than any game out there: full player participation.

*Again, these are the sole thoughts of me, not necessarily representative of CCP.