Disclaimer: Seraph IX Basarab opinions do not reflect the opinions or views of Eve News24

Yesterday has been one of the most entertaining for me. The amount of things flying around in regards to the drama surrounding this book deal is beyond interesting. It’s looking to be an amazingly entertaining winter to say the least. You have the “viceroyalty leak” where Goons plan on extorting alliances, endie’s leak regarding alleged TMC RMTing among other issues and lastly you have Sion Kumitomo, big whig in the CFC, harshly criticising the Eve community for how they are reacting to TMC’s ventures. All of this following Mitten’s particularly “interesting” SOTG and war declaration. I read Sion’s “Shake it off” article in which he raises several points I wanted to address. Some of it was pretty good, a lot of it… well not so much.

Sion has a good point regarding people’s treatment of the would-be-writer of “the book”, Jeff Edwards. People can be critical of his writing style if they want, but there’s no real point in being overly harsh. At the same time however, Eve has a fairly well known harsh culture. To be fair, Jeff isn’t being treated any differently than anyone else would be. In a way one could say that’s endearing…hey he’s “one of us.” But pointless hatred toward the guy personally is highly unwarranted. It’s not fair for Sion to say that “the community treats Jeff” in a certain way when it’s only a handful of people that even say anything directly about Jeff. Sion’s attempting to browbeat and shame Eve players into a collective corner consistently throughout his article.

I’m certain I’m not the only one that sees a bit of irony here in a prominent GSF wagging his finger about the community acting rudely considering Goons basically promoted their whole identity as being trouble makers, trolls, scammers, and downright gleeful shitters swearing to ruin everyone else’s game. I’m not saying that Sion’s message is necessarily wrong, but it’s a bit like hearing Charlie Sheen lecturing others about drug abuse and sexual responsibility.

Sion forces this false dilemma upon the reader arguing that if people are against the book, they’re also against the well being of Eve Online as a whole since Jeff’s book would supposedly bring in new players. There’s a few assumptions being made here. First, that the book would attract a lot of new players. It’s possible, but we don’t know that. Secondly, that that would necessarily harm Eve Online. This goes hand in hand with Mitten’s claim that the forces that have supposedly amassed against the CFC are trying to destroy the game because according to him harming the CFC is the same as harming Eve online since Goons have brought in so many players into the game.

Am I out of line to wonder if there may be just a touch of hubris in believing this sort of thing?

The next claim is that people who are against the book because they are against Mittens. Sure this may be true. But is it not a bit naive to feel entitled to the community’s support? Mittens and Goons have built up their entire reputation around being hostile and alienating others – remember, this is “the guy” who proposed his peers to cyberbully a depressed player into taking his own life. Why would they expect to suddenly gain support? You have to earn it. I think a much more pressing issue is why hasn’t this gotten more support within their own alliance?

This scenario where people hate the book because they hate Mittens and they’re simply harming the game is far too myopic. There are legitimate criticisms that can be leveled. I personally don’t have any animosity toward Goons or Mittens. I don’t have any motivation for it. I’ve never been part of BoB or N3 or any group that has historically been on the receiving end of his machinations. I’m critical of plenty of other people. I spent dozens of pages on failheap making Grath super angry at me with various critiques. Anyway you have to be pretty self-centered to think that I have any particularly keen sentiment toward Mittens/Goons that I wouldn’t have for any other leader/group in the same position. You can say I’m volatile, but I lack the ideological motivation for me to target a particular group how Goblin or MoA does.

Sion addresses the issue of The Mittani making money off of the project and provides examples of other individuals or groups making money as well. He cites examples of Rixx Javixx, Sort Dragon, Avalloc and includes CZ, and EN24. Well sure, and those groups will have the support of their respective audiences. They won’t have support wherever they may have burned their bridges. In this case it seems that the Mittani has burned a bridge too far. Sion’s article does nothing to close that gap or to win any allies. His words just comes off as petulant.

“Your impotent /r/eve badposts won’t save you from the wrath of our guns any more this time around than it did any of the others.” -Sion Kumitomo

Sion claims that /r/eve is just full of anti-goon people that are made up of haters that are simply jealous of the success Goons have had. That’s a fairly simplistic understanding of the situation. It’s a bit like someone saying “people hate America because of our freedom.” Sure, some people may simply be jealous…but many are not. Maybe some people are simply turned a bit cold regarding Mitten’s modus operandi via the CFC and his media site. Even Endie, the number 3 guy in GSF raised some concerns.

The Mittani is not the sort of individual in this game that has the sort of reputation that instills confidence regarding good intentions. You reap what you sow and your reputation proceeds you.

A good parallel would be CCP Games during 2011 and the “summer of rage.” CCP Games released the Incarna update along the ability to sell dress up items in game for large amounts of money. It was fully in CCP Games’ right to do this. Nobody forced anyone to buy a monocle or an in game shirt. The funds would have gone to better the company and further improve the quality of the game. But the way that CCP Games went about it disgusted its players. People rioted in Jita and we got to see a smug The Mittani sit across from CCP Games employees while they “worked to resolve the issue”. I’m not sure what exactly was done to solve things but it was pretty cool to see one of “us” a player, sit in front of a CCP dev.

You know what CCP Games did? They apologized, they reassessed their approach, they moved on and did their job better. You know what TMC/CFC is doing? They’re writing articles about how bad and degenerate the community is and how those disagreeing with their project must be blinded by the jealousy they have of Goons. Which method do you think is more effective?

Now Sion question is how you guys are going to handle this. Sure you can double down and stay in your echo chamber reassuring one another that critics only hate you guys because of your awesome success. Or you can recognize that you guys haven’t exactly done the best job of presenting a good image and that your own actions and elements of your culture has put you squarely in the position in which you find yourselves today.

~Seraph IX Basarab