Viewers get some drama





Is there any election that is scandal free? Virtual space politics are not excluded. Sometimes the scandals come from the people ruining. Sometimes they come from outside of that. “I can’t wait to enjoy the drama!” someone had said to me about the election. Those words would haunt me later as I fought not to be caught up and defined by the decisions another person had made. While I played the game and tried to convince people of my worthiness a dark drama was sweeping across the game.





The CSM does not dictate game policy. CCP does that. It does not stop many from seeing the members as vocal representatives. It was a public post made by one member of the CSM that started a fire that would take years to go out.





Eve Online is an interactive video game with few social rules. It is one of the games charmes. If you can trick another player into making a poor decision, you are allowed to. It causes heated and vicious discussion about the the true moral integrity of people who find their fun in harming others. The term psychopath is banded around quite often. Eve Online players are known for being cold and vicious in their calculations and casual destruction of others.





It creates the question why one scam is greater than another. Where is the line of morality? Often players have demanded that CCP define morality in clear, black and white terms. The demand is absurd. There is a fluidness to morality that created the shades of gray aspect of decision making. CCP has always shied away from making exact definitions for moral acts.





I don’t blame them for it. People are creative and boxes are restrictive. A case by case bases makes things easier to trouble shoot and problem solve. Unfortunately, shades of gray allow people to pick at the corners and try to pry them up.





The start was a blogpost in which a member of the CSM known and well followed for his writings, detailed an activity undertaken by another player group. That group made public their scams. They published the recordings of the people that participated. It was a way to share and enjoy both the humiliation of another and the anger that often followed it with others. The people who were taken advantage of willing walked into the situation. That willingness and poor decision making was shocking enough to cause many to say that the person deserved what happened.





It was a form of a prank. After all, virtual goods were all that were lost. The person subjected themselves to the humiliation because they hoped to win.





The scam was called the bonus room.





The creator of the Bonus Room would sit in the busiest trade hub in the game. In hte local channel he would offer people one of the oldest scams in Eve. That scam is called ISK doubling. In this scam the scammer promises that if you send them ISK they will send you double the ISK back. Depending on the scammer they may have complex rules that have to be perfectly followed. Others have limits and currencies. Some offer but never return ISK. Some return some ISK. Some say that they return it but never do. It is a gamble and some people fall into it.





It is easy to say that I do not understand why people fell for it. It is easy for me to say that. I am someone who does not gamble. I’ve sat in Las Vegas and pulled the arm of slot machines. The symbols flick past my eye. That boldly marked winning symbol flashes past over and over again, tantalizing the player. Then, at the last minute, it doesn’t happen. THe money is gone but you were so close to it. So very close. That is the moment that some of us will walk away and others will feel the thrill of possibility and feed in more money.





What the creator of the Bonus Room did was find those people who were pulled by the lure of more.Those who would take a gamble. They would message particular people and offer them a special game of trust. If agreed to, that person was invited into a voice chat with several agents that worked with the creator. There they were told that if they trusted they would be rewarded.





What normally followed was that the mark would give all of their in game assets to the creators of the bonus room. They would even have to provide an API key which would allow those running the bonus room to make sure that they had been given everything. ONce stripped of all assets and ISK, the mark would go on a multi hour marathon of tests. They would sing, spell, and do trivia. THey would do this for hours. One session is documented to be twelve hours long. Somewhere long enough that the agents had to trade out their duties with the mark.





The story that came to the forefront of player attention was about a Bonus Room round that wound up with the mark losing his temper. He rages at the people in the bonus room. They oh so politely tell him to calm down. In the background his wife can be heard pleading with him to calm down and he yells at her as well. The entire time the agents in the bonus room speak in voices made of spun sugar telling him to calm himself and relax. Only, he cannot relax. He has been in the room for hours. He has been given things to recite and sing that aggravate a natural lisp. And he has learned that he will not be getting his items back.





The results were released to the public. Some people complained about the behavior but they were often quieted by others that pointed out the Bonus Room did not take place inside of the game. There was also the fact that the mark willingly stayed. At any time they could leave. Most did. Sure, it also meant the loss of every asset they had created in game but that was the point of the risk they were taken. On its face that is true. But, when we look at the intangible realities of how people behave, things get murky.





Eve is a game of stuff. Tangable stuff that can be lost. It is one of the core pieces of the game that makes it both fascinating and infuriating. People are attached to their things. Even their virtual things. Ownership, the sense of self, the things that are mine, they are all very real and strong connections for someone. In the case of the bonus room it became an solid but intangable thing used in a maliciously creative way for personal amusement at the emotional stress of another.



