Reading this article was like reading someone trolling. I have to think the author might need to step out of his fictional worlds for some real world time, just as The Mittani should.
You have to draw a line somewhere, and what was said and done is not acceptable. Period, end of story. This was so unacceptable that the fact that this happened at all is a clear indication of deep disfunction in this person.
In my opinion it didn't go as far as it should have. Hell, it should have been a 60 minutes feature. The guy should have been permanently banned from the game, and criminal charges filed.
Anyone who thinks this isn't a big deal or too much has been made of it really needs to take a step back themselves and reconsider.
In the wake of all this, this Mittani is trying to use his "legendary" status to threaten mmo news organizations now. I don't believe his appology was genuine, and I think his status within this game world isn't the only thing now pointing to his disfunction.
...and by the way. I know many people following this story who do not play Eve (like myself) and don't give a rat's ass who the Goons are. I don't care what game you play...this has garnered interest across the community. Acusations that this is some effort of Eve players is idiotic.
You say "a line has to draw a line somewhere", by whom? Indviduals for themselves? I'd quite agree. But all too many people seek to get government involved in these issues. They go on some Crusade or another to "right" the worlds "wrongs", using a system ruled for the most part, in most places, by self seeking sociopaths. Anyone not familiar with that reality, is either naive, or hasn't been paying attention.
Mittens went well over the top (as far as I'm concerned) with his drunken diatribe, but removal from the CSM should be the extent of any action taken by CCP. Much more than that is simply appeasing certain hysterics.
Later on you speak of this being on "60 minutes", and Mittens having "criminal charges filed". Why limit this to America? Perhaps this needs to be broadcast through out the world? Perhaps Mittens needs to be hauled before the International Court at the Hague?
Or perhaps, some people need to take a step back, take a deep breath, and realize that just because something is offensive, doesn't require the type of hysterical responses we've been seeing way too much of for the last few years?
I agree with this post here. I think Mit did deserve the 30 day ban he recieved. I don't feel that it needs to go any further though. It has crossed into the real world of things enough; we do have to maintain that this is only a game.
The thing now for those that are appeased with the ban to let it go, to those that aren't the happiest. Tought stuff you're gonna have to eat this one. You've guys have gotten away with plenty. The 514 just needs to settle and people contnue to enjoy the game for what it is.
Does this one player being gone really disrupt your gameplay that much? Cause if that's what your raging for then its kinda lame right now. The more this gets pushed the louder the rumbles will be for something more to be done. When in this case it seems to be in order.
We should move on..
PM before you report at least or you could just block.
Wow all i can say is just freaking WOW and i dont mean the game. Its weird to actually find so many willing to defend some idiot that went way beyond what I'd call bullying. I've played alot of mmo's and run into the ppl that whine when I kill them or complain and send hate tells to me. Saying that if someone openly said I'm gonna kill myself I'd either have a conversation and try to help them out or just leave and let it be that. To have someone that suppose to be rep of the game get on a stage and call for others to try to push the guy to actually kill himself is beyond anything I can even imagine except maybe seeing this many defend someone that would do that, and sorry being drunk doesn't make it less a crime. I've seen many a story over the last few months maybe even year about how Eve openly lets players rip each other off and well to tell the truth if your playing a game that lets that happen and can't handle it you really should go on to another game.
Far as this guy goes banned for a few days give me a break he should lose his account for good. Whether he thought the guy was serious or just whining to get out of a death ingame to actual tell others to try to push someone over the edge is disturbing to say the least. I've tried Eve and well honestly I'm not willing to play a game with that kind of risk as I just don't have that kind of patience and I often play solo and enjoy doing so. That and well after hearing about Eve policy to let player scams go unpunished to me is out of my idea of good gaming policy. Honestly what happens ingame should be left there, and had he left it there noone would care or be the wiser. Once he actual put it out in real life is where everyone with a brain should know he went way over board and as such should be punished. To only put a temp ban on his account is poor judgement by CCP in my opinion.
Take it for what it is worth to you but when you bring this kind of thing into the real world is when you should have to deal with real world punishment which this man should get by the truckload instead of a simple slap on the hand.
he should have got perm ban.. but CCP doesn't care. if someone recives a xmas present from a friend, and then discovers said friend got money illegally buying them on ebay, he gets banned.
CCP claiming that said money were made trought "SCAMS", and so unacceptable, while I'd note to say that ccp is FINE about scams themselves saying it's a form of pvp.
Yet if something damages CCP wallet it's perm ban even on the whole christmas day, if someone leads another player to suicide attempt by cyber bullying, it's 1 week.
in Ultima online.. you call another player names.. and you get in a virtual jail for ONE WEEK, in eve you scam him, call him names, insult his family, grief him, destroy his assets, make him unable to play by constant griefing and so on... and you get a pat on the shoulder and a "Good pvp man" comment from CCP.
like you said in here, it's not just mittani guilty, the whole goonswarm is a product of eve online itself.. it brings the worst out of people, it's not just the "setting" CCP wants, it's that giving out freedom of certain behaviours and not only justifying them but ENCOURAGING them, they ended up having a player base made of assholes.
There's few good apples out of there.. but they cannot "ruin" the whole batch, they get ruined by the thousands of bad apples and either become like them or just leaves.
I am very surprised that mittani wasn't taken to public place by an angry mob and get executed in real life.. because that's what slowly eve is getting to.. such things have repercussions in real life, heavy ones as well, and often it's the weaker individuals, the "good apples" that turns things to the worst.
He was lucky the poor W just gone for the suicide road... many would end up going toward the homicide one instead.
oh yes, to prevent that CCP put a rule saying that any real life threat toward players is a violation to the EULA (I do read eulas you know..) too bad you can't break eulas of games you don't play anymore.
be warned people, I will see what will happen to CCP when a real life player will kill another real life player (maybe mittani himself..) over the game.. and see again how hard the shit hits the fan.
he should have got perm ban.. but CCP doesn't care. if someone recives a xmas present from a friend, and then discovers said friend got money illegally buying them on ebay, he gets banned.
CCP claiming that said money were made trought "SCAMS", and so unacceptable, while I'd note to say that ccp is FINE about scams themselves saying it's a form of pvp.
Yet if something damages CCP wallet it's perm ban even on the whole christmas day, if someone leads another player to suicide attempt by cyber bullying, it's 1 week.
in Ultima online.. you call another player names.. and you get in a virtual jail for ONE WEEK, in eve you scam him, call him names, insult his family, grief him, destroy his assets, make him unable to play by constant griefing and so on... and you get a pat on the shoulder and a "Good pvp man" comment from CCP.
like you said in here, it's not just mittani guilty, the whole goonswarm is a product of eve online itself.. it brings the worst out of people, it's not just the "setting" CCP wants, it's that giving out freedom of certain behaviours and not only justifying them but ENCOURAGING them, they ended up having a player base made of assholes.
There's few good apples out of there.. but they cannot "ruin" the whole batch, they get ruined by the thousands of bad apples and either become like them or just leaves.
I am very surprised that mittani wasn't taken to public place by an angry mob and get executed in real life.. because that's what slowly eve is getting to.. such things have repercussions in real life, heavy ones as well, and often it's the weaker individuals, the "good apples" that turns things to the worst.
He was lucky the poor W just gone for the suicide road... many would end up going toward the homicide one instead.
oh yes, to prevent that CCP put a rule saying that any real life threat toward players is a violation to the EULA (I do read eulas you know..) too bad you can't break eulas of games you don't play anymore.
be warned people, I will see what will happen to CCP when a real life player will kill another real life player (maybe mittani himself..) over the game.. and see again how hard the shit hits the fan.
It is really posts like this that makes me ask who is blurring the line between reality and EVE.
It certainly isn't 'The Mittani'.
I would like to introduce you to the INTERNET and/or XBOX LIVE COD.
And oh, Real Life bad stuff has already happened and will continue to happen. China has a division setup to deal with crimes done due to 'virtual goods'. A crime is a crime is a crime, regardless of motivation.
Gdemami - Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
This is hardly the "End of Mittani" as the guy who runs GSF hardly logs on to EVE to actually "play the game" . Essentially he conducts the majority of his moves out of game via social media networks, etc and his main focus is primarily meta-gaming and poltics which doesn't require any sort of high sp character to achieve. So yeah go ahead and ban his character but don't exepect it to matter much in the grand schme of things or in the leadership structure of GSF which is not dependent on in-games mechanics or characters.
Games I've played/tried out:WAR, LOTRO, Tabula Rasa, AoC, EQ1, EQ2, WoW, Vangaurd, FFXI, D&DO, Lineage 2, Saga Of Ryzom, EvE Online, DAoC, Guild Wars,Star Wars Galaxies, Hell Gate London, Auto Assault, Grando Espada ( AKA SoTNW ), Archlord, CoV/H, Star Trek Online, APB, Champions Online, FFXIV, Rift Online, GW2.
The only reason this is even a big deal is because it was done publicly. Players treat other players like crap all the time in mmorpgs. They say terrible things, encouraging someone to kill him/herself being the least of them. I will be bold enough to say that W. is not the first "victim" of these attacks. Online games are full of people with behavioral issues. Some people suffer from depression like W. clearly was. It is sad that he took his own life, but it is also not the fault of The Mittani either. He did exactly what anyone else would have done in his place - he played his in-game role on stage, and retaliated against someone who had betrayed him by going for his most apparent weak point. The loss of in-game items may be virtual in nature, but to have someone betray you in a game isn't that much different from real life. The desire for revenge is no less potent. It doesn't make it right, but being a bunch of self-righteous a-holes standing on your soapboxes condemning the Mittani is pretty ridiculous. If you can't recognize the evil in yourselves then you will never understand why this happened and instead just look at someone or something to blame. The blame game in this case may have repercussions for online-gaming, reinforcing notions that cyber-bullying needs to be stopped, etc. I neither agree nor disagree with such sentiments. I only recognize that there are clearly people who seek to hurt others in the world. If you can't handle such people in a game what chance do you have in real life? Can you really hide in a game until the day you die? If W. had died of a heart attack instead of killing himself would it have been any less tragic? Or more? Why did W. decide to betray his corp and steal 80 billion isk? Did he want them to hate him? Did he want them to try to hurt him? If someone stole all of your money in real life would you try to hurt him/her? You might say "Well it's not real life, it's just pixels!" Yet the emotions are no less real. People can have an attachment to virtual items just as much as real world items. Virtual items are even given a real world currency value in games like Eve. How much real world money is 80 billion isk worth? Probably not someone's life, but then it might be worth it to let that person know how pissed off you are at them.
It is pathos we lack, and this lack of pathos makes the worlds we explore quite stale.
If Mittens had just said "if you want to go kill this guy, here is his info" it would have been a non issue. The only thing that made it an issue is that he said "If you want to make this guy kill himself, here is his info." Both statements have the same affect its just that one sounds pretty horrible. It's a game and everyone who plays EVE knows they can be killed anywhere at anytime. I don't see what the fuss is.
Are you a Pavlovian Fish Biscuit Addict? Get Help Now! I will play no more MMORPGs until somethign good comes out!
If Mittens had just said "if you want to go kill this guy, here is his info" it would have been a non issue. The only thing that made it an issue is that he said "If you want to make this guy kill himself, here is his info." Both statements have the same affect its just that one sounds pretty horrible. It's a game and everyone who plays EVE knows they can be killed anywhere at anytime. I don't see what the fuss is.
Thats true but encouraging the hunting down of 1 person by potentially thousands of players is borderline abusive. Within game rules, but really nasty in this particular case when it is clearly known the guy is having emotional issues in RL.
Put it this way imagine a relative of yours played lets say football in real life, and was having real psychological problems, and you find the director of football telling everyone on TV to try and harass and bully your relative in game. Pretty nasty behaviour that would be shunned by most normal people. Empathy is a lost skill online these days, it has a place even in Eve.
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Whenever a gme is being played, whether a virtual computer game or a physical one like football, if it involves other human beings those interactions are 'real life'.
The proper response of a non sociopath upon hearing that W was suicidal would have been "Look, if you're really suicidal, then playing this game isn't for you. you should find a different game and seek help to deal with your problems."
What actually happened was very different. As has been pointed out earlier in this thread, Alex had prepared a slide of W's message to him in advance of the presentation that was on YouTube so the whole idea of this being a drunken indiscretion goes out the window.
Alex is extremely lucky that W didn't actually commit suicide... the court of public opinion is harsher than any legal court of justice. If Alex is in fact an american lawyer he REALLY should have known better; at the least if the law firm that he works for gets wind of this he will most likely be fired.
Whenever a gme is being played, whether a virtual computer game or a physical one like football, if it involves other human beings those interactions are 'real life'.
The proper response of a non sociopath upon hearing that W was suicidal would have been "Look, if you're really suicidal, then playing this game isn't for you. you should find a different game and seek help to deal with your problems."
What actually happened was very different. As has been pointed out earlier in this thread, Alex had prepared a slide of W's message to him in advance of the presentation that was on YouTube so the whole idea of this being a drunken indiscretion goes out the window.
Alex is extremely lucky that W didn't actually commit suicide... the court of public opinion is harsher than any legal court of justice. If Alex is in fact an american lawyer he REALLY should have known better; at the least if the law firm that he works for gets wind of this he will most likely be fired.
That all depends. Some law firms would consider that type of ruthless personality to be quite the asset. Look at the top corporate sharks for an example. But coupled with his lack of judgement and knowledge of his personal limitations, that would tend to work against him. The "court of public opinion" only counts if its backed up by real courts backed by real guns. Otherwise its just much sound and fury that signifies nothing, in this context.
Comments
I agree with this post here. I think Mit did deserve the 30 day ban he recieved. I don't feel that it needs to go any further though. It has crossed into the real world of things enough; we do have to maintain that this is only a game.
The thing now for those that are appeased with the ban to let it go, to those that aren't the happiest. Tought stuff you're gonna have to eat this one. You've guys have gotten away with plenty. The 514 just needs to settle and people contnue to enjoy the game for what it is.
Does this one player being gone really disrupt your gameplay that much? Cause if that's what your raging for then its kinda lame right now. The more this gets pushed the louder the rumbles will be for something more to be done. When in this case it seems to be in order.
We should move on..
PM before you report at least or you could just block.
Wow all i can say is just freaking WOW and i dont mean the game. Its weird to actually find so many willing to defend some idiot that went way beyond what I'd call bullying. I've played alot of mmo's and run into the ppl that whine when I kill them or complain and send hate tells to me. Saying that if someone openly said I'm gonna kill myself I'd either have a conversation and try to help them out or just leave and let it be that. To have someone that suppose to be rep of the game get on a stage and call for others to try to push the guy to actually kill himself is beyond anything I can even imagine except maybe seeing this many defend someone that would do that, and sorry being drunk doesn't make it less a crime. I've seen many a story over the last few months maybe even year about how Eve openly lets players rip each other off and well to tell the truth if your playing a game that lets that happen and can't handle it you really should go on to another game.
Far as this guy goes banned for a few days give me a break he should lose his account for good. Whether he thought the guy was serious or just whining to get out of a death ingame to actual tell others to try to push someone over the edge is disturbing to say the least. I've tried Eve and well honestly I'm not willing to play a game with that kind of risk as I just don't have that kind of patience and I often play solo and enjoy doing so. That and well after hearing about Eve policy to let player scams go unpunished to me is out of my idea of good gaming policy. Honestly what happens ingame should be left there, and had he left it there noone would care or be the wiser. Once he actual put it out in real life is where everyone with a brain should know he went way over board and as such should be punished. To only put a temp ban on his account is poor judgement by CCP in my opinion.
Take it for what it is worth to you but when you bring this kind of thing into the real world is when you should have to deal with real world punishment which this man should get by the truckload instead of a simple slap on the hand.
he should have got perm ban.. but CCP doesn't care. if someone recives a xmas present from a friend, and then discovers said friend got money illegally buying them on ebay, he gets banned.
CCP claiming that said money were made trought "SCAMS", and so unacceptable, while I'd note to say that ccp is FINE about scams themselves saying it's a form of pvp.
Yet if something damages CCP wallet it's perm ban even on the whole christmas day, if someone leads another player to suicide attempt by cyber bullying, it's 1 week.
in Ultima online.. you call another player names.. and you get in a virtual jail for ONE WEEK, in eve you scam him, call him names, insult his family, grief him, destroy his assets, make him unable to play by constant griefing and so on... and you get a pat on the shoulder and a "Good pvp man" comment from CCP.
like you said in here, it's not just mittani guilty, the whole goonswarm is a product of eve online itself.. it brings the worst out of people, it's not just the "setting" CCP wants, it's that giving out freedom of certain behaviours and not only justifying them but ENCOURAGING them, they ended up having a player base made of assholes.
There's few good apples out of there.. but they cannot "ruin" the whole batch, they get ruined by the thousands of bad apples and either become like them or just leaves.
I am very surprised that mittani wasn't taken to public place by an angry mob and get executed in real life.. because that's what slowly eve is getting to.. such things have repercussions in real life, heavy ones as well, and often it's the weaker individuals, the "good apples" that turns things to the worst.
He was lucky the poor W just gone for the suicide road... many would end up going toward the homicide one instead.
oh yes, to prevent that CCP put a rule saying that any real life threat toward players is a violation to the EULA (I do read eulas you know..) too bad you can't break eulas of games you don't play anymore.
be warned people, I will see what will happen to CCP when a real life player will kill another real life player (maybe mittani himself..) over the game.. and see again how hard the shit hits the fan.
It is really posts like this that makes me ask who is blurring the line between reality and EVE.
It certainly isn't 'The Mittani'.
I would like to introduce you to the INTERNET and/or XBOX LIVE COD.
And oh, Real Life bad stuff has already happened and will continue to happen. China has a division setup to deal with crimes done due to 'virtual goods'. A crime is a crime is a crime, regardless of motivation.
Gdemami -
Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
This is hardly the "End of Mittani" as the guy who runs GSF hardly logs on to EVE to actually "play the game" . Essentially he conducts the majority of his moves out of game via social media networks, etc and his main focus is primarily meta-gaming and poltics which doesn't require any sort of high sp character to achieve. So yeah go ahead and ban his character but don't exepect it to matter much in the grand schme of things or in the leadership structure of GSF which is not dependent on in-games mechanics or characters.
Games I've played/tried out:WAR, LOTRO, Tabula Rasa, AoC, EQ1, EQ2, WoW, Vangaurd, FFXI, D&DO, Lineage 2, Saga Of Ryzom, EvE Online, DAoC, Guild Wars,Star Wars Galaxies, Hell Gate London, Auto Assault, Grando Espada ( AKA SoTNW ), Archlord, CoV/H, Star Trek Online, APB, Champions Online, FFXIV, Rift Online, GW2.
Game(s) I Am Currently Playing:
GW2 (+LoL and BF3)
The only reason this is even a big deal is because it was done publicly. Players treat other players like crap all the time in mmorpgs. They say terrible things, encouraging someone to kill him/herself being the least of them. I will be bold enough to say that W. is not the first "victim" of these attacks. Online games are full of people with behavioral issues. Some people suffer from depression like W. clearly was. It is sad that he took his own life, but it is also not the fault of The Mittani either. He did exactly what anyone else would have done in his place - he played his in-game role on stage, and retaliated against someone who had betrayed him by going for his most apparent weak point. The loss of in-game items may be virtual in nature, but to have someone betray you in a game isn't that much different from real life. The desire for revenge is no less potent. It doesn't make it right, but being a bunch of self-righteous a-holes standing on your soapboxes condemning the Mittani is pretty ridiculous. If you can't recognize the evil in yourselves then you will never understand why this happened and instead just look at someone or something to blame. The blame game in this case may have repercussions for online-gaming, reinforcing notions that cyber-bullying needs to be stopped, etc. I neither agree nor disagree with such sentiments. I only recognize that there are clearly people who seek to hurt others in the world. If you can't handle such people in a game what chance do you have in real life? Can you really hide in a game until the day you die? If W. had died of a heart attack instead of killing himself would it have been any less tragic? Or more? Why did W. decide to betray his corp and steal 80 billion isk? Did he want them to hate him? Did he want them to try to hurt him? If someone stole all of your money in real life would you try to hurt him/her? You might say "Well it's not real life, it's just pixels!" Yet the emotions are no less real. People can have an attachment to virtual items just as much as real world items. Virtual items are even given a real world currency value in games like Eve. How much real world money is 80 billion isk worth? Probably not someone's life, but then it might be worth it to let that person know how pissed off you are at them.
It is pathos we lack, and this lack of pathos makes the worlds we explore quite stale.
http://www.mmorpg.com/blogs/Antioche
You know...
I dont really care to be honest
If Mittens had just said "if you want to go kill this guy, here is his info" it would have been a non issue. The only thing that made it an issue is that he said "If you want to make this guy kill himself, here is his info." Both statements have the same affect its just that one sounds pretty horrible. It's a game and everyone who plays EVE knows they can be killed anywhere at anytime. I don't see what the fuss is.
Are you a Pavlovian Fish Biscuit Addict? Get Help Now!
I will play no more MMORPGs until somethign good comes out!
Thats true but encouraging the hunting down of 1 person by potentially thousands of players is borderline abusive. Within game rules, but really nasty in this particular case when it is clearly known the guy is having emotional issues in RL.
Put it this way imagine a relative of yours played lets say football in real life, and was having real psychological problems, and you find the director of football telling everyone on TV to try and harass and bully your relative in game. Pretty nasty behaviour that would be shunned by most normal people. Empathy is a lost skill online these days, it has a place even in Eve.
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Now playing GW2, AOW 3, ESO, LOTR, Elite D
Whenever a gme is being played, whether a virtual computer game or a physical one like football, if it involves other human beings those interactions are 'real life'.
The proper response of a non sociopath upon hearing that W was suicidal would have been "Look, if you're really suicidal, then playing this game isn't for you. you should find a different game and seek help to deal with your problems."
What actually happened was very different. As has been pointed out earlier in this thread, Alex had prepared a slide of W's message to him in advance of the presentation that was on YouTube so the whole idea of this being a drunken indiscretion goes out the window.
Alex is extremely lucky that W didn't actually commit suicide... the court of public opinion is harsher than any legal court of justice. If Alex is in fact an american lawyer he REALLY should have known better; at the least if the law firm that he works for gets wind of this he will most likely be fired.
That all depends. Some law firms would consider that type of ruthless personality to be quite the asset. Look at the top corporate sharks for an example. But coupled with his lack of judgement and knowledge of his personal limitations, that would tend to work against him. The "court of public opinion" only counts if its backed up by real courts backed by real guns. Otherwise its just much sound and fury that signifies nothing, in this context.