Now look at that: despite I announced that I was (and still am) spying on the recipe of success of HBC and I called all the small-corp management useless and no longer pay them 20B/month, they didn't kick me. I'm genuinely surprised and still can't comprehend what is happening here.
However here is my second spy report on the recipe of success: the large corporation. On my last fleet we were out with a 50-60 man Rokh fleet in Esoteria destroying infrastructure. We met there with a fleet of The Initiative. which is another member of the same coalition as TEST. We merged fleets and rampaged on.
The first important thing is the existence of Init. fleet at all. The Jabber call went out not to TEST but to "All online HBC". It means that Init members and leaders have seen it too. Yet the Init leaders choose not to join that fleet (or inform our FC that they already have a fleet and he shouldn't make a second) but organize their alliance-only fleet and act on their own. They choose to join fleets only when we met in the middle of enemy territory and staying separate would have been utterly stupid, especially as they had no titan with them, so they had to take gates.
What does this mean? Init. leaders (even if not consciously) believe that their alliance is their in-group, the "us", while the rest of HBC are friendly outsiders. It's not like they aren't helping their allies. Actually on that very day their fleet went out to clean space for new HBC members and not for themselves. They merely prefer to be with themselves, with the "us"-people. They could handle it alone and saw no reason to ask for outside help. On the other hand when they shown up, our fleet comms was cheering and upon joining there were lot of welcoming of init-bros. The members of this fleet clearly had a different frame of reference, they did not see the Init people as "friendly outsiders" but clearly as part of "us".
My post told that the recipe of success in EVE is to merge the corporations, cut the useless management. If you think about it, it's kind of trivial. If you want a 1000 man fleet, you need at least 10000 members. If you want 10000 members, you need a 10000 men organization and not 100 different 100-men ones with different management, culture, chat, comms, doctrines, whatever. You need a 10000-men uniform monolith that acts as one. CFC and HBC are winning because they have at least a 4000-men monolith core that pulls the rest in the right way.
How does it connect to "init bros"? It is very important because it shows that while the the leadership lacks the means to formally merge allied corps and remove useless middle management, the Dreddit culture is able to bypass it. From the comms it seemed that the Init people were genuinely surprised by the warmth of their welcome and they were clearly happy to receive the amount of love they got. This means that the people are reaching out to the allied members and invite them to culturally merge, to be "one of us". This cultural reach-out solidify HBC, make it impossible for RMT-corrupted or Falcon-insulted alliance/corporation leaders to move their alliances/corps out of HBC. Just check out The Jagged Alliance. They were in HBC, housed in Querious. However their leadership was unable/unwilling to cooperate with HBC leadership and they were removed. They dropped sov at Nov 4 in Querious. Their simple members weren't happy about it and they voiced their sadness of leaving on the coalition forums. Since Nov 4 they lost 90% of their members.
-MTL-: 49
K0TA: 36
RKHS: 45
SUITE: 135
FOEA: 80
LEUMB: 23
VRTEX: 87
C.R.Y: 145
TAATO: 56
CRVNS: 26
JNKY: 52
These corps with 734 members moved back to HBC, and this number doesn't include the members who quit their corp and joined one of the HBC corps. It seems HBC made some serious impression in these guys.
OK, TEST members are some loving bunch, how is it important or new? The "bro" culture of TEST and Goons is widely known. It has two explanation: one is that TEST and GSF members are some special-breed people full of love. Well, they believe that. They openly claim this on the forums. Goons were so upset that people consider them ... goons, that they created their own news site to battle the bad press.
I don't really subscribe to the "Goons are made of love" theory. I rather believe in a "spirit of Christmas": in Christmas and other holidays people are extra nice to each other. It doesn't come from their person (otherwise they would be extra nice always), but from the setting. They are placed into a cultural frame where niceness is expected. They are reminded to that by symbols and by peer example (other people are nice too). Christmas is the unquestionable proof that outside things can make average people nice and friendly. OK, but there are no candy canes in HBC staging stations nor the FCs are riding reindeer sledges. What creates the structure that turns average people into "bros"?
Have you seen great music festivals? Have you heard of Woodstock? If you visit such event you see something familiar: huge amount of people giving hugs, everyone are friendly with everyone, people get together and so on, and so on. You don't see anything like that in a small club setting. The reason is a mixture of anonymity (no one will tell your mum/wife if you disappear with that random girl in a tent) and the common positive interest (the music).
The large-corp players experience EVE Online similarly as the festival-goers the music, while small-corp players do it as a small-party goers. There your actions have social consequences, you have a reputation to care of, the other people have a known history for you (that drunk and horny girl isn't random but the girlfriend of your friend you don't want to hurt). If you've been in an uptown party, you know that it's not at all about fun.
While other factors obviously contribute (for example a large group can not only be friendly, it can be a lynching mob too), but I'm sure that the main reason why TEST is so "bro" is the large-corp setting. This festival-like feeling could be recreated elsewhere too if the small social groups of the different small corps would be merged into a large one where everyone else is an anonymous, faceless, but clearly loving and helping "bro".
However here is my second spy report on the recipe of success: the large corporation. On my last fleet we were out with a 50-60 man Rokh fleet in Esoteria destroying infrastructure. We met there with a fleet of The Initiative. which is another member of the same coalition as TEST. We merged fleets and rampaged on.
The first important thing is the existence of Init. fleet at all. The Jabber call went out not to TEST but to "All online HBC". It means that Init members and leaders have seen it too. Yet the Init leaders choose not to join that fleet (or inform our FC that they already have a fleet and he shouldn't make a second) but organize their alliance-only fleet and act on their own. They choose to join fleets only when we met in the middle of enemy territory and staying separate would have been utterly stupid, especially as they had no titan with them, so they had to take gates.
What does this mean? Init. leaders (even if not consciously) believe that their alliance is their in-group, the "us", while the rest of HBC are friendly outsiders. It's not like they aren't helping their allies. Actually on that very day their fleet went out to clean space for new HBC members and not for themselves. They merely prefer to be with themselves, with the "us"-people. They could handle it alone and saw no reason to ask for outside help. On the other hand when they shown up, our fleet comms was cheering and upon joining there were lot of welcoming of init-bros. The members of this fleet clearly had a different frame of reference, they did not see the Init people as "friendly outsiders" but clearly as part of "us".
My post told that the recipe of success in EVE is to merge the corporations, cut the useless management. If you think about it, it's kind of trivial. If you want a 1000 man fleet, you need at least 10000 members. If you want 10000 members, you need a 10000 men organization and not 100 different 100-men ones with different management, culture, chat, comms, doctrines, whatever. You need a 10000-men uniform monolith that acts as one. CFC and HBC are winning because they have at least a 4000-men monolith core that pulls the rest in the right way.
How does it connect to "init bros"? It is very important because it shows that while the the leadership lacks the means to formally merge allied corps and remove useless middle management, the Dreddit culture is able to bypass it. From the comms it seemed that the Init people were genuinely surprised by the warmth of their welcome and they were clearly happy to receive the amount of love they got. This means that the people are reaching out to the allied members and invite them to culturally merge, to be "one of us". This cultural reach-out solidify HBC, make it impossible for RMT-corrupted or Falcon-insulted alliance/corporation leaders to move their alliances/corps out of HBC. Just check out The Jagged Alliance. They were in HBC, housed in Querious. However their leadership was unable/unwilling to cooperate with HBC leadership and they were removed. They dropped sov at Nov 4 in Querious. Their simple members weren't happy about it and they voiced their sadness of leaving on the coalition forums. Since Nov 4 they lost 90% of their members.
-MTL-: 49
K0TA: 36
RKHS: 45
SUITE: 135
FOEA: 80
LEUMB: 23
VRTEX: 87
C.R.Y: 145
TAATO: 56
CRVNS: 26
JNKY: 52
These corps with 734 members moved back to HBC, and this number doesn't include the members who quit their corp and joined one of the HBC corps. It seems HBC made some serious impression in these guys.
OK, TEST members are some loving bunch, how is it important or new? The "bro" culture of TEST and Goons is widely known. It has two explanation: one is that TEST and GSF members are some special-breed people full of love. Well, they believe that. They openly claim this on the forums. Goons were so upset that people consider them ... goons, that they created their own news site to battle the bad press.
I don't really subscribe to the "Goons are made of love" theory. I rather believe in a "spirit of Christmas": in Christmas and other holidays people are extra nice to each other. It doesn't come from their person (otherwise they would be extra nice always), but from the setting. They are placed into a cultural frame where niceness is expected. They are reminded to that by symbols and by peer example (other people are nice too). Christmas is the unquestionable proof that outside things can make average people nice and friendly. OK, but there are no candy canes in HBC staging stations nor the FCs are riding reindeer sledges. What creates the structure that turns average people into "bros"?
Have you seen great music festivals? Have you heard of Woodstock? If you visit such event you see something familiar: huge amount of people giving hugs, everyone are friendly with everyone, people get together and so on, and so on. You don't see anything like that in a small club setting. The reason is a mixture of anonymity (no one will tell your mum/wife if you disappear with that random girl in a tent) and the common positive interest (the music).
The large-corp players experience EVE Online similarly as the festival-goers the music, while small-corp players do it as a small-party goers. There your actions have social consequences, you have a reputation to care of, the other people have a known history for you (that drunk and horny girl isn't random but the girlfriend of your friend you don't want to hurt). If you've been in an uptown party, you know that it's not at all about fun.
While other factors obviously contribute (for example a large group can not only be friendly, it can be a lynching mob too), but I'm sure that the main reason why TEST is so "bro" is the large-corp setting. This festival-like feeling could be recreated elsewhere too if the small social groups of the different small corps would be merged into a large one where everyone else is an anonymous, faceless, but clearly loving and helping "bro".
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