You wouldn't rob a stranger. You would definitely not kill a stranger just against boredom. You wouldn't rob the safe of your corporation. You wouldn't shoot your coworkers even if it was legal. Similarly, if faced with evil ones, you wouldn't attack them with blazing guns against odds. You wouldn't give a large sum to a young person just because he is an adorable newbie. You would definitely not work for your employer without payment.
You are neither a mass murderer, nor a saint. You are an ordinary person who plays a massively multiplayer online role-playing game, where your avatar is a villain or hero. A spaceship pilot, a dragon slayer, an orc or some other weird thing.
But some people take the game too seriously. Things happen to their avatar in-game, and they act like it happened to them, in real life. The internet is full of people raging over a game. People who post angry rants. And people who quit over something that happened to their avatar.
I was thinking about this, reading the parting words of a prominent member of the MMO group I play with. He was upset because another leadership member was removed due to inactivity: "people are all `Hey this is what you should expect because you were unavailable etc etc.` Sure, if we were a Fortune 500 company or even if we paid X some real life salary, I would agree. But let me tell you what the reality of this is. X is someone who has devoted ungodly amounts of time to this alliance over the past 18 months or so. X done this all for practically nothing".
This is absolutely wrong. X spent "ungodly amounts of time" in a video game. The reward for playing a game cannot be anything else than enjoying the game and maybe learning something from it. If such things didn't happen, then it was time badly spent. You can't expect other real life people reward you for playing a game.
Within the game, X roleplayed a director in a company. This avatar stopped doing the director duties and was removed. This happened in the game, according to the logic of the roleplayed world. Would you fire a friend of yours for being unavailable for a few weeks, for serious family matters? Of course not, you would probably help him with these matters.
But the sad truth is that we aren't friends. Our avatars are friends. We are roleplaying being bros, standing side by side till the bitter end against the evil spaceship empire. You, the person, the player, can expect nothing else from the fellow players than what laws, EULA and human decency demands. Things like "don't threaten him with IRL violence or call him a [racist homophobic slurs]". You definitely can't expect gratitude for playing the same video game.
Drama starts when someone perceives that his friends betrayed his trust. In the game our avatars are friends and one can betray the other. The other can retaliate in-game by hunting him down, getting him kicked from groups, and so on. But you, the player has absolutely no reason to be upset. The other guy beyond the avatar was never your friend. He was a random player whose avatar happened to come to the circles of your avatar. Thinking that random player as friend is just as crazy as performing violent crime against a player whose avatar violenced yours in the game.
Clarification: I'm not against statements like "he did so much for the alliance that he deserves X reward". Many people devote serious resources to help out in-game groups. But it must be understood as "he given up time spent roaming or time spent farming ISK for the alliance" and not "he given up real life time for his alliance". For a non-player family member "FC-ing in Asakai" and "running lvl4s in highsec alone" are both classified as "sitting at his computer playing EVE".
You are neither a mass murderer, nor a saint. You are an ordinary person who plays a massively multiplayer online role-playing game, where your avatar is a villain or hero. A spaceship pilot, a dragon slayer, an orc or some other weird thing.
But some people take the game too seriously. Things happen to their avatar in-game, and they act like it happened to them, in real life. The internet is full of people raging over a game. People who post angry rants. And people who quit over something that happened to their avatar.
I was thinking about this, reading the parting words of a prominent member of the MMO group I play with. He was upset because another leadership member was removed due to inactivity: "people are all `Hey this is what you should expect because you were unavailable etc etc.` Sure, if we were a Fortune 500 company or even if we paid X some real life salary, I would agree. But let me tell you what the reality of this is. X is someone who has devoted ungodly amounts of time to this alliance over the past 18 months or so. X done this all for practically nothing".
This is absolutely wrong. X spent "ungodly amounts of time" in a video game. The reward for playing a game cannot be anything else than enjoying the game and maybe learning something from it. If such things didn't happen, then it was time badly spent. You can't expect other real life people reward you for playing a game.
Within the game, X roleplayed a director in a company. This avatar stopped doing the director duties and was removed. This happened in the game, according to the logic of the roleplayed world. Would you fire a friend of yours for being unavailable for a few weeks, for serious family matters? Of course not, you would probably help him with these matters.
But the sad truth is that we aren't friends. Our avatars are friends. We are roleplaying being bros, standing side by side till the bitter end against the evil spaceship empire. You, the person, the player, can expect nothing else from the fellow players than what laws, EULA and human decency demands. Things like "don't threaten him with IRL violence or call him a [racist homophobic slurs]". You definitely can't expect gratitude for playing the same video game.
Drama starts when someone perceives that his friends betrayed his trust. In the game our avatars are friends and one can betray the other. The other can retaliate in-game by hunting him down, getting him kicked from groups, and so on. But you, the player has absolutely no reason to be upset. The other guy beyond the avatar was never your friend. He was a random player whose avatar happened to come to the circles of your avatar. Thinking that random player as friend is just as crazy as performing violent crime against a player whose avatar violenced yours in the game.
Clarification: I'm not against statements like "he did so much for the alliance that he deserves X reward". Many people devote serious resources to help out in-game groups. But it must be understood as "he given up time spent roaming or time spent farming ISK for the alliance" and not "he given up real life time for his alliance". For a non-player family member "FC-ing in Asakai" and "running lvl4s in highsec alone" are both classified as "sitting at his computer playing EVE".
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