This month's Banter topic comes to us from the ever helpful Eelis Kiy, capsuleer behind the "Where the frack is my ship" blog. She asks: How does your real life personality compare to who you are as a character in EVE? Does a good leader of people in the real world make a good leader of pilots in game? Or vice-versa? Do your real-life skills help you with the roles you fulfil in your corporation or alliance? Or do you behave completely differently? Does the anonymity of the Internet allow you to thrive on the tears of others in New Eden whilst you work as a good Samaritan away from your keyboard? Or are you as mean outside of your pod as you are inside it? Have experiences in EVE Online affected your behaviour, skills or attitudes outside of the game?
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I was fascinated by the idea of a real life Good Samaritan playing Eve as a complete b@stard when I came up with the idea for a banter question. I am looking forward to reading the other responses to see if there are any such players out there!
I'll break a few of the points down and share my own thoughts:
How does your real life personality compare to who you are as a character in EVE?
For me personally, in-game Eelis is much the same as oog Karen. I do take on a “role” of sorts but it isn’t one that is that far removed from the person behind the keyboard.
I guess it is only natural to loosen a few boundaries when you are shrouded by the, mostly, consequence-free anonymity of the internet. Put that with a game like Eve and it is easy to see how some folks turn to the darker arts of scamming, misleading or blowing up hapless noobs and how others lose their temper and start raging against their antagonists.
But for me personally it is mostly a case of what you see is what you get and as for roleplaying or taking on an entirely new persona, I just don’t get it!
I am happy to respect a bit of role-play style chatter now and then, if I am with someone who is that way inclined, but I’ve never been able to embrace it completely and turn myself into someone else. Similarly, in Eve I have never been able to scam anyone. I sat there one afternoon, in Jita, with my carbon contract all ready to go but my conscience just wouldn’t let me do it. No matter how many times I listened to HTFU on youtube. Am I just failing at computer games or is my moral compass simply too strong?
Does a good leader of people in the real world make a good leader of pilots in game? Do your real-life skills help you with the roles you fulfil in your corporation or alliance?
As I’ve gotten to know certain people in Eve a little better it becomes (not surprisingly) easy to see a strong connection between their apparent “real personality” and how well (or badly) they deal with certain situations or perform certain tasks within the game. My own CEO for example is someone who could walk into a room full of strangers and soon be in a room full of (probably drunk) friends. He’s good with people, pretty patient and also quite the wordsmith which makes him ideally suited to a life of never ending diplomatic incidents of one kind or another. But could someone without these natural talents reinvent themselves online and take on such a role successfully?
For me personally, my previous years of work in legal offices and dealing with office politics and processes have probably helped me quite a lot with my roles as a Director here in Eve although my time in other guilds/corps from previous mmos has no doubt come into play as well.
Have experiences in EVE Online affected your behaviour, skills or attitudes outside of the game?
This was a startling point for me to ponder.
Many moons ago I used Photoshop skills and web design/creation in my job. But when I left that job I had no real reason to carry on using these skills. However, having Eve Online as a muse has helped me to keep my knowledge of these things going. In addition, my experiences with blogging about Eve and reading other Eve blogs has been quite educational and taught me not just new things about Eve but also a lot about blogs and social media.
It wasn’t my intention to do anything meaningful with all the knowledge I accidently accumulated whilst making stupid pictures or writing about how I totally got drunk and died last night but meaningful results have inadvertantly come from it. In the last 3 months my job role has changed dramatically and now encompasses a lot of Photoshop work, web design and social media. So, cheers for that Eve Online!
As for attitudes, certainly my attitude to pvping in mmos has completely changed since I gave it a go in Eve. No more “mrs pve server” for me. I almost have the urge to resub to WoW and go around ganking people. Hmm, perhaps Eve made me a little bit evil after all.
Looking forward to reading other peoples responses to this, and thanks CK for running with my question.
Fellow banter responses:
1. EVE Blog Banter #24: Be, all that you can be, and so much more!
2. BB24:RL + EVE = | A Mule In EvE
3. Freebooted: BB 24: You Talking to Me?
4. where the frack is my ship?: Blog Banter 24: Behind the keyboard
5. (OOC) CK’s Blog Banter #24: I Am Prano. « Prano's Journey
6. mikeazariah » Blog Archive » BB24 Who are you, who hoo woo hoo
7. Drifting: The 24th EVE Blog Banter (January 2011 Edition) - EVE and Real Life
8. Victoria Aut Mors » Blog Archive » Blog Banter #24 – Where Eve Meets Real Life
9. Who is more real?? « The Durzo Chronicles
10. Captain Serenity: blog banter #24 - Personalities
11. Confessions of a Closet Carebear: EVE and Real Life (EVE Blog Banter #24)
12. The 24th EVE Blog Banter - EVE and Real Life - The Phoenix Diaries
13. EvE Blog Banter #24: EVE and Real Life EvE Blasphemy
14. Blog Banter 24: In Real Life « Yarrbear Tales
15. The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Alt « the hydrostatic capsule
16. Blog Banter #24 – Me « Roc's Ramblings
17. Blog Banter: Personalities in game and out of game
18. Fiddler's Edge: Game Face - Eve Blog Banter #24
19. Progression's Horizon: Blog Banter 24- Synonymous or Anonymous?
20. More to come....
Good topic Eelis.
ReplyDeleteIn asnwer to your first question, Flashfresh is probably the most obvious player I can think of that has the 'Good Samaritan/Ebil Piwate' dichotomy. By day, releief worker, by night, scourge of low-sec (and a damned good blogger!)
Enjoyed reading that. :)
Aye theres been some really fun responses, the pleasure for me in this banter has all been in reading what others wrote.
ReplyDeleteI'd love to have posed this question to an old friend of mine from SWG. She was a very dirty, flirty, funny mostly-unhappily-married woman in her 40s. Great gal, so funny, we were friends for 3 years... then I discovered that she was actually a happily married man who just loved his role-play. Always thought I was good at working out the role-players to the real ladies, I'll never make that assumption again hah! Really don't know how he kept it going so well for so long with no one twigging!
This is indeed a pretty fascinating topic, good shout. As I'm working my way through the banters, I'm wondering two things;
ReplyDelete1. A lot of folk seem to be responding along the lines of being the same in-game and out. Which makes me wonder about the roleplaying character roots of EVE. I suppose there's a bit of a disconnect given that our avatars are currently ships, so it's hard to 'get into character'. Hopefully that's something Incarna will change.
2. As it's such an incisive and revealing topic, are people being honest or are they saying what they want people to think (if someone was a proper git in real life, are they likely to admit it)?
A psychologist would probably have a field day. Have we got any in the blogoshpere?