The Mittani

CEO Update: Clutching Pearls and Finger-Wagging


When a leader stumbles, his enemies come out of the woodwork - like termites from a rotted stump - and try to tear him and his people down. This is an iron law of politics; we see it replicated everywhere. When in Iceland, I stumbled: my presentation was boring, I was hideously drunk, and I said something entirely regrettable. My apology upon my return was not a troll (though our in-game enemies are trying to imply it is just a calculated move); as a maniacal control freak, me getting that drunk leaves me with a foul opinion of myself and I wish I hadn't done as I had. Yet my admitted guilt is no excuse for the sort of scheming and conniving that we are seeing from petty souls looking to score political points at Goonswarm's expense.

In 2007, after being handed CEOship against my will by a retiring/escaping Remedial, I encountered some controversy over the T20 threadnaught where CCP made some vague legal threats in some shitty dev blog against Goonswarm, and my wife and I decided to pull the plug and walk away from the game. In that era, I also believed in such quaint notions as "democracy" and "libertarianism"; as a leader and as a person, I had my head completely up my ass, and didn't understand even the basics such as 'sleep on it'. In the past five years I've learned a lot about leadership - usually the hard way - and the value of holding firm in the face of temporary internet controversies. My skin is much thicker than before, and GSF will hold firm as this lynch mob of pubbies points their fingers at us, drooling and howling, addicted to sanctimoniousness. After I fell on my sword in public in an act of honest contrition, anyone still holding a grudge about my presentation and making shitty posts about it is probably one of GSF's ancient foes, or someone we blew up in Eve Online. The same old rogue's gallery is there - all the same faces and their NPC alts who cry in each and every anti-Goonswarm thread, every goddamned day.

How Did This Happen?

Why did the shitstorm break out on Monday, when I was drunk on Thursday night? The hard fact is this: the gaming media hates CCP after the Incarna incidents; microtransactions of that sort are anathema to the gaming press as a whole (and rightfully so, $70 monocles, etc). As the 'mainstream' - non-EVE playing, that is - gaming media doesn't actually participate in the game, the Crucible fixes and the sea change from CCP after their restructuring is meaningless to them. We know that CCP under Unifex is a completely different, spaceships-focused organization; we know that the people now at CCP increasingly play EVE and 'get it'. But the media doesn't understand why "The senior producer was born in Syndicate" matters so much. To them, Unifex is the same as Zulu, and at any moment it's going to be Monocles and pants everywhere.

In addition, certain individuals in the gaming press who actually do cover EVE specifically (Brendan Drain, Massively.com columnist, is a great example of this; he's been trying to get Goonswarm banned for 'cyber bullying' for years) hate GSF for being mean, bad, arrogant people. The combination of anti-CCP and anti-GSF grudges is a great opportunity for a journo to skip writing boring copy about the DUST 514 release - which is what CCP had hoped the press would do, post-Fanfest - and instead hype up a juicy Internet Scandal where everyone clutches their pearls and wags their fingers. I can't say I blame them, given my experience at Tentonhammer; generating copy after a media event is about as entertaining as filing a tax return.

This isn't to say that I didn't act like a jackass - I fell on my sword for a good reason. But the media shitstorm is a nexus of several factors working together, accelerated by people who hate us in the game itself.

Apology School, Mittens Edition

I apologized personally to The Wis; There is no question that I went too far and drank too much, and ignored advice that I shouldn't use that specific slide at all. Many of you disagree, and that's fine; as you know, I'm kind of a squishball in person rather than an internet hardman. That said, my apology to The Wis doesn't extend towards the gaming media who are trying to make a quick buck by whoring traffic by dumping on me without actually investigating what took place, and that apology certainly doesn't extend to hypocritical shitbags like Jade Constantine or Issler Dainze who are explicitly trying to use this controversy to further an ingame political agenda.

I don't blame them for trying to further an ingame agenda, of course; this is EVE, and the metagame now clearly extends to the gaming press itself, and the only solution is to come over the top at them. I can make an out-of-game apology for out-of-game behavior, but is still being treated as part of the Great Game by everyone else; if I still had to work for a living, these people would be mailing my boss trying to get me fired - much like they did in the past with Darius JOHNSON. Because I fucked up, our foes now expect us to be weakened and uncertain - but we are not. All of what is transpiring here is predictable. We will prove them wrong, yet again.

The CSM Chair/GSF CEO Hat problem:

Yet for CSM7 I am going to refuse to accept the Chairmanship when CSM7 takes office, but not because of our enemies trying to use my Fanfest fuckup for ingame political advantage.

This is a nuanced position, so read it carefully before you flip out.

Many of the cool things we, as GSF, are planning on doing - particularly destroying Jita - will create a torrent of negative press for CCP if I'm wearing the Chairman's hat. One could additionally argue that I've spent so much time in Iceland this year that I've become co-opted by CCP; I have too many friends who work at the company and I don't want to fuck them over with wave after wave of "Chairman and his Band of Thugs Annihilates Jita, 'Harvests Souls', Mocks Suffering Of Community, Is ~Arrogant~" by trying to wear both the GSF CEO hat and the CSM Chair hat simultaneously. As the profile of the CSM has raised due to Vile Rat and my successes on the Council, pressure has increased on CSM members - and particularly the Chair - to be 'upstanding citizens' in Eve Online itself. An 'upstanding citizen' cannot lead Goonswarm.

We're up to three stalkers following me around. Someone posted about how they should kill my dog. My wife is unamused, and thinks that dropping the Chairman the title will allow me to have a lower profile that doesn't see us getting death threats on a weekly basis or nailed to a cross in the media by our in-game foes.

Ditching Chair gives us more freedom to behave like goons. It means we can perma-wardec other CSM members such as Issler Dainze, carrying on a proud tradition first initiated by Darius JOHNSON on an earlier CSM (Regarding Issler's corp, apparently the thought of actual war strikes raw terror into them, as all they want to do is mine and produce in hisec). The non-EVE playing gaming media has no idea who I am, and the only reason they have focused on me this year is the Chairman's title, not our more interesting accomplishments over the years.

Let a solid CSM like Two Step bear the burden - he's a good guy and he won't fuck nullsec over - and I'll fade into the background of the CSM to focus all of my efforts on leading GSF at the expense of the rabble now trying to persecute our alliance and turn EVE into Hello Kitty Online. It's a shame that I have to do this after we spent so much collective effort fighting for and winning the Chair the past two years, but after what I've seen over the past few months and now at Fanfest, it is clear that I can either lead the CSM or lead Goonswarm.

I choose Goonswarm.

War, Glorious War

Meanwhile, as I was being embarrassingly drunk and causing scandals, our war against the forces of Elite PvP continues. Many interesting discussions were had at Fanfest; I spent a lot of time hanging out with the Finfleet and PL crowd, and there was a broad consensus that Vince Draken and NCdot are complete buttlelords who no one likes. Then, as if by magic, NCdot's director forums are leaked by the GIA heroes Gicer, Midge, et al, and then barely a day later we kill three of their Titans. You guys own.

I'm honestly not sure who to kill now. We need to get Razor a new home. Do we invade Tribute and wipe out the drama-wracked NCdot? Do we invade Tenal, as planned before Fanfest? No matter which way we leap, our foes appear exhausted and unhappy with the Titan Nerf hanging over their heads. At Fanfest CCP made noises acknowledging that the initially mooted nerf didn't seem like it would go far enough to solve the subcap blapping problem, which implies that a more significant/drastic adjustment may be in the cards. That's good news, as our EFT wizards had already figured out how to modify our Titan fleet with stacked target painters on motherships in support to blap with impunity - a dictor with two Aeons dropping 4+ TPs each on it will get locked quickly (sig impacts both locktime and gun tracking) and then blapped, just as in the status quo.

There are already posts from Greyscale to that effect, but perhaps more importantly Masterplan - one of the twin ~Saviors of EVE~ along with Veritas - is on Greyscale's team. Regardless of Greyscale's history of badposting, I'm sanguine about the progress on the Blapping Problem.

Jita Will Burn

Jita will burn.

I suspect that the cries of protest when we begin hitting Jita will make the Ice Interdiction sound like old Manilow tracks played through a de-tuned Muzak speaker at half volume in an elevator full of incontinent chimpanzees. Everyone uses Jita - alliances, humble traders, mega-jews, legions of market bots, you name it. Ice miners could escape our Interdiction by moving away, but ruining Jita will ruin, erm... everything. It will be like surrounding the New York Stock Exchange, the Board of Trade, and the Federal Reserve with a ring of armored vehicles and shelling them all, simultaneously, until the entire economic system flies apart at the seams.

If successful, the Jita project will be the single largest and most coordinated act of grief in the history of EVE - we can expect press, calls for us all to be banned, and other nullsec entities joining the fun. While GSF will be focusing on high-value targets like freighters, it is entirely possible that PL and RDN and god knows who else will swing by and smartbomb the shit out of Jita just for the fuck of it; there was palpable excitement at Fanfest about the idea across most of nullsec.