Welcome to the tenth installment of the EVE Blog Banter, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week to post articles pertaining to the said topic. The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed here. Check out other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!
 
This month’s banter leans a little, OK a lot, on the academic side. It comes to us from xiphos83 of A Misguided Adventurer, who asks the following: ” Victor Davis Hanson argues that western culture, comprising of ideals such as freedom, debate, capitalism, and consensual government, are what make western society so successful at waging war. These ideologies create a warrior who’s direct participation in government, ability to think freely, and desire to remain free, fights harder and is willing to suffer more than his conscripted foe. Though a military must remain a structured oligarchy to fight a war effectively, why in a world where military conflict is as familiar as breathing are there so few alliances that embrace these ideologies when governing their members?”

The fundamental flaw in this month’s banter topic is trying to compare this particular aspect of real life theology to a multiplayer gaming universe.

In real life, everything said in this banter topic can be true. It is an ideal to which many strive.

Ingame, the difference is really quite simple. I play my game in the way that I see fit. If I find it fun, I do it. If I don’t want to do it, I don’t have to.

As long as I pay my monthly subscription fee, I can be as selfless or as selfish as I want.

This is why corporations fail.

EVE Online is ultimately a game. It is not a job. In fact, I know a few players who dread logging in at times because it can feel like a part-time job, consuming all our free hours, sucking us into its ever evolving depth.

Let’s look at a corporation CEO. They more than likely formed the corp because they had an idea of how they wanted to play the game. They wanted to run a corp and thought it would be fun to see things go their way. Or they may have formed the corp with like minded friends, either from real life, or ingame.

No matter how noble the cause may be, we all have our own idea on how to reach the objective. Because we are not forced to work together, ultimately we can choose to walk away at any point in time. Eve will still be there. We can join another corp, or not; the choice is up to us.

We are all equal in Eve. That is something the real world cannot offer.

The politician, the soldier, the worker; everyone has someone they answer to, even the President of the United States. We must perform our duty, or we are removed from that post. Period. The consequences are much more severe in real life.

Is that to say there hasn’t been, or cannot be successful alliances in Eve? Of course not. Some alliances have shown great success, having thousands of like minded players working towards several smaller goals, driven by one overarching objective. And because it offers fun to its members, it can succeed.

Democracy fails in Eve ultimately because we each have our own story to tell, our own game to play, and at the end of the day, what are you really paying for? The ability to login to a game to have someone else tell you what to do? I have a job for that where they pay ME to tell me what to do. I don’t really need that from a game, thank you very much.

A game is meant to entertain, to relax, to be fun. Maybe that makes me selfish. Maybe it makes us all the same.

Fly safe.

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