“The Way You Are Playing Is a Reflection On How You Really Live Your Life”
Looking back over the summer, I realize it’s been a while since I posted anything in the way of actual tears on this blog. Thankfully, my new friend Diaishi Akye graciously supplied us with some truly exquisite and classic vintaged boo-hoos the other night, and they definitely merit sharing.
Pertaining to the post title, no, it’s not my quote; yes, I find it highly amusing. We’ll get to that.
As a forward to our story, Diaishi was little peeved at me because I had tricked his friend with some slick social engineering and an alt of mine into giving me aggro. A little under 10 minutes later, that lucky pilot was kind enough to warp back to the ice belt in an Orca, which I promptly set about violencing very, very slowly in front of his corpmates, who could do nothing but watch.
To his credit, the Orca pilot was man enough to avoid any over-dramatic weepies, and (wisely) declined a ransom offer. So, it was after the inevitable fireworks that the real, well, waterworks started, when one of the helpless corpmates convoed me with what I believe might be the first “reverse-ransom” attempt I’ve ever seen:
Diaishi Akye > 500 million
Diaishi Akye > Now
Aiden Mourn > Howdy
Aiden Mourn > Well, what am I buying for 1/2 a bil?
Diaishi Akye > Give me a reason
Aiden Mourn > to…..?
Diaishi Akye > Bannedible Exploit
Diaishi Akye > Petition
Diaishi Akye > and you are Ban hammered
Aiden Mourn > oh please, make a petition
Diaishi Akye > done
Ladies and gentlemen, start your engines. Clearly pissed about his friend losing a 500mil ship, but incredibly misdirected in his assumptions about how that ship was taken from them, Diaishi decided to stomp on the gas and head full-steam into crazy-town, spouting rage and bullshit all the way:
Diaishi Akye > You are a idiot
Aiden Mourn > there was an easy out here, and that was 250mil, wich i think is a fair price for my time and efforts
Aiden Mourn > no, your friend is an idiot
Aiden Mourn > for trusting a complete stranger in eve
Diaishi Akye > 500 mill and I wont hit the send button
Diaishi Akye > you explotied the game
Aiden Mourn > how about this
Aiden Mourn > 250 mil, and i wont make you look like the dufus you are on my blog
Diaishi Akye > cheated
Aiden Mourn > no, bested
Aiden Mourn > you got bested
Diaishi Akye > broke the EULA
Aiden Mourn > in which way
Aiden Mourn > please show me exactly where i broke the EULA
Diaishi Akye > I intend on taking this to the Gms and to a close friend that is very close to the GMs in this game
Aiden Mourn > lol
Diaishi Akye > Laugh
Diaishi Akye > I will when you cant get in your account
In my years of getting under people’s skin and making them cry in this game, I’ve learned a thing or two about the human psyche and the way it works, or doesn’t, under stress and clouded by anger; and everyone’s a little different. Some people will move very quickly from rage into sadness or acceptance, at which point, the tears are no longer fun, they’re just depressing. So when you get someone thats really letting the fire and brimstone out, the way to keep them on that level is a careful mix of sarcasm, sympathy (really), and just the right amount of mockery. You do this right and I guarantee they’ll keep raging until you choose to walk away.
Aiden Mourn > and i wish you the best of luck my friend
Aiden Mourn > but it aint going to work out for you
Diaishi Akye > Yes it will
Aiden Mourn > i tricked you using working as intended game mechanics
Aiden Mourn > and you are rightfully pissed off about it
Diaishi Akye > Exploite
Aiden Mourn > no, trick
Diaishi Akye > Am not mad I just dont like cheaters
Aiden Mourn > me neither
Diaishi Akye > Well look in the mirrow
Diaishi Akye > You cheated and broke rules
Aiden Mourn > how did i cheat
Aiden Mourn > how on earth could i have cheated
Diaishi Akye > I hate to say it but but you are not any better than a liar and a real thiefe
Aiden Mourn > well, id normally say “yes” to the liar part, but i never actually lied to you
Diaishi Akye > the way you are playing I would say it is a reflection on how you really live your life\
Aiden Mourn > lol
Diaishi Akye > Welcome to life Cheater
If you play this game long enough, (actually it takes about a week to run into your first one), you’ll begin to notice that there is a sizable group of misguided do-gooders in this game who honestly believe that who they are in a video game is a DIRECT EXTENSION of who they are in real life. These are the same people who always wanted to be the cops in cops n’ robbers and the cowboys in cowboys and indians (mislabeled racial epitaphs aside). Ironically, I’ve found that these are the same people who tend to be the most vicious and cruel when going up against an opposing team of “bad guys” in a game (say, terrorist vs CT in Counter Strike) after a rough day, even if that team is comprised of their RL friends. I’m not a psychologist, but I read enough Carl Jung in college to know what fragmented identity and misguided hero syndrome are. Time to turn the tables…
Aiden Mourn > can i ask you a question?
Diaishi Akye > sure
Aiden Mourn > do you actually fly a REAL spaceship in real life? do you actually use that spaceship to mine ICE in an astroid belt in outer space?
Aiden Mourn > its a video game bub, and you got beaten
Aiden Mourn > deal with it
Aiden Mourn > and stop being such a cry baby
Diaishi Akye > I don’t cheat people and I do have morals I live by in and out of game
Aiden Mourn > i cheated you out of an orca, but i didnt CHEAT
Diaishi Akye > Am not crying I am seeing how a cheat and a liar works
Aiden Mourn > /emote hands diaishi a tissue
Diaishi boldly continued to not get the point, at all, and continued to declare that video games = real life, despite some pretty A-game persuasive arguments on my part. Where do these people come from?
Diaishi Akye > you decieved
Diaishi Akye > lied
Diaishi Akye > cheated
Aiden Mourn > exactly
Aiden Mourn > theres no rule that you have to fucking tell the truth in the eula
Aiden Mourn > now grow a pair and continue in this game or go play something else
Diaishi Akye > Ok Once a cheater and liar always a cheater and a liar
Diaishi Akye > Sorry but I would be ashamed of my self if I did that sort of stuff to other people
Aiden Mourn > well thats where we’re different
Diaishi Akye > you are dealing with a person that is honest and decent
Diaishi Akye > If you even know the meaning of the words
Aiden Mourn > its a video game man
Aiden Mourn > the whole point is to escape reality and be different
Diaishi Akye > Really so in reality do you behave that way too
Aiden Mourn > why would i act the same way i do in rl in a video game
Aiden Mourn > especially one as crazy complex and amazingly indepth as this one
Diaishi Akye > its a reflection of who you really are
Aiden Mourn > no, its not
Aiden Mourn > at all
Aiden Mourn > if it was, that would be sad and pathetic
Aiden Mourn > do you play a fucking video game in the same way you tackle real life?
Diaishi Akye > Yes I do with Honesty and decentcy
Diaishi Akye > any how I understand and I guess you will contuine
Aiden Mourn > indeed i shall
Time to wrap things up at this little pity-party.
Aiden Mourn > you know diaishi, im glad we had this talk
Diaishi Akye > Why is that
Aiden Mourn > because this is hilarious
Diaishi Akye > You know you have a twisted sence of humor
Diaishi Akye > but I should not expected any more for a bunch of primates I guess
Aiden Mourn > thats me
Aiden Mourn > a monkey in a space suit
Diaishi Akye > If you ever get a bit if good in you decent honest mood look me up
Aiden Mourn > i think im being very honest right now
Aiden Mourn > for instance…
Aiden Mourn > “diaishi: i think you are a hot-headed, ill-tempered douche bag”
Aiden Mourn > true story
Diaishi Akye > In a insulting smart fresh way yeah
Aiden Mourn > just being honest
Diaishi Akye > I am not mad
Aiden Mourn > i beg to differ
Diaishi soon left both convo and system, after making sure to call me a “big pussy” for not opening fire on him with no aggression. As a final farewell to my new friend, I had to try poking him with that stick one last time:
I forgot, a present!
From: Aiden Mourn
Sent: 2011.08.31 05:32
To: Diaishi Akye,wait, I forgot, I have a present for you:
for the little girl that has everything else….you’re going to look SO PRETTY!
Best,
-Aiden
The moral of the story? “Haters be hatin.” No wait, wrong one. Maybe more like “Don’t do the crime if you can’t…” ? No thats not it either. I’ll look into this, but in the meantime if you’ll excuse me, I have to go beat up an old lady, rob a bank, and lie on my taxes. Stay tuned kids.
o7,
-Aiden
Finders & Keepers 
I started typing out my comment and then realized I had a lot more to say than I thought i did. So I’ll just post it over on my blog:
http://araziah.blogspot.com/2011/09/real-life.html
@Araziah You bring up some pretty good points there sir. A few points though I’d like to highlight, for the sake of this discussion:
“I try to be honest in my dealings with others. And the time I spent purposefully deceiving him didn’t sit well with me.”
I think this is maybe the biggest point of yours that stuck out to me. You followed it up very nicely with this, which I especially liked:
“Suiciding a thrasher to kill a hulk in a .5 system, ganking an industrial in low-sec, and can flipping miners and missioners are all activities I have no qualm with. This is Eve. It’s a game built on the fact that you can lose what you work to earn. It’s dealing strictly with game mechanics. But when it comes to more personal human interactions such as corporate infiltration and theft or my instance with the drake pilot I mentioned above, I can’t reconcile my efforts to be honest with others and treat them with respect outside the game with those type of actions in the game.”
I think I should underscore that it is not my belief that everyone should play this game, even when they’re being “bad” or “tricky”, in a hyper-aggressively hostile or evil way. Where you draw the line in how comfortable you are with your “mean-ness” in interacting with other players (in your case, you’re ok ganking someone, but conning trust and exploiting false-camaraderie is a step further than your comfort level), is really no different than drawing a line in other facets of your game-play in my opinion. For instance, some people choose to fit expensive deadspace or faction mods on what they fly in place of the tech 2 variants due to either un-met skill requirements, or in some cases, because they give a marginally better performance. In another example, some pilots play this game truly and fully in-character, following Eve cannon to the letter, even to the degree of changing their speech or writing style to suit their “in-character experience”.
Personally speaking, I think that deadspace and faction mods are a completely unnecessary risk and a reckless investment 90% of the time, and I really just can’t get into the whole RP thing. But, those are both active choices I make in my game play. Where you go on to say that choosing to act differently in a game than you would in life creates “a lie”, I have to disagree with. Take away the shiny graphics, the huge back-story, the greater meta-gaming community and the hyper-connectivity, and this whole thing starts to look a lot like, well, checkers. In short, its just a game, not real life, and we are all ultimately made-up cartoons we use to act out our own entertainment. I leave the moral conundrums to things that actually matter to who I am as a real person.
So, though I reserve the right to find entertainment in others and their choices in this game, I think it can be summed-up best with “to each his own”. Again though, I appreciate the great response you wrote up; more food for thought is always a good thing, and discussion keeps the whole thing going. Cheers.
-A
[…] Every now and again, I look at my wallet and see I still have 1,000 of those nifty “buy a shirt” credits. I could care less about that part of the game, unless I can figure out a way to scam people out of theirs or make a large profit on it. That’s what I, and really, SN, does. And we do it very well. […]
I am constantly intrigued at the arguments for and against why sociopathic behavior in a game is/is not a reflection (however minor) of how a person IRL would act, give the opportunity to do so. You always hear things like:
“You must be a big ol’ **** IRL!”
“It’s just a game! Y U SO MAD LOL!”
Etc, etc etc…
Both sides use this “logic” to demean the other, but which is actually right? I wonder if anyone has taken the time to do a study on it. It’d be interesting to read, I think.
@ZS Actually, I just found this article you might find interesting. Not entirely relevant to this exact type of “internet social interaction” but pretty illuminating on virtual vs actual identities:
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1739601,00.html
“to each his own” is an easy cop-out to justify your gaming style and redeem yourself for the tears you create.
If Aiden Mourn were to play WoW or any other MMORPG he would adopt the same piraty gaming style each time. Why ? I don’t know. But there is a link between RL desires and frustrations and how people construct and use imaginary worlds to deal with them. You’re telling me your not an ass-hat pirate RL ? I believe you. But the reason why you are playing that persona in Eve lies somewhere in your real identity. You enjoy tricking people into losing their (sometimes hard) earned cash, teaching them a lesson how tough and unforgivable Eve is, besting them with your knowledge of aggression timers etc etc. This need for superiority is part of what you are or what you want to be RL. We all play the same game, and the way we play (or *why* we play) is linked to our RL identity in one way or another.
So yeah, maybe you should think about why it is exactly that you love to extract people’s tears and put them to complete shame for reacting emotionally on your blog afterwards.
Looking forward to your next blog post !
[…] edit: after writing this, I realized I wrote a fairly similar post (“The Way You Are Playing Is a Reflection On How You Really Live Your Life“) about this same subject almost exactly 2 years ago! Funny how this discussion […]
In Defense of the Dark Side | Finders & Keepers said this on June 27, 2013 at 3:01 pm |