The Carebear Mentality

Over the weekend, Burn Jita 2 has been in full swing in Eve with the current reported figures sitting at 128 freighters, 12 jump freighters and over 520 billion isk in assets destroyed. There have been the usual threads on the forums about how Goonswarm is ruining the game, that they are bad and general rage about the situation. But in my time on the forums this weekend, one thread popped up that caught my eye.

The thread was called A letter to CCP - Please proof read and make any suggestions.
Go and read the original post right up until the part where he starts listing responses. I'll wait...

Ok back? Welcome back.

This thread represents everything wrong with the so called 'carebear' mentality. The reason I throw in the word mentality in there is because it is possible to do everything that Asith does without feeling that losing something in high sec is wrong. How do I know that is possible? Because what Asith does is almost exactly what I do in the game.

I am what the average null sec player would call a 'carebear'. I rarely leave highsec space, I make almost all of my ISK trading, I don't PVP that often and my killboard has more losses than kills. Asith and I share the same profession of flying big freighters (although I wouldn't buy a Rhea for highsec). I have lost ships in highsec full of gear to suicide gankers.

Where Asith and I are different however, is the reaction to what happened and our viewpoint on the game. When I lost a Badger with almost a billion isk worth of faction ammo to sell, I logged out of the game for an hour to calm my nerves and make sure I didn't do anything rash. I then logged back in, convo'd the pilot who killed me and asked what I did wrong. Asith did lose considerably more than me, but he still rage posted a thread about how CCP's game mechanics are flawed.

His reasoning is that the cap in Jita is there because the server cannot handle demand. He is right of course. The cap is to prevent Jita from crashing out, as it is the highest populated system of any in the game. But how did he get stuck on the gate? He auto piloted. He put 8 billion isk worth on auto pilot and left the computer to go and make dinner. Even if burn Jita wasn't on at the time, he was running a risk of being ganked anyway.

He then tries to say that the fault lies with CCP because if Jita was full it must be their fault. However he shows that he knows nothing about Burn Jita happening by saying that Goonswarm and TEST took advantage of the cap. When it is pointed out to him that it is common knowledge that Burn Jita is on he says that he doesn't come onto the forums. Which is fine. I mean the majority of the player base doesn't come on the forums. But even my little corp and alliance sent out mails to all members saying that Burn Jita was happening. If I didn't know before that, then I was informed by my corp. He says his main isn't involved in high sec, so what corp is it that didn't even bother to warn their members?

However my favorite part of this post is where he completely fails to understand what CONCORD is there to do. He says that they don't kill criminal fleets (which they don't, that's faction police) in 1.0 space and that he thinks that makes no sense based on the story of Eve. Well Asith that's a little wrong. In the Eve lore CONCORD are there to allow the different empires to work out their differences peacefully. They have slowly added more and more regulations that everyone must abide by, but they do not do anything until a regulation is breached.

But story aside, the CONCORD mechanics for suicide ganking are pretty easy. If you attack another player you get killed by CONCORD. If you can kill the other player before CONCORD kills you, good job you got a kill. Asith was killed by 113 people all of whom died at CONCORD's hand. That is the mechanic working as intended.

Asith's mentality is what people dislike about carebears so much. To him it makes sense that highsec should be perfectly safe and that he should be reimbursed for his loss. But to me I see another person who was uninformed, and therefore unprepared for what was ahead. I see a person who was never cut out for Eve, despite the fact that he has been playing since 2006. I see someone who has the carebear mentality.

GAME ON.

Australian Gamers vs Australian Game Prices

If you live in Australia, that title probably just struck a nerve. For as long as I have taken an interest in gaming around the world, it has surprised me that Australia gets gouged constantly on pricing for games. When I started buying games myself (not when I would beg my parents to buy them for me) it wasn't uncommon to pay AU$110 for a new release title. Now the price gap has dropped ever so slightly, however it is still there. To give an example, let's look at the price of recent AAA title Bioshock Infinite (referred to from here on as BI).

Sometimes it feels cheaper to just burn all the money...
Maybe the Joker had it right.

On Amazon.com you can buy BI for $US59.96. At the exchange rate at the time of writing this would be around AU$57. Gamestop as a brick and mortar retailer has it at US$59.99 Now lets look at the major brick and mortar retailers here in Australia. EB Games (who for all intents are purposes are Gamestop Australia) are selling BI for AU$78, or around US$82. JB Hi-Fi aren't any better (AU$79). Steam is the best value for Australians (but of course only on PC, if you use a console you are pretty much having to pay Australian retail not matter what), with it listed at the same price as Amazon and Gamestop in US$. That isn't uncommon with Steam as Valve tends to treat Australia to the same prices as the US, unless the games publisher chooses otherwise.

It seems that for boxed copies of the games, Australians are always going to be paying higher prices. However even when certain companies release digital versions of their games they may still jack up the price for Australia. To give a recent example, SimCity was released across the world on EA's Origin service as a purely digital product. No postage or shipping costs. Just click buy and download, no matter where you are in the world. This link is for the US, and this link is for Australia. In both the standard and 'digital deluxe' versions, the prices are jacked up an additional $20 for the Australian version. Why does this happen to Australian gamers? The costs to EA for the product have not increased simply because the download is going to an Australian IP address. It's not like they need to pay to ship a CD to Australia for the customer to play. The same files are up on Origin servers for the US customers as the Australian ones. There is no reason for this to happen.

While doing my research for this post, I came across this Kotaku article where the Australian Government has summonsed major IT companies such as Microsoft, Apple and Adobe to have them explain why their prices here in Australia are, according to the article, "up to 60% higher than in the US." This may not be about video games directly but it is part of the issue.

“While television and computer prices fell 14 per cent according the to the latest Consumer Price Index Figures, there’s still a long way to go – with some estimates suggesting that Australian prices are up to 60 per cent higher than the US.

“Given the widespread use of IT across businesses and the community, the prices paid for hardware and software can have a major commercial and economic impact.

But how is it that game publishers can get away with the pricing here in Australia to begin with? A simple idea called Parallel Import Restrictions (PIR). Essentially this is supposed to protect IP owners from people who buy items cheaper overseas and importing them for sale in Australia (Parallel Importing). A good non video game example of this is books. Brick and mortar retailers of books are usually more expensive than online retailers such as Amazon.com. The restrictions don't apply to someone buying the book for themselves, but it does for people who want to then on sell them in a store. A retailer must buy from the IP owner or legal wholesaler.

In the games industry this means that publishers can legally raise prices in Australia to our wholesalers, and they cannot go elsewhere to source the games, even though the price they may be getting charged is the same as, say US retail price. Indeed in my time working for an electrical store that sold games, our cost price from a wholesaler was usually a few dollars more than US retail which would support this theory. Selling a game at $60 may well be selling at cost for most, if not all brick and mortar establishments in Australia. There is also the issue of local taxes, such as GST for Australia, the higher base employment costs and the costs of getting a game rated here in Australia (particularly before we got our R18+ rating). These are taxes, employment laws and rating laws that the local publishers have to comply with, regardless of where the product was produced.

 

Judge used legal speak. It's SUPER EFFECTIVE!
"Yes! Take that gamers!"

To conclude, while this is a complex issue, I truly believe that in the case of brick and mortar retailers there is nothing they can do unless the publishers reduce the local costs of games. However in the case of digital distribution in cases like SimCity on Origin, there is absolutely no reason for the price increase. Digital products aren't subject to PIR laws when going to the end user. They don't have any of the local taxes applied to them and certainly they would only in rare cases have local employment costs added on. It is my opinion that these services shouldn't be supported until the prices are the same for Australia as the US. There is no reason for the inequality here.

If you did get to the end of this without a headache, I salute you, and as always GAME ON!

Sandbox vs Themepark

So recently I've lost a fair bit of time playing Guild Wars 2. And when I say lost, I mean the 'I have no idea where the previous 5 hours went' kind of lost. As far as MMOs go it's got to be my second favorite behind Eve. I think the biggest reason for this isn't so much the game, it's more to do with the fact that my real life friends are playing it. In truth this is the first so called Themepark MMO that I have ever played to max level (and on two characters no less), and the first one that has captured my interests for more than a week. I played World of Warcraft for a little bit, but found the grind so boring that I had to quit very quickly.

However Eve has been a fixture in my life since 2009, and although I have let my account subscription lapse for a time due to real life things, I don't see it going away in my life any time soon. The reason? Well as far I am concerned, it's choice that keeps me coming back. Games like WoW and to some extent GW2 say go here and do this that way. Games like Eve say you can go here, here or here, you can do this, this or that and you can do any mixture in between. It is a true sandbox.

The point of Sandbox MMOs is the so called emergent gameplay. This is gameplay that is not scripted and completely player driven. Eve is essentially all about emergent gameplay as even a short look at some of the stories coming from the Eve news sites (Eve News 24 and TheMittani.com). Almost everything that is worth reporting has happened between players, or corporations and alliances of players. There might be one or two articles that are on the page about events (such as the recent Battle for Caldari Prime event) but the overwhelming majority is about some form of player emergent gameplay.

From a personal viewpoint the sandbox works well for me as I enjoy setting my own goal in a game and working toward it. I don't like being told this is the optimum way to do something so you have to do it that way. Guild Wars 2 handles this well by allowing you to level by crafting, exploration, questing or even just straight PVP. Eve basically sets the bar for freedom by throwing you into a cold harsh world and saying good luck, go and survive.

I personally don't want my hand held by a game, I want to create my own path and write my own story in that universe. It makes sense to me that people like The Mittani and James 315 polarize communities like Eve, as that is the backbone of player driven emergent gameplay. They create conflict something every healthy sandbox needs. They are the content creators in these games.

Anyway, thats enough for the time being. Time to go back to getting that GW2 map to 100%.