The discourse of rape in EVE-Online
Since a comment in my last post seems to have aroused some interest...
My combat character's alliance killed a very large and expensive ship a couple of weeks ago. The ship kill was a perfectly valid con within the game, executed with style and finesse on a player who seems to have been far too innocent for the sort of ship they were flying. The whole "you shouldn't trust my alliance-mates because they'll gleefully lie to you" thing doesn't sit too comfortably with me, but social engineering is definitely a layer of the game. A significant number of people were attracted to EVE by reports of some of the long-term infiltrations in the early years of the game. You, too, can play a spy, a spymaster, a con-artist, a scammer, a pirate (honourable or not) or a cold killer. (I actually find some of this really interesting but I'm mostly too lazy for it. I haven't yet found something I want to achieve enough to make it worth the hassle.)
The ship kill was mostly fine. Interest and incredulity as the story broke and the call to arms went out. "Trap or treat?" discussion with increasing tension as one of our members kept the mark on the line. Adrenaline-fuelled jubilation as we hooked the mark, got the tackle and all went in for the kill.
Inside your ship is the pod that protects the pilot, supported in special goo against the accelerations of space travel. When a ship is killed, the pod is released, and is like a small, fast, defenseless ship. Pods are fairly hard to lock and hold, but they die easily if you can shoot at them.
Killing a pod means you kill the body that the pilot was using at the time. We all have access to clones so that's not permanent death, but it's an inconvenience, an expense (sometimes considerable) and an indignity. The pilot's corpse will then hang in space and can be collected and kept or traded.
The ship kill was mostly fine: the pod kill was different. I think this is what happened. Sometime, as we pounded through the ship's defences, the mark logged off, leaving us to deliver the death-blow to their unresponsive ship. If a player logs off while they're engaged in a fight, their ship remains where it was. When the ship died the pod automatically warped away to a random place. Then, because the player wasn't guiding it, the pod stayed there, immobile and seemingly abandoned, while we tracked it down and gathered the fleet around it.
So there we were, high on the recent fight and our power as a pack, surrounding this pod. And there was a pause. My main role in this type of work is as a tackler -- I hold things down while more powerful ships hit them. And going through my mind was a half-remembered comment in an article about the Ambury Park gang rape in Auckland in 1986. One of the participants had been convicted for maybe six years, 'although' all parties agreed that his 'only' role had been to restrain the woman. "It's a long time," someone said, "for holding someone's leg."
Sometime in the process the mark logged back on. Sometime we tackled. We took the pod. We also took the hit to our security status.
It's common to talk about the power-play of combats and sovereignty in terms of rape. We raped them: they raped us: that player was butt-hurt.
There's no subtlety or hidden layering. Merely "killing" seems cleaner and less satisfying, somehow -- it obliterates the person too quickly. "Rape" seems to involve a more personal exertion of power, an "I can do this to you and keep doing this to you". There's this messy, potent blend of power and acknowledgment of that power and a group dynamic that makes it damned hard to back down, and...
It's just a game. But there are things I think I understand more now. More viscerally. How it can come to pass. Some sense of what it feels like. That I want a different way to manage things next time, and I'm not yet sure what that will be.
The talk afterwards was freewheeling and offensive and went on and on. There were calls to tone it down. One alliance-mate logged off in anger and later posted to the forum that "Rape jokes are not cool". That view was supported by management. There were discussions at various levels. It's officially not okay, and there's still a sense in some sectors that other people are too sensitive.
I find this group of people fascinating. There are some I'd like to have long conversations with, and some I wouldn't really want anywhere near people I like. Sometimes it seems like something I want to get more involved with (I'd been going to record some propaganda for the cause the weekend this all happened). Other times I wonder how much longer I'll stay.
As a final comment, sometimes it's harder to act on an issue where awareness has been raised. It becomes too touchy a subject, and what would previously have been seen as taking a personal stand comes to seem like you're following a party line.
My combat character's alliance killed a very large and expensive ship a couple of weeks ago. The ship kill was a perfectly valid con within the game, executed with style and finesse on a player who seems to have been far too innocent for the sort of ship they were flying. The whole "you shouldn't trust my alliance-mates because they'll gleefully lie to you" thing doesn't sit too comfortably with me, but social engineering is definitely a layer of the game. A significant number of people were attracted to EVE by reports of some of the long-term infiltrations in the early years of the game. You, too, can play a spy, a spymaster, a con-artist, a scammer, a pirate (honourable or not) or a cold killer. (I actually find some of this really interesting but I'm mostly too lazy for it. I haven't yet found something I want to achieve enough to make it worth the hassle.)
The ship kill was mostly fine. Interest and incredulity as the story broke and the call to arms went out. "Trap or treat?" discussion with increasing tension as one of our members kept the mark on the line. Adrenaline-fuelled jubilation as we hooked the mark, got the tackle and all went in for the kill.
Inside your ship is the pod that protects the pilot, supported in special goo against the accelerations of space travel. When a ship is killed, the pod is released, and is like a small, fast, defenseless ship. Pods are fairly hard to lock and hold, but they die easily if you can shoot at them.
Killing a pod means you kill the body that the pilot was using at the time. We all have access to clones so that's not permanent death, but it's an inconvenience, an expense (sometimes considerable) and an indignity. The pilot's corpse will then hang in space and can be collected and kept or traded.
The ship kill was mostly fine: the pod kill was different. I think this is what happened. Sometime, as we pounded through the ship's defences, the mark logged off, leaving us to deliver the death-blow to their unresponsive ship. If a player logs off while they're engaged in a fight, their ship remains where it was. When the ship died the pod automatically warped away to a random place. Then, because the player wasn't guiding it, the pod stayed there, immobile and seemingly abandoned, while we tracked it down and gathered the fleet around it.
So there we were, high on the recent fight and our power as a pack, surrounding this pod. And there was a pause. My main role in this type of work is as a tackler -- I hold things down while more powerful ships hit them. And going through my mind was a half-remembered comment in an article about the Ambury Park gang rape in Auckland in 1986. One of the participants had been convicted for maybe six years, 'although' all parties agreed that his 'only' role had been to restrain the woman. "It's a long time," someone said, "for holding someone's leg."
Sometime in the process the mark logged back on. Sometime we tackled. We took the pod. We also took the hit to our security status.
It's common to talk about the power-play of combats and sovereignty in terms of rape. We raped them: they raped us: that player was butt-hurt.
There's no subtlety or hidden layering. Merely "killing" seems cleaner and less satisfying, somehow -- it obliterates the person too quickly. "Rape" seems to involve a more personal exertion of power, an "I can do this to you and keep doing this to you". There's this messy, potent blend of power and acknowledgment of that power and a group dynamic that makes it damned hard to back down, and...
It's just a game. But there are things I think I understand more now. More viscerally. How it can come to pass. Some sense of what it feels like. That I want a different way to manage things next time, and I'm not yet sure what that will be.
The talk afterwards was freewheeling and offensive and went on and on. There were calls to tone it down. One alliance-mate logged off in anger and later posted to the forum that "Rape jokes are not cool". That view was supported by management. There were discussions at various levels. It's officially not okay, and there's still a sense in some sectors that other people are too sensitive.
I find this group of people fascinating. There are some I'd like to have long conversations with, and some I wouldn't really want anywhere near people I like. Sometimes it seems like something I want to get more involved with (I'd been going to record some propaganda for the cause the weekend this all happened). Other times I wonder how much longer I'll stay.
As a final comment, sometimes it's harder to act on an issue where awareness has been raised. It becomes too touchy a subject, and what would previously have been seen as taking a personal stand comes to seem like you're following a party line.