Breaking — FW not dead. Australian Pirates say fuck you to CCP.
Despite CCP games best efforts at killing Faction Warfare (FW), so they don’t have to spend development resources to fix it, the Okkamon Pirates refuse to lie down and let FW die quietly.
Written By Hezekiah Winter of Black Shark Institute.
Trigger Warning: There is a fairly good chance that you will have an emotional reaction to this article. This is not 100% certain but it is fairly likely.
Introduction
Skip this section to get to the article.
Eve Online has a long history of of players using propaganda both to influence the developer CCP Games, and to start the conflicts that bring Eve Online to life. There is a growing field of research that show that people’s decision making is more influenced by their emotions that by rational logical decisions making. This article and the ones to follow in the coming weeks, will both present a propaganda message and then deconstruct it.
Black Shark Institute is an authority in the field of Propaganda. Perhaps not the best in Eve Online, but definitely in the Top 3.
This article makes use of propaganda techniques such as weaponised trolling, stereotyping, otherization and false dualism. It intentionally challenges dominant stereotypes, and refers to groups by their public image as opposed to the lived experience of an individual member of that group. It also has a healthy dose of Australian humor thrown in for good measure. If you are insulted then it probably means that you just experienced the Australian sense of humor. It is common in Australia to make fun of the people close to you and to especially make fun of the things people are sensitive about. This helps people to have a greater self awareness of their irrational beliefs that are protected by emotional triggers.
I am being up front about this so that you can observe the techniques in action, and perhaps learn a thing or two from them. If you are triggered by a statement then it probably touched on an irrational belief. This is an intentional propaganda technique which provokes your strong emotions and then associates them with the target of this message. It is likely that as you read this article it will trigger some assumed stereotypes that define your understanding of the world. If you get angry or emotional at anything written here please try and observe your reaction and then look beneath it to see if the claim that triggered you is based on fact or hyperbole. I have hidden truth and exaggeration in here so you may have to dig a bit in order to make sense of this article. This article collapses a lot of complex issues in simple dualities. The simplified stereotypes presented do not necessarily reflect the views of the author.
I look forward to a constructive chat after you have finished reading.
It is quite likely that you will feel pleasantly surprised. It is also slightly possible that I am about to waste 10 minutes of your life, in which case, you just got trolled. This could happen, but its not very likely.
Trust me you are not going to forget this. This is the opening chapter to the biggest war lowsec has ever seen. Expect the unexpected. Expect the show of your life. Its gonna be great.
If you are over-sensitive and scared of seeing things from a different perspective please stop reading now.
…end of effort post, now onto the juicy stuff.
Love Hez.
TLDR:
While there are some massive problems with FW that CCP could fix relatively easily, the real problem is not the developer but the players.
The problem is that the players are spineless piss-weak, unimaginative nerds with gaping ego problems. If we can fix the player’s identity problem then faction war will not die, and CCP will front up and fix this shit. A small group of pirates are showing us all how to do just this.
-Smash-Em-and-Dash-Em- have channeled the power of the Australian National Hero, and with this mighty legacy they are on a quest to save Faction Warfare, one piss-weak nerd at a time.
Let us begin.
Reddit has recently been flooded by confused capsuleers complaining of bleeding eardrums after hearing outspoken Australian and Okkamon Pirate, Sheltark Sykari lose his shit yelling in his bogan Australian accent.
“I’d recognise a degenerate kiwi accent anywhere”
-Reddit user.
“I thought that was an English accent”
-Another Reddit user.
Despite widespread confusion about the origin of the accent and grammar use of this pirate, consensus says that he is angry about something.
The problem is that these linguistically and geographically challenged Reddit users don’t understand what his anger is about.
This article is going to be a little educational so that all our readers can learn what the Okkamon pirates are angry about. Then you can choose if you are going to be angry too.
The Australian National Hero.
We are talking about the Australian national hero. That’s right. Not the English national hero or the New Zealand national hero.
You see people have identity. Nations have identity. It’s who we are. It’s who people know you as. That is, if we choose to subscribe to our national identities.
Who are you?
What does your group say about your identity?
Are you reaching your full potential?
So we are going to have a look at the Australian national hero, and why the attitude he exemplifies is going to save Faction Warfare from a quiet death.
So let’s talk about Australia.
Countries are famous for things.
Like the USA.
The USA who is famous for lying to the world about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction, and for following in the footsteps of the British Empire to invade nations around the world to steal their oil and other resources.
Britain is famous for taking over 3/4 of the world, massacring heaps of ethnic people and forcibly selling opium to China so that their population became unproductive and servile, is also famous for creating living conditions that were so poor that common people in Britain had to turn to stealing to feed their families.
That brings us back to Australia. What is Australia famous for?
Australia was a British prison.
First it was invaded by the British under a policy just as racist as the Nazi’s. (People from the Australian first nations were not legally recognised as human).
Then after killing a fuck-ton of locals the British set up prison camps for convicts.
Who were the convicts? They were the poor from Britain and Ireland.
The capitalist industrial revolution in Britain displaced an enormous number of people and led to the creation of massive slums and poverty in British cities. Great masses of people were poor and could not feed their families so they turned to stealing food to survive.
The number of people that this effected was so huge that Britian conquered an entire continent and massacred the locals in order to build a prison for thier own maltreated poor.
So who are Australians?
Well you have the British government and their representatives who stayed on in power.
You have the survivors of the many Aboriginal nations who were invaded and massacred. (Yes the entire state of Tasmania was systematically ethnically cleansed.)
Then you have the convicts, who most often had stolen a loaf of bread back in England in order to feed their family, and then they were shipped off to the prison camp in a desert at the arse end of the world.
I think that given this history is should be quite evident as to why Australians have an angry, “fuck you”, anti-authority attitude.
This brings us to the Australian national hero.
Ned Kelly.
Who the fuck is Ned Kelly?
He is a bush ranger.
A robber.
A land pirate.
A gun toting, armour wearing Robin Hood.
Yes the Australian national hero is a bank robber who stole from the British government representatives and their banks.
Stop for a second.
Yes the Australian national hero is an anti-authoritarian, bank-robbing, government-hating, horse-riding-pirate.
The man, the myth the legend is Ned Kelly.
What is he famous for?
Ned Kelly would rather die than surrender to the oppressors.
A hundred plus years have gone by and lots of other people arrived in Australia by boat or plane, and it is now a diverse multicultural country, but underneath that there lies the tension between the survivors of ethnic cleansing, the descendants of the oppressed poor who turned to theft to survive, and the oppressive governmental-commercial-legal class that continues to serve global imperial power.
Australia is quite unique because we have a national hero who is an anti-authority figure. Some of you may need to search harder to find an anti-authority figure in your nation.
Robin Hood maybe, or Guy Fawkes for our English friends. For our American readers I’ll forgive you if you have to go back as far as the American Revolution to find a legitimate anti-authoritarian hero you can relate to, because since that time your government has been pretty good at keeping the population docile by making sure that even the most badass anti-hero still respects the government.
Stop.
Breath.
Chillout.
I’m just kidding, mate.
I’m just having a go.
Now listen to my Crocodile Dundee accent.
“That’s not a hero, this is a hero”
You still breathing ok?
That was a little Aussie joke.
I was having a joke about who’s country has the best anti-authoritarian hero.
And I’m actually talking about real anti-authoritarian heros, the ones who have real conviction. A hero who questions the legitimacy of the entire system of national government and who through their actions openly defies it.
Does this idea trigger you?
If you identify strongly with one of the two national identities that I just made fun of you may have just had an emotional response.
There is a small chance that you may be in a rage right now.
Once your emotions are under control, if you need to get them under control that is, let’s stop and think for a minute.
A lot of Australians would happily burn our flag then piss on it to put out the fire.
Just for fun.
Is this the case for you?
Would you burn and piss on your national flag?
Do you have an irrational emotional attachment to your nation state?
Has your brain been hacked by the national Propaganda machine to make you believe that an insult to your country is an insult to you?
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That some how, a massive sprawling beauracracy somehow represents you and cares about you deeply?
Don’t worry guys it’s ok.
I love you guys.
I love you heaps.
We are all in this together.
There is a lot that we can all learn from each other.
But we need to cut the bullshit and be real.
Now let’s go play some cricket together or go explode some internet spaceships.
This is a video game why the fuck are you talking about politics and shit?
I am showing that people from different cultures think differently.
The way I am writing and talking may seem alien and foreign to you. It may seem offensive, or it may feel really natural and normal.
I am intentionally highlighting the way we think and emotionally respond to things.
Because I firmly believe that it is only by changing the way we think that we can affect change in the world or in Eve Online.
What does this have to do with the big story about Australia?
Faction Warfare is CCP’s forgotten redheaded step child, who has been sent to a hot desert on the arse end of the world to quietly die of dehydration.
So yes.
Fuck you CCP.
And fuck you if you are a nerd who plays the most complex video game in history and you can’t be bothered to read a fucking page of text.
Ok yeah I read it, I just like to look edgy and post memes.
I hope that this makes the relevance of our little history lesson abundantly clear. Now go out and weaponise your memes to change the world.
No really I don’t get how it relates to Eve.
The fucked-up, brutal globe-controling empire of oppression that Ned Kelly was fighting against has sprung up in the virtual world of Eve Online.
The Evil Empire of Galmilistan
Previously known as the Gallente Milita, the Evil Empire of Galmilistan is made up of a group of mercenary corporations that fight for the Gallente nation in return for payment in loyalty points. The leaders of these mercenary corporations, together form an oligarchy, the orwellian Inner Party of Galmilistan; a vampiric, ego-stroking, circle-jerking, orgy of oppression.
The Inner Party controls the Outer Party which is made up of the mercenary corporations that serve the Empire of Galmilistan.
In turn the Outer Party opresses the Proles, the great suffering masses that inhabit the regions of Placid and Black Rise.
The Galmilistani Inner Party understand the terrain of the warzone and how to control it’s economic and human resources. Due to their deep understanding of human motivation they know that if their Empire is ever revealed for what it is then the masses they are oppressing will wake up and rise against them. As it stands they are able to slowly grow their Empire without drawing attention to themselves. Even now they are encroaching onto nullsec, in addition to their ever growing customs office conglomerate. Placid and Black Rise suffer their rule in docile servitude.
The number one element that enables the rule of the Galmilistani Inner Party is the sweet sounding lie of freedom and false democracy.
One man stands against this Evil Empire. Sheltark Sykari. The Okkamon Pirate, the reincarnation of Ned Kelly.
He is not the hero we wanted. He is the hero we deserve.
And he has one thing on his mind.
To Smash and Dash the cock sucking, green supremacist, black murdering Empire of Galmilistan.
Choose your team in the battle to save the universe.
Are you a green supremacist, circle jerking, Galmilistani virus, who huddles together in fear of the black depths.
Or are you a pirate.
Do you wear your black flag with pride.
Are you ready to join the 15 against? the 1000?
Are you ready to channel your inner-Australian, fuck-you to all things authority.
Smash em and dash em brav.
See you in Okkamon.
Brav yes brav.
What is the alternative to imperial exploitation and stagnation?
To combat stagnation we need an injection of disruptive creativity.
Due to the nature of established power blocs it is near impossible for citizens of Eve Online to transition from being servants of an established status quo, into being the leader of a new idea or initiative.
This is compounded by power blocs such as the Empire of Galmilistan targeting and destroying new initiatives before they can be fully established.
The Black Shark Institute operates a series of programs to train and support the establishment of new ideas and new initiatives.
By forming a community of new creative thinkers who question the status quo, we can nurture the seeds of creativity and offer mutual protection until we reach a critical mass of self sufficiency.
With this aim in mind the Black Shark Institute sponsors the Defiant Coalition, a loose collection of pirates and creatives who aim to inject Eve Online with the new ideas that will save it from stagnation.
Black Shark Institute was established as a spin off of Eve University by former Eve University faculty members. It provides more interventionalist training programs designed around disruptive entrepreneurship and the support of new ideas and new content creators.
Black Shark Institute currently offers training programs in Faction Warfare, Sovereign Null Sec, and in Corporation Building. These are specialist post graduate level programs, that combine theoretical discussion and experimental field work, which together will form a community body of knowledge in the field of disruptive creativity, and will lead to the establishment of a new generation of content creation initiatives.
Courses in Faction Warfare and Corporation Building are now opening.
Sign up now to join the community, and bring your new idea to life.
Over a period of 3 to 6 months you will establish your own corporation and get it to a level of self sufficiency. The Institute will then support you become independent and to move on into what ever area of Eve Online you desire.
Now back to one final point.
Fuck you CCP games.
You are an Icelandic company.
You are from a little underdog nation you should know better that this.
You started off burning with passion but now you have turned lukewarm.
In the beginning you were based on the ideal of community capitalism. Business that serves and nurtures a community.
But now you have been seduced by the lustful promises of Modern American exploitation capitalism.
Hiring a fucking EA microtransaction vampire who is here to teach the upper management how to drain the blood out of a community and then leave it as a dying paralysed husk.
Fuck you CCP.
Remember who the fuck you are.
Remember your first love.
Your community cries out in jealous anger, why are your offering us up as a whore to your exploitative EA games vampire.
Wake the fuck up and remember who you are before you kill your beloved darling.
Listen to your community.
Support your content creators.
Support the establishment of new ideas.
Faction Warfare is the best incubator for new content creators in Eve Online. It has a low barrier of entry and requires an extremely high skill level at its apex. It is a master-stroke of game design. With multiple levels of co-existing ecosystems, and a perfectly designed staircase to higher levels of risk and reward.
If you fucking abandon faction warfare then you are throwing your new player experience to the hands of the null sec meat shield new player corporations who will squander the content creators and reward the drone footsoldiers.
10 years ago you could join Eve as a creative thinker and you could establish a new idea.
Now you can join Eve as a Footsoldier for the status quo.
This is why Eve is dying.
Either you support the ability of new content creators to become established or else you drain the blood of the mindless footsoldiers until you sell off the hollow corpse of Eve Online to the highest bidder.
Remember your first love CCP. Remember your community and your content creators, and quit your adulterous fling with the EA games exploitation vampire, the fucking whore of Babylon.
Thanks for reading. I hope it was an emotional and intellectual rollercoaster of a journey. I look forward to the responses in the comments, I’m sure that they will be diverse. Hopefully we can find some positive discussion there.
If you have just read this and you don’t play Eve Online you should. It is the most complex virtual simulation ever made by man. Which as you can see here recreates systems of sociology, economics, politics, media war. It will make you laugh, cry and scream in rage. There is no better entertainment.
Start your journey into eve online here.
If you are an Eve Player I hope that you just experienced seeing Eve through a new perspective. I hope you think about things and realise that there is a cultural change coming to Eve Online. Either the culture changes and begins to massively support new players bringing new ideas to the game then it will die a slow death as all the old content creators slowly move on.
As wealth accumulates, it’s owners take less risks and shut down any threats to the status quo.
We need to reset the system.
We need the young and the small groups to join together to defy the accumulations of wealth. A fight club is spreading across New Eden and a reset of the economy is coming as the small and disillusioned destroy the illgained wealth of the oppressive rich.
There has never been a better time to throw yourself into Eve Online.
If you are a current player who is becoming bored, then it is probably because you are playing on easy mode and are a part of a big power bloc.
Of course you feel insignificant if you are just a number in the masses. Break free and restart the game on hardcore mode. Ditch the big power block and start something new. Burn the old Empire to the ground, and bring Eve back to a state of creative chaos.
If you are ready to step up to be hero to that Eve Online needs. Contact Sheltark Sykari in game.
If are a nullsec foot-soldier who thinks that you know more about what up than your current corp leader, then grab yourself and alpha clone, head down to black rise and run an experiment in building your own corp.
Black Shark Institute will be there to help you or fight you, which ever option will help provide you with the best growth.
If you have a great idea buried somewhere inside your crushed little heart then dig deep, pull that shit out and make it happen.
To the Inner Party of Galmilistan:
We are defiant. We are pirate. We do not forgive. We do not forget.
Expect us.
