Grief is Good

There was some talk recently on Talking in Stations about griefing - in particular, HiSec ganking. This is a long standing debate in EVE Online, and the culture of the game tends to shift a little bit in one direction before swinging back in the other. But now the topic has been discussed on a very popular EVE media outlet, so I feel I need to weigh in and throw my two cents to keep the culture balanced. Since these sorts of discussions have a tendency of getting heated very quickly (see: Caleb), I want to preface this article by saying that I like Talking in Stations. I like Matterall and I like Caleb. I think it's a high quality program and, as far as I can tell, fairly unbiased. It is not the purpose of this article to trash TiS or any of the TiS folk. Instead, I want to respond to this installment of the show with my own perspective: I think griefing is good for both the griefers and the people they grief within certain constraints.

Multifinality: A Double Edged Sword

Griefing and ganking are activities with a high degree of multifinality; that is, they are a single set of activities that can have multiple outcomes; either leading to player retention as CCP has determined, or driving players away from the game as countless anecdotes go to show. I would argue, however, that the amount of players who engage with griefing and ganking with the level of malice and antagonism that would drive players away is smaller than the amount of griefers who are either neutral, or helpful. And I would also argue that the type of person who would be driven to quit EVE Online as a result of a gank is not the sort of person who should be playing EVE anyway. You don't have to like ganking; you just have to be willing to tolerate and adapt to the risk without asking CCP to hold your hand by removing the mechanic.

Oh and before anyone calls me an apologist, here's one of my alts:

I have to live with the same reality as everyone else.

Griefing is a double edged sword and one edge - the negative edge that drives people away - is more dull than the positive edge that leads to player retention. And it's not so much the ganking itself that drives players away; it's the toxicity from the gankers. Ganking is then a net positive for the game, even if a small cadre of players engage in copious amounts of the salt harvesting that leads to players logging off permanently. Just peruse the EVE-O forums; there is a lot of talk (read: engagement) over ganking and anti-ganking. CODE. went from being one dude bumping ice miners in a single system to a large HiSec alliance creating content for thousands of players. There are ganking groups and anti-ganking groups. Players adapt to ganking by joining corporations and mining in fleets with defense (shield boosts, logi, etc). If ganking was outright removed - or even just nerfed heavily - all of this content, all of this engagement (the thing that leads to player retention) would vanish.

I do have to declare my bias here. I am a "griefer". Griefing is something I do, not only for fun, but as my primary means of engaging in conflict. It's how I wage war. While other groups will form up fleets of combat vessels and try to win by shooting each other and grinding structures, I prefer a more asymmetric approach. Instead of shooting your structure, I would rather that you just unanchored it on your own. Instead of going toe to toe with your combat fleet, I 'd like it if you just redeployed somewhere else. I will encourage you to make these choices by griefing you: I will make it as uncomfortable, frustrating, and nerve wracking as possible for your line members to be here. And I will do it, ad infinitum, until you yield outright or enough of your membership has left that you fail cascade. So "griefing" - including HiSec ganking - is a means of engaging in asymmetric, guerilla warfare. And it's pretty effective:

After less than a week of griefing, he was ready to capitulate.

But I don't always grief to drive people away: I also grief for fun and the sublimation of aggressive tendencies. Here's a thread I wrote somewhat documenting my activities near Amarr before the moon mining nerf. This was new content for me, and I had to get creative with how I waged my "war". I had no real aim here, I was simply having fun with an opportunity that presented itself to me. The end result was good: the system became much more active as people were actually logging in to engage with me and "drive me off". They also began forming proper fleets - complete with logi and combat ships - instead of mining independently in their little cliques. A couple of members of the corp I was "griefing" even convo'd me to tell me how much fun they were having.

In the end, I unfortunately ended up going too hard; I was a poor sport and did not allow my "adversaries" enough opportunities for victory (yes, I know - it was the first result on Google, but the psychology they cite is sound). I leveraged my experience and knowledge of the game too strongly, and ended up overwhelming the locals. Eventually the system was dead and they had stopped running their moon beams. I had achieved an objective that wasn't even set, and farmed my own content dry. Had this been an actual turf war this would have been a clear and decided victory. They've since recovered, and I only hope that, despite my mismanagement, their membership is better off and having more fun in EVE because of my shenanigans.

So there's two reasons to "grief": to actually hurt people such that they will leave or do what you want, pay you ransoms, give you mining rights, etc - or to provide fun and entertainment to all parties involved. If you remove the former, you will remove the latter. You'll throw the baby out with the bathwater. As Matterall rightly suggested - griefing and ganking are the secret sauce of EVE Online.

We Have Enough Safe Spaces
Or: HiSec Isn't "Civilized"
Or: Leave my sublimation alone.

Caleb made a comment about how HiSec is "civilized" space. I'm not sure Caleb has read much EVE lore. HiSec is full of pirate NPCs who operate ad libitum without any resistance from either CONCORD or the faction navies. Sansha invades constantly, abducting millions of citizens to become zombies in their fleet, and nobody does anything (except the capsuleers who can be bothered). The four Empires are perpetually on the brink of war. The Amarr practice chattel slavery. The Caldari practice corporate slavery. The Minmatar are... well, the Minmatar; they engage in terrorism. All four factions practice torture. Freaky space aliens came and literally sucked entire systems into some weird Abyssal void and FOB's regularly send out fleets of elite ships to gank people in HiSec.

HiSec is not civilized. No part of New Eden is "civilized". Human life has little value. It's a grim, dark, dystopian landscape. HiSec is just HiSec; you get some added protection in the form of deterrence but for the most part you're on your own. It's is not TotalSec or MaxSec. It is just HiSec. Being undocked is a risk in HiSec, as being undocked in EVE Online is a risk. We don't need CCP holding our hands; if you want "civilized space", it's up to the players to hold each other's hands and civilize it themselves.

And this is a good thing. Gamers have enough hand-holdy safe spaces. In most games griefing isn't allowed, either because the game mechanics don't allow for it (shit, Blizzard went so far as to make your gathering nodes instanced to the player, so no one can "steal" and I don't think PvP deaths even damage equipment anymore...) or the EULA expressly forbids it. My account was actioned on FFXIV simply for swearing at someone. I was temp-banned on retail WoW because I ganked the same dude too many times. Give me a break - there isn't even any loss involved in WoW ganking!

If you want a safe space where you can endlessly run your dopamine loop farming resources and currency without interruption then go play one of those games. EVE has gotten soft enough already.

As human beings we occupy the intersection of the "good" - prosocial, helpful, virtuous, and the "bad" - sinister, antisocial, destructive. Freud, for all his failings, rightly observed that people need outlets for all their drives; a drive "repressed" (either by the person themselves or society pressuring them) will reassert itself in some way, often manifesting as strange maladaptive behavioral oddities or some kind of mental dysfunction. This is where the concept of sublimation comes from; taking a hostile or antisocial drive and harnessing it for some productive activity, such as sports or the military. For many people EVE Online is a space where they can blow off steam, say or do things that would otherwise get them in serious trouble in meatspace, and just let it all go. And this is a good thing. You want people blowing off steam on a computer game.

Content = Engagement = Retention

EVE Online is a game that really lacks content. I mean what is there really to do? There's mining/industry, missions, and incursions... what else? Farming WHs? No - in EVE Online players make the content. CCP gives us a set of tools, and the rest is up to us. Hulkageddon, MiniLuv, CODE., Safety., anti-ganking, minerbumping.com and James315.space, Belligerent Undesirables, safaris, and suspect baiting - this a short list of the emergent content players have come up with given the tools provided by CCP. And it's all wonderful and engaging for those involved - even those on the receiving end of the grief stick.

Players who are engaged with the game have higher rates of retention. The first time I got canflipped, way back in 2010, I had no idea what had just happened, but it was very frustrating and absolutely amazing. It really caught my attention. As I lost more ships to NPCs and players, I thought: this game is really challenging and frustrating. I must figure this out and succeed! And listen to when Caleb talks about griefing, in particular HiSec ganking. You can hear the anger and indignation in his voice. The passion. This is grist. This is something to chew on! When Caleb was talking about griefing, he was really engaged. While I don't agree with Caleb's perspective, I appreciate that he has that perspective, and that he feels so passionately about it. Because this is the purpose of griefing, at least for me: to evoke strong emotions. Because these strong emotions are the really real; they're authentic and raw.

Of course, you can have too much of a good thing. Too much stimuli becomes aversive, and this has a negative impact on retention and engagement. Many people can't get into EVE Online because the game just has so much depth - there's just far too much to learn and keep in mind and be aware of. It's just too much stimuli for some people; it's vertiginous, leads to them feeling overwhelmed, and eventually they leave. My own style of griefing - at least when I'm on a mission - is to overstimulate my victims (with frustration, humiliation, anxiety etc) so that they will decide to leave. So it is possible that griefing and ganking can be taken to such an extreme that people quit the game. But I do question the effect size on overall player retention. I'm sure there are things CCP needs to prioritize; ganking isn't one of them.

I disagree with Caleb on many points: It's not all decided by the griefers. It isn't all calculated out ahead of time. There are ways around us. There is absolutely nothing stopping HiSec miners from forming up fleets together, tanking their ships, using shield boosts, and having logi on grid. In other words: being engaged. People can run logistics through WHs, have a corp mate scout them, don't haul too much value in a single trip, etc. In other words: just take basic precuations.

If ganking were to be removed from the game, it would have to come at a serious compromise: the conversion of most of HiSec to LowSec and the removal of much PvE content from HiSec. That would be the only way to balance the newfound invulnerability of HiSec players. Actually, maybe CCP should just go ahead and do that anyway; create more HiSec islands surrounded by LowSec space. I'm sure they could come up with some lore reason for it.

Anyway so those are my thoughts on "griefing". I think griefing is absolutely fine where it is right now. CCP isn't here to hold your hand and protect you from losses. There are mean people out there who want to blow you up and take your cargo or just ruin your day for lulz; plan accordingly. Until next time space cowboys - fly safer. o7