GDC, San Francisco, March 10th.
The Goons uber-spymaster (former?) gives a talk about the espionage meta-game in EVE online. Thanks to @GreyOdin for the live tweeting.
Personally I love the EVE meta-game, and believe it to be one of EVE’s defining elements. You can’t grind for trust like you can for ISK. you have to work to earn it and if you plan to abuse it then you have to calculate whether the payoff at the end is worth the work you put into it.
When I heard the The Mittani was giving a talk about this aspect of EVE’s diverse gameplay I was gutted that I wouldn’t be able to attend. It would be like learning the laws of motion from Newton himself, or having relativity explained to you by Einstein. So here are the tweets that @greyOdin provided from the talk and my interpretations of them:
“Metagaming is fun, but it also means you have to be a bit of a dick”
Yes, up to a point. It really depends on what you mean by ‘being a dick’. if you mean generally being as asshole to everyone you encounter then you’re not going to get far. You have to be loyal to your own side and feign loyalty to your your target. Only reavealing your dickishness upon the completion of your mission (if ever). You basically have to be subtle about being a dick.
“Espionage games started with MMOs in MUDS, Ultima (looting) and early PvP MMOs”
Basically This kind of thing started with MUDs, text based Multi-User Dungeons, which had rules and mechanics which governed how you could behave in the world, but often also had OOC (out of context/character) channels where discussion of the rules and other things could take place without breaking the immersion of the game. Not having played these (I was only a nipper when they were about) I don’t have personal experience of them. but I can see where he’s coming from.
“Very different settings and mechanics for Esionage metagames (Eve, Darkfall and Global Agenda cited).”
I think what might be being got at here is that Devs have different policies on metagaming ans espionage, and different approaches to allowing them to have an effect on IC (in context) gameplay.
“The benefits of an espionage metagame are free media coverage (it’s usually epic) have to use real world cunning as an in game skill, it’s also the ultimate form of user generated content.”
The downfall of BoB, which The Mittani was instrumental in bringing about, was covered by alot of mainstream media outlets, most notable the New York Times. The infamous and legendary Guiding Hand Social Club corporate takedown also garnered alot of mainstream attention. So the developer of a game which allows deep and engaging metagaming gets some free publicity for their game (if their players are ingenious and underhanded enough to pull of some truly epic maneuvers).
Espionage metagaming is not dependent on game mechanics, at all. It does not rely on an in gam statistic to determine results. It is based purely on the cunning and guile of those taking part. This is as it should be. Trust, honour, loyalty; these are all things that are lessened by any attempt to turn them into a number. Someone will always find a way to game the system to their advantage. Leaving them as the amorphous and indefinite concepts that they truly are leads to a game having greater depth and complexity.
A game like EVE would be nothing without its players. New Eden is the living breathing world that it is purely based on the actions of those who play it. This kind of emergent content is something that not very many games have. This is not user generated content in the way that a hom0made map or model in another game is, this content is purely unplanned and emergent. Arising as it does from the actions and interactions of each individual involved without their knowledge.
“Pitfalls are it’s completely unpredictable, it offends a sense of fair play and customers dislike losing or being cheated [htfu!]“
This kind of emergent gameplay has its drawbacks, it is totally unpredictable (Sensetive Dependence on Initial Conditions anyone?), and yes getting your corp yanked out from under you can be seen as unfair by those who are the yankee’s. But this is where I take issue with the cry babies who call for there to be tighter controls on metagaming. This is EVE, trust is more valuable than ISK. Don’t give it away so easily.
“Key elements are: Player factions (not dev made), people grouping by purpose and choice, not by “Alliance vs. Horde” – more personal”
A common purpose, coming from within a group of players is a far stronger driving force than one which is imposed from outside. A goal which you decide for yourself is far more powerful than one which is given to you by others. You have something invested in your group, you are more loyal to it than you would be to an arbitrary ‘faction’ which is built in to the game. There are some exceptions to this in EVE, Ushra’khan and CVA being notable examples, but the players involved with them have chosen those ideal for themselves rather than had them imposed arbitrarily.
“Espionage metagame cannot exist where nothing is risked, convertible currency and RMT raises the stakes (loss of a Titan = $4000 down drain)”
I’m not sure the RMT or convertible currency directly applies to EVE. I would think that it is more a time based valuation. it takes a long time to build a Titan, more if you include all the time taken to gather th resources for its construction. The piint still stands though. If you have worked hard for a long time to achieve something then having that taken away from you will hurt, equally you are going to spend more resources and time to protect that asset.
“Devs need to have to “police” a system as metagames are fragile, but they also have to have a slightly dismissive attitude toward cry-babies”
A line needs to be drawn, in other words. A question I have often asked (and may ask again in future) is “How meta is too meta?” I think CCP have line in about the right place (infiltration of external forums/voice comms by legitimate means is OK, hacking is not.) And I think that as long as nothing illegal has been done they are well within their rights to dismiss the cry-babies.
“Elements of espionage gameplay #1 – Intelligence Gathering: Most happens outside the game, so it reduces game load and enhances involvement”
I would imagine that this would usually require the use of an alt with no connection to the protagonists gaining an enemy corp/alliance’s trust and getting onto their forums or voice comms. They could safely remain completely undetected (unless the target counter-intelligence is good) and could feasibly pass intel back to base indefinitely.
“#2 Sabotage – Theft, strategic sabotage (war changing direction), diplomatic sabotage (false claims, scams) – this exposes your agent.”
Theft is the most common form of sabotage in EVE, gaining the trust of a corporation and then stripping it clean is the occuption of a goodly number of EVE players. Strategic sabotage is a little trickier to define and is often dependent on the actual situation involved. It is also the most complex to co-ordinate and it requires your intelligence about the enemies strategy to be very good indeed. Diplomatic sabotage is basically a case of telling lies to sow dissent among the ranks of your enemies. “He said you said that..” kind of thing. I’m not sure how scamming would work in this element of organisational sabotage, but then I wasn’t at the talk and only have these tweets to go on.
These methods will invariably end up with the exposure of your agent. Any decent Corp has a finger on who is taking what out of the hangars/wallet, and knows exactly what was said and to whom (chatlogs ftw!)
“#3 – Counterintelligence – Spy vs. Spy – When at risk spies provoke witch-hunts. Most time intensive and is bleeding edge of the metagame”
The good old “He’s a spy!”, “No he is!” trick. creates an atmosphere of paranoia and mistrust within an organisation and if done well can tear it apart from the inside, leaving you to clean up afterwards. Not often used as a weapon in itself but when a spy risks being discovered.
“Counterintelligence includes timestamps, collecting IP addresses (to determine geolocation) and honeypots (breeding false / tempting info)”
Properly executed, counterintelligence operations will make use of out of game information to study patters of behaviour and spreading misinformation to find out where it goes.
“Last type of espionage is fraud / scams – item scams, recruitment scams etc.”
“Fraud in Eve closely mirrors techniques used in the real world – ponzi schemes, and “legit” banks gone bad.”
We’re all familiar with scams in EVE, from the very easily detected Jita spam scams to some of the more complex and convoluted schemes executed for massive rewards and involving multiple parties. Scamming is part of the fabric of EVE and the only advice I can offer is this: If it seems too good to be true, then it probably is.
So that was The Mittani’s GDC presentation (or the tweets I got of it from GreyOdin, well done mate). I’d like to have seen the whole thing. If anyone knows of a video or MP3 of it then let me know (as long as its free, it might end up on the GDC Vault but it looks as if you have to pay for that.)
A final parting question, and its one I asked earlier: How meta is too meta?
M out
