Cui Bono?

Latin can be such a marvelously expressive language.

In proper Oxfordian english, "to whom (is the) benefit"?  In just a few - in this case two - words, it expresses a whole range of thought:  Who is benefiting from something?  Is it legitimate, or is there something we should be considering in addition?  Something perhaps not so ... good?

I've been playing the internet spaceships MMO EvE Online since late September 2007, or about a month less than my good friend and prolific blogger (specifically on the topic of EvE) Dan "Corelin" Zelman.  Like myself, Dan is a gamer of long standing (not quite so long as me - he's younger - but nonetheless).  We had long shared a hobby of several miniatures-based tabletop games - Babylon 5 Wars, Battletech, Warhammer 40K, and others - although that certainly does not fully define our friendship, as neither does EvE.


Interestingly, I was the one who prompted him to get into EvE, even doing so before I did myself.  Dan had been looking for a new MMO to play, was thinking about something science-fictiony, and I put thought of EvE to him from my reading about it in PC Gamer, which I was subscribed to.  He tried it out, liked it, and as we talked about it increasingly I said to myself "well, why not?" and began my own traipse through the game.  Five years later, that journey continues for both of us.

I was thinking again this morning about those early days and months in the game.  Dan and I as very young characters had joined this established group of players, a bunch of guys from primarily the Portland, Oregon area who he knew previously from another gaming community - producers of the tabletop star ship combat game Starfire.  All these guys had been in EvE for a while, and had an established playgroup in the game.  Mostly, they specialized in what we call "carebear" activities - industrial activities such as mining asteroids for raw materials used in the game, making stuff for in-game use, and missioning; in short, various player-versus-environment (pve) activities.

Despite the fact that group was always two (for Dan) or three (for myself) hours behind us in time zones, we had scheduled times for the various activities we enjoyed.  Foremost among this was mission-running - we would get a group (fleet) of ten or eleven of us, each holding various duties within the fleet.  While this was never the most exciting of processes, it was still fun - mainly because of the social aspect.  While we were playing the game, we would use voice software to chat about whatever interested us as well as coordinating our activity in the game.  Although it's not the part of the game I am most fond of, I still recall those days as quite enjoyable and a pleasure to get to know those guys.  The ability to indulge in that aspect of the game on a group basis drew us into the game on such dates, regularly, and kept us coming back.

This is what I recalled as I thought about my early days in the game.  And truly, I did so with a nostalgic sadness because those days would have a hard time repeating - if they were possible.  Why was this so?

Not too long ago (a few months or so, I believe, after the game's developers had released an update patch for the game software) it was noticed by a number of players in the game that certain benefits from pve (not solely missioning, but including it) no longer applied on a group basis.  While this particular benefit was not of the greatest import to players of the game as a whole, it would still represent a serious drawback to a significant portion of the game's player-base.  Thinking this was some problem with the game, it was reported as a bug to see what was wrong.  After some while of waiting, the answer came back that one of the game's developers had made a change in code causing it so that what had been a benefit bestowed on each member of a fleet would henceforth only apply to a single member of it.  It was, IIRC, termed a "new feature" of the game as part of that response, which was reported to be "operating as intended."  There had been no announcement of it as such, with the release of the patch.

Controversy, predictably, ensued.  One of the strengths of this game has to do with its community, and promotion of the game as best experienced in the context of group activity, just as we did in the "old" days.  The ability to operate as such groups heightens the game's social aspect, making the game more enjoyable, as one might have gathered from my reminiscing.  Commentators were quick to note that a significant reason for engaging in EvE group activities of this particular sort had now been removed with this "new feature."  Doing so would force more and more players away from the group activity and into individual effort well-known to be less desirable for its dull, far less social aspects.  I will not delve any further into that, as it has been covered by other commentators ad infinitum.

One looks at an incident such as this, and wonders if the game developer in question was acting outside of the knowledge of superiors.  In a game, which as a game is supposed to be fun, why would you introduce something that would make it less fun and give people an excuse to look elsewhere?  In most ways one would hope the parent company was not ignorant, that something with such potential effect upon the game as a whole would've entailed wider knowledge within the wider development community, and that there was a plan, a reason.  There are, however, two aspects to this situation that would seem to militate against such.

First was the lack of announcement of this "new feature."  One thing CCP - EvE's parent company - generally tries to do well and thoroughly is to announce what changes and new features they are releasing in their game ahead of time.  Even if they hold some aspects back as a surprise for their player base - not unreasonable - they still report on them in the 'patch notes' released with each patch and upgrade to the game.  In this case, there was none such, hence the surprise among the player base when it was noted and with the initial bug report filings.  Second, the developer in question has a history of acting on his own initiative in this manner on at least one other occasion, negatively impacting a different segment of the game's player base, creating another point of controversy and doing so with no previous warning.  To paraphrase from a story I enjoy, "once is a coincidence, twice is enemy action."  Which returns me to the title and thesis of this essay: To whom is the benefit?

Is it the players?  Although the original instance mentioned was termed a "feature," it would be hard to argue that the player base would see it that way.  What players used to be able to do as a group endeavor, they now no longer can; instead, they are forced to work for this benefit on a solitary basis, something as I said earlier almost guaranteed to reduce enjoyment in the game for most people (humans being the social animals they are).  Under no circumstances would I consider this a benefit, much less a feature; indeed, again, it's a disincentive.

Is it the game, and the game's parent, CCP?  I think this is best answered by first remembering that EvE is a game.  Games, again, by definition, are meant to be enjoyable.  This I can say clearly - if you reduce my enjoyment in playing your game, you reduce my desire to spend my time playing your game.  At a certain point, there is no more return to diminish; you've already killed the fattened calf, so to speak.  Do so for enough players, and you have a real problem.  We saw clearly that this mattered to CCP last year (2011) during what was popularly called "the Summer of Rage."  Bad policy after bad choice piled upon itself like a monstrous stack of tinder (player discontent) merely awaiting a reason to ignite.

That spark came when another, more popular developer than the one earlier referenced was shown to have made a series of unfortunate and highly controversial comments in an internal company newsletter.  When this was followed with what were viewed as extraordinarily poor responses on the part of the game's lead developer and CCP's CEO to this rapidly escalating issue, the game's community exploded.  It proved a real threat to the game and its parent company, as the raw negative emotion of the offended community was translating directly into a significant enough percent of its players leaving the game then and there - enough that, unreversed, it was not inconceivable that the blaze could well have been the game's (and by extension CCP's) funeral pyre.

Under the full force of this inferno, with their flagship game burning to the ground at a time when they could ill-afford it, CCP stepped way back, acknowledged most of the issues and mistakes leading up to the Summer of Rage, and committed to avoiding them while giving its core product the attention it had long needed in return.  Given the record of what CCP has produced in terms of EVE in the aftermath, most would agree they've met their end of the bargain.  The company has slimmed itself down, refocused with much welcome thankfulness on its flagship, EvE, and undocked toward the future with the promise of more of the same.  And yet ...

And yet.  The question is still begging: If the players do not benefit, and by extension neither the game nor the game's parent apparently do either, who or what does that leave?

To my mind, we're left with but one reasonably identifiable choice - the developer responsible.  The curious thing I see here is that what is the ready benefit to provide motive?  Money?  He gets paid no more nor less than he gets paid, and survives to collect the next check.  No real profit there.  Notoriety?  The person in question certainly has that ... but it's a questionable, controversial notoriety at best.  Oh, he has his defenders, those who claim he's acting out of what he sees as the best interests of the game.  One could argue either side of that; certainly, the most vocal component holds that these actions are destroying the game.  They may or may not be right; history will judge.  But that history is one littered with controversial actions that have been fairly well established; and with such a consistent record of angering significant subsets of EvE's player body, you have to wonder.  At a certain point one would expect a rational entity to come to the conclusion that anyone who consistently manages such feats is a liability.  It makes the question of why this particular dev continues to have a job at CCP a valid one

And therein is the fly in the ointment - this singular, unavoidable point.  The only clear thing that can be said for CCP's response is that this developer is still employed at CCP.  What is otherwise a deafening silence from Reykjavik speaks more toward a desire, even a hope that all such furor will be short-lived and simply go away, than anything else.  Remember that paraphrase I mentioned earlier?  There's a third condition it describes, and it is this: Six times is policy.  In the course of wondering at how behavior of this sort can go uncommented much less uncorrected, one must eventually arrive at the conclusion that what is rogue is in fact not.  That the benefit being received is no less than the paycheck for doing one's job, with the tacit (if not explicit) approval of the one/s signing that paycheck.  One cannot believe that CCP is blind to what goes on, not on so consistent a basis; they must know.  We do not know enough, otherwise, and that is not a comfortable thought.

So, what is the answer to cui bono, in this instance?  I think it is summed up in that one and only clear, incontrovertible fact we've laid out so far: CCP Greyscale still has a job.


Find out for certain why that is so, and the rest should be clear.