The studio say their community has ”grown to a maturation point” where the ‘frat house style’ of Fanfest is no longer a good thing. The ”out of control drunkenness” has to be addressed.
The chairman of the player-run Council of Stellar Management called on others at Fanfest to target and harass a player believed to have been despressed.
The EVE Online community were angered and took to the forums over the incident, and the chairman issued an apology claiming he’d little memory of what he’d said because of all the alcohol he’d consumed. CCP stated they were launching an investigation into the community event and would take action where appropriate.
Now it seems that CCP has grown uncomfortable with the ‘frat house’ mentality of Fanfest. Below is an excerpt of the full developer statement issued by the creators of EVE Online:
Following internal discussions after everyone has returned to their offices from Fanfest, it is clear that we, CCP, need to revise the scope of the Alliance Panel for Fanfest 2013 because, frankly, EVE Online has grown to a maturation point where such behavior and such a forum are not appropriate. A “frat house” type presentation style may have been well-matched for a younger EVE Online, when there was a smaller community roaming the stars.
In fact we, CCP, have long enjoyed a reputation for being extremely tolerant of our playerbase. It’s a unique relationship where the culture of the company and the culture of the players have many overlaps. We typically appreciate the same “internet humor”. We can laugh at ourselves and enjoy exchanging satire, puns, sarcasm etc.
We constantly celebrate the “culture” of EVE Online in many different venues, which do often involve inappropriate language. We will continue to do so.
Yet out of control drunkenness and calls for harassment have no places in such a culture. This Alliance Panel went too far even for our very open-minded standards. Beyond even our tolerance level.
It was a mistake to hold the Alliance Panel in the way we did—and while it was somewhat “in the spirit” of EVE’s sandbox gamestyle, the session was not representative of CCP nor EVE nor the playerbase as a whole. Given that we did not have a time-buffer on the video feed, we were unable to react in time to the Q&A comments.
Should we choose to hold an Alliance Panel next year, we will still aim for comedic player-agency over the content, but will be very careful to create a different setting for the event.
The larger point.
This speaks to a larger point. We need to revise how we showcase the culture of EVE. It was clear in some comments from attendees and internet observers that while Fanfest was a massive success there are aspects of it that we can improve upon even more.
This solemn effort has already begun. Time for us to grow up a bit.
“Internet spaceships” are often called “serious business”, but increasingly they actually are serious business. It is moments like this that remind us that there are people beyond the characters we encounter and everyone in the EVE universe should always treat other players with a base human level of respect and decency—whether enemies or not. We would be remiss not to use this as a chance to revise our event and communication strategies.
CCP and the community of EVE Online need to understand this, and we, CCP, will be taking serious steps towards fostering a better environment at our panels and beyond.
