Tölvumál - 01.10.2012, Page 26

Tölvumál - 01.10.2012, Page 26
26 intRoduCtion EVE Online is an MMORPG [1]created by CCP Games. Its setting is the future where space travel is common place and the technology is advanced. It is also a unique game compared to contemporary games due to its open-ended nature. There are not predefined goals offered by the game, such as the ‘highest’ level or the ‘best’ position – ‘winning’ EVE Online is not simply a part of the design philosophy. Players set their own goals and then try and fulfill them, either in cooperation with other players or not. These conditions create a very special situation when it comes to the community that participates in EVE Online. Politics play a very large part in EVE; negotiations, scheming, alliances, wars, territory control and what we call meta-gaming (simply put playing the game outside the game). The political venue can be split up into three different sections. First, EVE Online is a role playing game which means that there is a story that is happening in EVE, written and maintained by CCP – five empires strife for control over solar systems and players can participate in this part by aligning themselves with one (or more) of those empires. Second is the political venue where users are at the helm. Allowing the users to create alliances, claiming territory and, to put it in terms we easily understand, behave like they are running real life countries allows for the spectrum of real life political events to happen in EVE. Thirdly, CCP decided in 2008 to form the Council of Stellar Management (CSM). This council is a democratically elected representative council where once a year general elections are held where players vote for a fourteen man council, with all the candidates running for the council being players themselves. The purpose of this council is to allow players to have a direct input into how EVE Online is developed with visits to CCP’s HQ in Iceland and a close relationship with the company. The conditions in EVE are very political and because of that it is not surprising when activism and protests are practiced in EVE. And no one should be surprised when the methods used by players towards CCP are sophisticated – they’ve had plenty of time to hone their skills in the game. ContempoRaRy aCtivism on tHe inteRnet The first question that comes to mind is ‘what is activism?’ Looking up ‘activism’ on Wikipedia gives us the following definition[2]: Activism consists of intentional efforts to promote, impede or direct social, political, economic, or environmental change. Activism can take a wide range of forms from writing letters to newspapers or politicians, political campaigning, economic activism such as boycotts or preferentially patronizing businesses, rallies, street marches, strikes, sit-ins, and hunger strikes. Granted this definition is very broad and could allow us to call everyone that wants to promote any form of change an activist; no matter what the change might be and no matter whether the change can be considered ‘good’ or ‘bad’ (I use the apostrophe intentionally as not everyone agrees on what is good and what is bad). Civil disobedience [3] is also a phrase used to describe similar things (sometimes it is categorized as being a specific method of activism) but I will stick to the broader term of activism in order to keep it simple. It is also necessary to mention that in most cases is activism a rule/law breaking activity which can lead to an arrest. Following this definition, activism and protests in virtual worlds include ‘intentional efforts to promote, impede or direct social, political, economic, or environmental change.’ How a person (or a group of persons) would go about achieving that depends entirely on the virtual world and the goal he/she or they are trying to accomplish. Due to this broad definition I’m going to name a few examples to clarify how internet activism is practiced. Wikileaks is an example of an organization that utilizes the Internet to make available documents that many governments do not want out in the open due to the nature of the information they contain. They use the Internet to publish these documents because it is very difficult to remove such content from the Internet once it gets ‘out’ there. Anonymous is supposedly a group of cyber criminals that vandalizes websites (i.e. gains access to the back end of a website and is therefore able to change the website, either partially or in full), breaks into computer systems accessible from the Internet (generally taking advantage of outdated software running on the server that has known security holes in it) or uses DDOS (distributed denial of service) attacks on web servers. Needless to say, those who practice this type of activism are usually breaking aCtivism and pRotests in viRtual woRlds Pétur Jóhannes Óskarsson, Senior Researcher, CCP Games The conditions in EVE are very political and because of that it is not surprising when activism and protests are practiced in EVE. And no one should be surprised when the methods used by players towards CCP are sophisticated – they’ve had plenty of time to hone their skills in the game.

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