Tölvumál - 01.10.2012, Page 26

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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.