Cyberflayer
Vagabonds Unincorporated
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Posted - 2007.10.15 03:19:00 -
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Hm. This thread and accompanying idea are relevant to my interests.
 Originally by: Spenz
Sounds interesting. You have someone who lived off nothing to entertain others (innominate, who I hear actually died IRL), someone who has seen it all and has forsaken material wealth to live off skill alone (Vagabond in a stabber), and now we have someone who is going to attempt to live completely off the charity of others.
I wonder if, in spite of the fledgling nature of this particular idea of testing charity, these social and personal experience experiments are becoming more common. Moreover, if they are, I wonder if it is because of natural creativity to find new ways to play game - to make it more open-ended than it mechanically is by the virtue of the social aspect. In fact, I wonder if it could qualify as emergent gameplay. Then again, isn't the first time for anything in a game emergent gameplay?
I hear many claims of thinly veiled scammery and beggary, but isn't that the point? If its beggary, it it not somewhat new that it's veiled? If it is nothing more than a thinly veiled scam, then is it not honest and somewhat antithetical in its nature by virtue of its transparency? That's new, too. I don't see reason not to reward the modicum of creative thought and see where it takes us.
Originally by: Spenz
IMO Instant Pain is taking a pretty big risk. He is a returning player from the pre-Lofty-privateers-bankscam-suicidegankage-gingermagician-BoBgate-Jita era, where trust prevailed much more than it does now. To live off charity in these times is a pretty bold experiment.
It's funny that, in a time when EVE is considered to be "softening" substantially, all of these events seem to have made the EVE community more brutalizingly paranoid. Maybe this says something about the recent doomsday cries of EVE's inexorable fall into WoW in Space. Maybe mechanics are changing to take the edge off of the game, but the players are certainly doing their part to balance the equation and keep EVE just as unforgiving as it's always been.
Here we have a player from the days when the game was harsh but the community was not, using his postulated experiment to say "hey, remember the days when..." and it's amusing in a morosely nostaligic way to see him get slammed by so many members of the modern community in a short span of time.
For what it's worth, I encourage this experiment to continue. By the looks of the 250k donated so far, it appears that a few are willing to put a piddling amount of faith into the idea. However, I would also encourage Instant Pain to go about his meddling with charity and trust slightly differently. Bear with me while I unfairly manipulate the text to get my idea noticed.
Most of all, I would strongly suggest that Instant Pain pay no heed to the whims of those that donate. It compromises your experiment in charity by allowing the charitable a return on their investment. Allowing someone to take your money and do whatever they desire with it is true charity, instead of this awkward ugly duckling of a personal IPO (which I have attempted before for amusement, and which came to nothing).
Secondly, I would encourage you to use the money you gain in ways which will provide little or no return. To find something in EVE that gives you no money for the effort you put in is difficult; in fact, I think it's more effort than actually making money. This will ensure you are living entirely off of charity, and perhaps it will educate you some about the game that has changed so much since your absence.
Lastly, you seem to have attracted a lot of negative attention which I am tempted to credit to the state of and opinions surrounding "charity" in the modern world. I have the sneaking suspicion that dropping the phrase "welfare state" in this thread would open a truly ugly can of worms. In short, pay them no attention.
Good on ya, sir.
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Moto's Sig
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