Backstage - OOC Forums
General Discussion => General Non-RP EVE Discussion => Topic started by: ArtOfLight on 12 Sep 2012, 10:49
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http://themittani.com/news/rip-vile-rat
I never knew Sean Smith (aka: vile_rat) and I'm relatively new to EVE in comparison to many people that play this game, but I can relate to sudden loss and the shock and emotions associated with it.
Regardless of your opinions on The Mittani and GSF, I just wanted to bring this to everyone's attention that EVE has lost someone that touched a lot of people. Please keep the Smith family and friends in your thoughts and prayers as they pick up the pieces of a shattered reality.
RIP: Sean Smith
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Shoot Blues, Tell Vilerat.
:cry:
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I've flown in fleets with him. I've kept his ships alive with my scimitar.
This is fucking me up.
RIP.
Shoot blues > Tell Vile Rat
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I never met him, never spoke to him, never knew him... and now I never will.
I've been crying for the last hour over someone I never even spoke to.
Alliances all over Eve have been renaming their station in his honour. Every single station owned by Goonswarm, TEST, Fatal Ascension, RAZOR and LAWN has been renamed. Multiple stations belonging to GENTS, Spacemonkey's Alliance, Fidelas Constans, SOLAR and EvOke have also been renamed. There are almost certainly others. (Minor edit to add a link: http://evemaps.dotlan.net/outposts/changes )
Moments like this show that whatever our ingame enmities and differences, the players of Eve is among the greatest online communities out there. My deepest condolences go to his friends and family.
Fly Safe Vile Rat. Shoot Blues. o7
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He was stationed in The Hague for a time; it struck me we could've passed in the street, not knowing. Small world.
My Twitter has feed has basically been nothing but people pouring out emotion over him, for the last 12 hours. Tragic as this is, it really heartened me to see the strong sense of community we seem to have, despite everything.
Shoot Blues -> Tell Vile Rat, indeed.
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The tribute Facebook page for Vile Rat. (https://www.facebook.com/RipSeanVileRatSmith)
PC Gamer article on his death. (http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/09/12/eve-online-top-player-was-us-official-killed-in-libya/)
Tribute from Spacemonkey's Alliance. (http://themittani.com/media/memoriam)
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This sucks. I never met him, it feels strange to feel so emotional about someone I never even talked to. Death sucks.
RIP: Sean Smith
Shoot Blues > Tell Vile Rat
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Terrible, terrible news.
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Truly sad for someone so talented to be taken in such a way.
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This was linked in OOC chat and it actually had me in tears, its really heartwarming. Faith in Humanity +10
http://imgur.com/a/tlCyI (http://imgur.com/a/tlCyI)
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The world sickens me.
Terry Jones and Sam Bacile made this movie specifically to kill people. They saw the outrage caused by youtube videos of Americans burning Koran pages (and there have been plenty,) and calculated this movie to cause as much outrage as possible.
Of course, they were gambling on a bunch of faceless, nameless brown people dying in a riot on the other side of the planet. Now that a few Americans have bit the bullet, they're in hiding - purportedly from the threat of Islamic terrorists, but really from the family members of the people they got killed.
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The world sickens me.
Terry Jones and Sam Bacile made this movie specifically to kill people. They saw the outrage caused by youtube videos of Americans burning Koran pages (and there have been plenty,) and calculated this movie to cause as much outrage as possible.
Of course, they were gambling on a bunch of faceless, nameless brown people dying in a riot on the other side of the planet. Now that a few Americans have bit the bullet, they're in hiding - purportedly from the threat of Islamic terrorists, but really from the family members of the people they got killed.
The thing is though, they're allowed to say what they want. Don't hate them for making a video, they might be turds but the video was aired in July. Someone planned to cause riots in both Egypt and Libya and used the video to get people riled up on 9/11. Terry Jones and Sam Bacile may not be a shining example of humanity, but the blame shouldn't go entirely on them, they didn't storm the consulate.
But this thread shouldn't get into politics, best save that for another time.
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But this thread shouldn't get into politics,
This, please.
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Very sad and unfortunate.
RIP Vile Rat/Sean Smith
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Sad news - his name was familiar to me, but no more.
The solidarity and all is great to see. However, I can't help think that the first time I learned about the Goons was when they disgraced the memory of a dead member of BoB. Sigh.
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This was linked in OOC chat and it actually had me in tears, its really heartwarming. Faith in Humanity +10
http://imgur.com/a/tlCyI (http://imgur.com/a/tlCyI)
Yeah it's important to not let the media shift things out of perspective.
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I don’t know how to respond to tragedies such as this. My thoughts are with his friends and family. Know that even strangers mourn his death and celebrate his life with you.
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Told a buddy about this today and he replied, "Yea, surprise, gamers are people too." Easy to forget how mortal we all are playing around as unkillable spaceship captains. The Mittani mentioned he was on voice when something broke out nearby and then he never came back. Chilling. Anyway, I salute Mr Smith for his service. State guys pay the price too.
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I can't add much beyond what others have said. RIP Sean Smith.
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This was linked in OOC chat and it actually had me in tears, its really heartwarming. Faith in Humanity +10
http://imgur.com/a/tlCyI (http://imgur.com/a/tlCyI)
Thank you for linking this.
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The world sickens me.
Terry Jones and Sam Bacile made this movie specifically to kill people. They saw the outrage caused by youtube videos of Americans burning Koran pages (and there have been plenty,) and calculated this movie to cause as much outrage as possible.
Of course, they were gambling on a bunch of faceless, nameless brown people dying in a riot on the other side of the planet. Now that a few Americans have bit the bullet, they're in hiding - purportedly from the threat of Islamic terrorists, but really from the family members of the people they got killed.
Inflammatory documentaries don't kill people, people who get inflamed by them and decide to kill people do. The proposition that offense gives license to force is the proposition that the killers in Libya adhered to.
I wouldn't go as far as saying that the man who was killed died in defense of free speech, because I think that having an embassy in Libya at all is foolish, but I do think that free speech is more important than the religious feelings or political beliefs of any group. And if the exercise of free speech results in violence by those who oppose it, the problem is the violent people, not the speech.
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The world sickens me.
Terry Jones and Sam Bacile made this movie specifically to kill people. They saw the outrage caused by youtube videos of Americans burning Koran pages (and there have been plenty,) and calculated this movie to cause as much outrage as possible.
Of course, they were gambling on a bunch of faceless, nameless brown people dying in a riot on the other side of the planet. Now that a few Americans have bit the bullet, they're in hiding - purportedly from the threat of Islamic terrorists, but really from the family members of the people they got killed.
Inflammatory documentaries don't kill people, people who get inflamed by them and decide to kill people do. The proposition that offense gives license to force is the proposition that the killers in Libya adhered to.
I wouldn't go as far as saying that the man who was killed died in defense of free speech, because I think that having an embassy in Libya at all is foolish, but I do think that free speech is more important than the religious feelings or political beliefs of any group. And if the exercise of free speech results in violence by those who oppose it, the problem is the violent people, not the speech.
I agree, but again, lets please keep the politics out of this thread. It isn't the time or place.
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What a stupid world. (http://hellostrangedays.blogspot.de/2006/07/what-stupid-world.html)
There's not much else I can say, this - and the response from the community - has certainly moved me.
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Here's to bravery.
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(http://i.imgur.com/w2i5W.png)
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If you want to talk about the politics of it, come find me on G+ or Twitter (both are easy to find or just PM me, my RL identity is no secret).
For this thread, though: I'll be pouring one out at EVE Vegas in Sean Smith's memory.
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Shoot Blues - Tell Vile Rat. :-(
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Too often one tends to forget the actual persons behind the avatars one interacts with. The something like this happens and one is brutally awakened.
Rest in peace, Sean.
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This makes me sad.
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In EM we had a pilot who'd been flying since he was 14 or so, at the age of 17 he joined the Marines. At 19 or 20 he got shipped to Afgrandstand.
When he left, I suddenly had a voice to tie to someone fighting in Afgrandstand. I've seen some of the stats on how many come back alive (quite high) and how many of those come back damaged with TBI or other injuries. Before that, those were just statistics. Now I was imagining that damage inflicted on someone I knew.
I mourned for him when he left.
Luckily, he came back. As far as I know, in one piece.
I don't know Vile Rat from Adam. Because I didnt know them, I didn't really mourn the NZ soldiers killed a couple of weeks ago in the Afg, and I find it difficult to be all that upset about Sean Smith. He's just a name to me, not someone real, certainly not more real than the other people who die around the world; the people who die in car accidents; the people who die of cancer; the people who had their wedding exploded by remote control; the people who died in car bombs around Iraq; the people who died when the drunk crossed the centre line and head-on connected with their family car.
I don't mourn individually, but I have a low grade background level of wishing the world was a different place than it is. That all those people could have had more life; that nobody need die in tragic ways. That deep down inside, it would be nice if everyone was prepared to get along with each other. I have come to realise though, that there are people out there who don't feel that way. Perhaps they think it's inevitable, and if it has to happen, then they're going to make sure it happens to someone else, not them.
Some days, it depresses me, so I practice not thinking about it.
I never knew Sean Smith or Vile Rat, so I do not mourn, but I have a lot of sympathy for those that did. I hope they find peace in these times, and that they come through it as best as may be hoped for.
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Indeed.
For me, it is not the visceral, deep pain when someone you knew directly or cared for dies.
It is the cruel, sudden reminder that we are still all humans, with human troubles and human dangers to our lives. However much we may be intellectually aware that there are humans on the other end of the chat, behind that voice on the comms, in that ship we fly alongside, we often tend to regard all but the closest of online friends as, on some level, detached from the rest of reality. We are, after all, brought together primarily by a game about flying spaceships in an alternate galaxy.
I see this in some of the snippets of messages from other goons that have been posted: They talk about him repeatedly going AFK due to mortars or alerts all the time, then coming back later. Even though I'm sure they didn't doubt he was actually in mortal danger, they came to regard it as something that ultimately couldn't detach him from them for longer than a few hours.
And then in a second, those people are gone - not "yeah, taking a break for a bit to deal with RL", not "be right back, got to deal with something" - gone, gone, gone. And it's a nasty wake-up call for those who've not had this happen before, and even some who have.
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Yeah well, same. It is a sad thing, much like the day a guy in a friendly corp disappeared for weeks before we learned that he killed himself.
As much as I find it sad, I am not sure what to think of all of this. It seems to have blown out of proportion. Because he was famous ? Or maybe that's what he wanted ? Because that's a political context ? Or just because :goon: ? Maybe, maybe not.
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How many stations were named after Dark Elf? Verone might be able to tell you.
How many were named after Dracous? Only one; OOY-Z Dracous station. It was meant to be named that forever in reminder of a guy who died in a car accident IIRC, about a month before I joined ASCN. I never met the man, but my new corp-mates spoke of him fondly, and I was a bit proud to not only base out of an actual player station (that I was tasked with helping defend) but an actual reminder-totem for a guy that has well respected, like most players should be.
Then it was handed to BoB in a betrayal, who (from what I've heard) kept the name, then they lost it to the Russians, who didn't respect the name. I have no idea what this station is named today, nor will I know what all those Vile Rat stations will be named in 2 months. It's highly likely, not all of them will be named after him.
IIRC Vile Rat was ASCN once upon a time, so I knew of him from before he became a greatGoonFriend, but I never knew him. I find it hard to genuinely grieve, and honestly feel a bit like the universal (literal in EVE's case) mourning period is played up to some extent. The Goons are sad, and they should, but everyone else follows suit and suddenly care so much as well.
R.I.P Sean Smith, but the stations dedicated to your EVE persona will be back to their old names in due time, and I don't feel sorry for it.
I do however, feel sorry for you, and hope you family and friends find some peace sooner rather than later.
o7
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I had some very limited interaction with him, and I'm sure he wouldn't have known me except possibly by name when I was actively blogging, so I count him as an acquaintance, not friend.
That said, we had many mutual friends, people I genuinely know and care about outside of EVE, and so because of that I share their grief.
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I only spoke to Vilerat once.
The conversation ended with me knowing that goonswarm was not the place for me.
This still hits home in a viscerally hard manner.
Fly safe Vilerat.
My thoughts are with those left behind, may they also find peace of mind.
-Dave
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I've been on vacation the past week, and just found out about this as I was reviewing links to remove, now that the unsub has hit. :(
Though I've been at odds with the SA community since my Second Life days, my heart still goes out to them, and to Sean's family.
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Indeed.
For me, it is not the visceral, deep pain when someone you knew directly or cared for dies.
It is the cruel, sudden reminder that we are still all humans, with human troubles and human dangers to our lives. However much we may be intellectually aware that there are humans on the other end of the chat, behind that voice on the comms, in that ship we fly alongside, we often tend to regard all but the closest of online friends as, on some level, detached from the rest of reality. We are, after all, brought together primarily by a game about flying spaceships in an alternate galaxy.
I see this in some of the snippets of messages from other goons that have been posted: They talk about him repeatedly going AFK due to mortars or alerts all the time, then coming back later. Even though I'm sure they didn't doubt he was actually in mortal danger, they came to regard it as something that ultimately couldn't detach him from them for longer than a few hours.
And then in a second, those people are gone - not "yeah, taking a break for a bit to deal with RL", not "be right back, got to deal with something" - gone, gone, gone. And it's a nasty wake-up call for those who've not had this happen before, and even some who have.
I think that really sums up how I feel. Its not deep grieving, after all I never really knew Vile Rate. But his death definitely leaves this hollowness, a reminder of the mortality of our own loved ones and ourselves. Since it happened, I've been slightly nervous every time I have to let my boyfriend out of my sight, for fear he might just not come back. It must be a horrible feeling, actually having knew Sean, much less been on chat with him, and had him leave, just never returning. How quickly lives can be snatched away....
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For those of you who wish to support Sean's family, you can make a donation here: http://www.youcaring.com/fundraiser_details?fundraiser_id=9332&url=benefitforseansmithsfamily (http://www.youcaring.com/fundraiser_details?fundraiser_id=9332&url=benefitforseansmithsfamily)
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-19680785
Seems a large section of the Libyan population took exception to the attacks.
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And because we all need a tiny bit of levity injected here:
Glenn Beck thinks the Goonswarm is a CIA front (http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/09/21/glenn-beck-thinks-the-goonswarm-is-a-cia-front/)
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And because we all need a tiny bit of levity injected here:
Glenn Beck thinks the Goonswarm is a CIA front (http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/09/21/glenn-beck-thinks-the-goonswarm-is-a-cia-front/)
Bird dog, bird dog. I say again, bird dog. The hammock is compromised. The hammock is compromised.
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And because we all need a tiny bit of levity injected here:
Glenn Beck thinks the Goonswarm is a CIA front (http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/09/21/glenn-beck-thinks-the-goonswarm-is-a-cia-front/)
Bird dog, bird dog. I say again, bird dog. The hammock is compromised. The hammock is compromised.
lol
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And because we all need a tiny bit of levity injected here:
Glenn Beck thinks the Goonswarm is a CIA front (http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/09/21/glenn-beck-thinks-the-goonswarm-is-a-cia-front/)
This is hysterical on so many levels.
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Remarkably haunting video put together by Rixx Javix and Aiden Mourn, promoting the Ring of Fire Project. The Ring of Fire is a proposed in-game object, or place, or landmark, that holds a memorial for all eve players to have passed on.
https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=153916
Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GC0vbbHJb-0&feature=player_embedded
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Bit of a necro, but Playboy published a fantastic article on Sean Smith just recently. Came across it on Failheap today. Link NSFW, if anyone has issues with clicking it I'm happy to quote the article in a post, but it's quite long so I won't spam up the thread with it unless someone asks.
http://www.playboy.com/playground/view/vile-rat-virtual-world-of-eve-online
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I had a good laugh at the embellishments and misinterpretations of actual EVE gameplay, especially the Tigerlily part.
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I had a good laugh at the embellishments and misinterpretations of actual EVE gameplay, especially the Tigerlily part.
Yeah, that was a bit over the top. Still a good article though.
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I had a good laugh at the embellishments and misinterpretations of actual EVE gameplay, especially the Tigerlily part.
Yeah, that was a bit over the top. Still a good article though.
Without a doubt, an excellent article.
Don't get me wrong though, I enjoy those embellishments. It stirs nostalgic sensations of mystery and fantastic adventure for the game.
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Bit of a necro, but Playboy published a fantastic article on Sean Smith just recently. Came across it on Failheap today. Link NSFW, if anyone has issues with clicking it I'm happy to quote the article in a post, but it's quite long so I won't spam up the thread with it unless someone asks.
http://www.playboy.com/playground/view/vile-rat-virtual-world-of-eve-online
Doing a quick copy-pasta isn't really all that hard.
Sean leaves behind a loving wife, Heather, two young children, Samantha and Nathan, and scores of grieving family, friends and colleagues. And that’s just in this world. Because online, in the virtual worlds that Sean helped create, he is also being mourned by countless competitors, collaborators and gamers who shared his passion. —Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, September 14, 2012
Sean Smith lived in two worlds, but he died in one. His death came in the world where he worked. It was September 11, 2012, and Smith was inside the United States Special Mission Compound in Benghazi, Libya. A scruffy, bald 34-year-old with a warm smile and dark wit, Smith had spent the past decade as a globe-trotting operative for the U.S. Department of State, with stints in Montreal, Pretoria, Baghdad and, most recently, the Hague, where his wife and children awaited his return.
As a foreign service information management officer, Smith was the consulate’s one-man geek squad, ensuring the electronics ran smoothly and securely. When he wasn’t fixing modems, he would help manage staff and deal with locals. But like most wartime operatives, he was prohibited from revealing any more details of his job to friends and family. When his mother, Pat, asked him what he did, he’d joke, “Mom, if I told you, I’d have to shoot you.”
The State Department had been in Benghazi since April 2011 as part of its diplomatic mission in a country in the throes of civil war. Tensions and violence grew in the wake of Muammar el-Qaddafi’s death in October of that year, and the U.S. took to upgrading security at the compound where the American diplomats lived. The outer wall had been extended to 12 feet high and lined with barbed wire and razor wire. A steel gate and drop-bar traffic barriers reinforced entrances to the complex, and large concrete blocks were placed farther outside to keep cars from ramming their way in. Five armed security agents patrolled outside. Some windows were covered with grilles and doubled as escape hatches.
For Smith, who had arrived at the compound about a week before it was attacked, being in such a hostile environment was a necessary but unsettling part of his career. “He wasn’t happy in those stressful situations,” his friend Kristoffer Touborg recalls. “He wanted to go back to his wife and kids. He was uncomfortable. But he’d try to make light of it.” When friends worried about his safety, he’d joke, “I’ll try not to die this time.”
On this afternoon in Libya, Smith noticed suspicious activity outside the compound. Attacks by extremist Islamic militiamen had been growing in Benghazi in recent months—rocket grenades fired at the Red Cross building in May, an IED explosion outside the U.S. compound in June. Now this was the onset of what would become the most controversial attack yet, a messy scandal for the Obama administration and a dark stain on Hillary Clinton’s career.
But for Smith, it wasn’t about diplomacy anymore; it was a struggle for survival. He took to his computer and fired up a chat window. He began urgently trying to describe the scene as it unfolded, “assuming we don’t die tonight.”
“We saw one of our ‘police’ that guard the compound taking pictures,” he wrote.
Soon after he wrote “Fuck.”
Then “Gunfire.”
And then, nothing at all.
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Smith’s last messages didn’t go to the White House. They went to the world where he lived a double life of diplomacy, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game called Eve Online. Run by CCP Games, an independent developer in Iceland, Eve pits players against one another in futuristic space wars. Though wildly complicated, it has become one of the most successful games on the internet, with more than 400,000 subscribers paying $15 a month to battle for hours a day. It has also become an underground cultural phenomenon. There are Eve podcasts, online radio stations, blogs and fan festivals from Las Vegas to Moscow.
Yes, it’s geeky, but it’s also surprisingly influential and unique: a virtual world of geopolitical intrigue that attracts real-life spies, hackers and emissaries from across the globe. And in this parallel universe, no one was more influential than Sean Smith, who went by the name Vile Rat. As one of his Eve allies blogged after his death, “If you play this stupid game, you may not realize it, but you play in a galaxy created in large part by Vile Rat’s talent as a diplomat.”
Diplomacy is a game, and to understand the mind of this diplomat—and what was going through it the moment the consulate was attacked—you have to understand the game of Eve. Launched in 2003, it was created by a group of buddies in Reykjavik who wanted to put more balls and brains in computer-game warfare by making it more like real life. “Eve is a mirror of real-world geopolitics,” says Alexander Gianturco, Smith’s best friend in the game. “Territory is scarce, resources are scarce, and there are massive wars of people fighting over them.”
The game takes place in New Eden, a galaxy of more than 7,500 star systems controlled by four warring factions. After logging on and creating your avatar—from its shoes to its eyebrows—you join one of the competing races.
But that’s where the similarities with other games end. Unlike in, say, Call of Duty, you don’t have a required set of missions to complete or enemies to slaughter. Once you create a ship to pilot, you’re off to explore the galaxy as you see fit. Flying a ship through Eve is like gliding through a dreamy sequence of Star Trek, with incandescent white supernovas and spiraling wormholes. But despite the beauty, Eve is a ruthless Wild West. As in reality, the battles center on making cash. To fuel this, Eve boasts one of the most complicated virtual economies on the internet, with its own currency. The game’s builder employs a full-time staffer with a Ph.D. in economics.
Almost every item inside Eve—from the spaceships to the towers—is created, distributed and sold by the players. To earn money, players work at in-game jobs—seemingly menial tasks such as smashing rocks or driving a delivery truck. For hours a day. As in reality, sex can be a currency. One of the game’s most notorious players, a busty blonde avatar named Tigerlily, is a self-described “sexpionage agent.” She plies her trade in Pleasure Hubs, sections of Eve devoted to gambling and sex. She waits for high-profile pilots to fly through and then flirts with them in chat—hoping to lure them into a private chat session where they can have full-blown cybersex. “When you’re presented with a sex slave and all she wants to do is suck your cock, it works out quite well,” she says.
In real life Tigerlily works in national security for the Canadian government.
For added gravitas, Eve has a unique element of mortality. In the game, death is real. “The idea,” says CCP spokesman Ned Coker, “was to have a massive universe where the core principles were that death has to mean something and Everyone lives in the same game world.” This is a radical departure from hit online games such as World of Warcraft, in which players can die and respawn without much consequence. By limiting itself to a one-game world and making losses permanent, Eve raises the stakes for gamers.
As in real life, evil is part of the game. “We don’t regulate what players do,” says Touborg, the game’s lead designer. “We accept that people don’t want to play good guy all the time.”
For a player like Sean Smith—who would encounter his share of bad guys from Iraq to Libya—Eve was something remarkable: a political minefield with high stakes, just like the world he lived in day to day.
Source: http://www.playboy.com/playground/view/vile-rat-virtual-world-of-eve-online
P.S.: Holy damn I had forgotten how much those girls look like plastic caricatures of real people :|