Backstage - OOC Forums
EVE-Online RP Discussion and Resources => Player Driven Content => Topic started by: Lyn Farel on 07 Feb 2012, 14:47
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First, to the player of Alain Octiran / Hans Nardieu (not sure if he roams here), I have to say that I really enjoy your characters fleshing out that kind of political day to day debates, heated discussions and outrages, playing between the whole roster of the gallente parties. Also, the last one (here (https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=66808&find=unread)) made me particularily laugh as it seems obviously inspired of something that recently happened IRL (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/feb/07/french-cabinet-walkout-parliament).
Now that on the matter of RL inspired things in roleplay, more seriously, it made me wonder several things. I must say that I am not opposed to it, quite the contrary in fact, as I find it quite enriching. But is that somehow blurring the barrier between RL and the Eve world ? Will it become a little too much obvious if we abuse of it after some time ?
To the first question I personally think that if this is well done like this and transfered to the eve world properly, it does not. To the second, though, I am not so sure. What is your opinion on that ?
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Hey, Lyn.
I've been thinking about this a lot lately and I'm not sure yet what the answer is. I agree that the allegory has the capacity to become obvious and silly if not done in a subtle and interesting fashion.
There's an extent to which everything we do is RL-inspired. Our characters are largely mired in the context of their players and this is unavoidable.
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I believe it was Shaalira that pointed out before that associating Federal politics too closely to Western politics has the danger of turning people off of the faction altogether. As entertaining as it can be, I'm not confident all of us want to see EVE equivalents of RL political debates...at the same time, taking a unique approach to it can be entertaining.
This is more personal bias, but the reason I don't want to see too much RL-in-EVE political debates is oversimplifying the Federation. Demographically, it is closer to India, with a strong developed/developing world(s) divide. It is far more diverse than the US ever will be, and IMO is more closer to a "confederation of planets" than a space US.
But that's personal taste. If people enjoy it, by all means...I'd just encourage to take unique approaches...for example...people in remote places of the Federation...how do you ensure they pay their taxes, if they haven't been recorded or even made aware of to the general public? Look at internal issues as well as diplomacy with foreign empires, because it's certainly not perfect (maybe Gallente Prime is, though).
There might be a planet that consistently violates Federation law, but nobody cares to touch them due to the supply of a certain resource to the rest of the Federation. Alienate them, and you risk that planet cutting off trade with others, and making even more people unhappy (there is an emphasis on 'interplanetary trade' according to the Fed Admin NPC desc)
Stuff like that...in summary...
"Look at the Federation from the bottom-up socially, politically and culturally, and see how it collates with a top-down perspective. Do not apply the Senate government top-down"
Eurgh, who knows, i've been drinking, so bit rowdy :P
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The more there is RL crossover the more the Amarrians will be referred to as paedos.
I think it will just bring down the level of any kind of interaction to a more reactive level of the player instead of somewhat planned responses of the character.
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The more there is RL crossover the more the Amarrians will be referred to as paedos.
I think it will just bring down the level of any kind of interaction to a more reactive level of the player instead of somewhat planned responses of the character.
Good points, though I think that if the thing is done well enough players should not really see the parallels done with RL and thus the player should probably not tend to react too much to an OOC reactive level as much as the character level.
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Seriphyn, it is your personal bias and I disagree with your opinion that the United States lacks diversity. I suggest you look into the demographics of the United States a little deeper than the top layer (for example we lump Mexican, Chilean, and Costa Rican into a single category Hispanic) before making assertions that it lacks diversity.
I will say I think it is fair to state US politics, generally, lacks diversity.
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The Hans Nardieu post in question, as Lyn rightly points out, is a poke at French politics rather than US politics, anyway, so I'm unsure why the US allegory is being discussed.
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Well I was having fun, at least.
Senn only recently discovered how to talk, he's excited to share ideas. ._.
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Keep it up, Senn, I think it's good.
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Without really elaborating on why it's being discussed, India or a South American democracy like Brazil actually is a far better point of comparison. I believe Peru had a Japanese president a while ago.
Never said the US lacked diversity, but it pales in comparison to a place like India, and would be just one planetary blip for a nation that spans hundreds of worlds.
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IMO, RL politics comparisons works a lot like other player-influenced or produced content:
It's not terribly bad to set this as an example for a small sub-community in the cluster, especially for purposes of goodhearted satire. I remain somewhat suspicious of serious RL governmental comparisons out of a concern someone will make a mock-US/Britain/Russia/whateveristan and then start presenting it as a utopia/distopia, then RL feelings about RL politics get involved, etc... not seen it happen yet, though, so I'm not going to come down on this to hard.
It's not cool to be trying to dictate and entire factions' politics based on such comparisons.
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Oh, also, slavery. Slavery is Teh Bad IRL. But as Lou has pointed out on the IGS (https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=67058&find=unread) it doesn't necessarily have the bad connotations we think it would.
If slaves at 90% of the Amarr workforce, why the hell would you want to abuse them? It's property. Like how a factory has machines, you don't want to be abusing those machines.
That's the "ideal" anyway.
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Also, you don't want to piss off 90% of your workforce.
They have all the tools to cave your head in, and know how to use them.
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Like how a factory has machines, you don't want to be abusing those machines.
Yet 99.9% of factories do so because it's cheaper not to maintain their equipment and run to failure and replace whatever breaks, or the entire machine, or to use sub standard parts.
I'd assume given experience as an Engineer in heavy industry for the last 10 years, in a LOT of places, probably the majority of the empire, slave labour is not a pretty thing at all.
Why give them more than the bare essentials they need to survive?
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Why give them more than the bare essentials they need to survive?
Indeed.
Why give them a possibility to not to have a worldview that makes them work 24/7/365 for a pittance?
How would that be different from the Gallente Federation?
Or any other empire?
The difference is that in the Empire it is called slavery, its cultural motivation is religious (not just survival as in other empires) and it is limited.
Once you are free, you can start working your way up the ladder of society.
Those that are in an economic prison do not have that possibility open for them.
Yes, in the Amarrian system you have to pay for the sins of your ancestors by being enslaved for generations upon generations until you have emptied the ocean of sin with a spoon that has a hole in it.
At least the system is honest.
Unlike in any other empire.
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I think the subject is slightly derailing into a very subjective discussion...
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Exactly.
When RL views are brought into EVE it always makes things less fun.
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When it comes to political or, especially, philosophical debates between EVE characters, there's inevitably going to be some tie-ins to RL ideas.
We're all people living in this universe, and even if we made up authors in those fields for our characters to read from, it would still be influenced by our current ideals.
It would be handy if there were an essay-style forum for such discussion or something. The IGS is too easily bogged down by the instantly appearing super-edgey nihilists crying "all government is dumb and you're all dumb for thinking otherwise."
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It would be handy if there were an essay-style forum for such discussion or something. The IGS is too easily bogged down by the instantly appearing super-edgey nihilists crying "all government is dumb and you're all dumb for thinking otherwise."
Perhaps it's like getting a physicist to discuss politics. It perhaps has the same disastrous effect as a sociologist trying to discuss quantum physics.
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I'm not sure how real life comparisons can be completely avoided. For instance, when capsuleers talk about what ships they have, what are their properties and how they are fitted, they do it pretty much in the same manner as someone might talk about cars in real life, and I think it's actually quite plausible point of reference in this case.
When it comes to religion or politics, it would be strange to not use the existing best practices to convince the listeners, induce uncertainty, appeal to emotion, sell ideas etc. There is evidence that these practices have not changed dramatically over the course of history and I think it is generally not better for role-playing purposes to come up with completely new ways to interact with other people.
While budget, constitution or local affairs are poorly detailed in PF, there's still no real lack of concrete topics for Gallente political discussion. Philosophical questions or prejudices like here are perhaps more accessible for a wide audience and that's probably why they make interesting IGS material.
I agree with others here that if you form a mixture of your own and your character's opinions, it becomes very difficult to play with you, especially when there's a contentious topic under discussion. I think this the real problem, rather than having something similar existing in real life.
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Quickly chipping in with aesthetics...
There's this image to think about for the Gallente (http://bestgamewallpapers.com/files/eve-online/gallente.jpg), and this one for the Caldari (http://images.wikia.com/eve/images/e/eb/Caldariphoto.jpg).
But they are ye olde.
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It would be handy if there were an essay-style forum for such discussion or something. The IGS is too easily bogged down by the instantly appearing super-edgey nihilists crying "all government is dumb and you're all dumb for thinking otherwise."
Perhaps it's like getting a physicist to discuss politics. It perhaps has the same disastrous effect as a sociologist trying to discuss quantum physics.
Well I don't think we're incapable. I mean, I've always toyed with the idea of producing some abstracts for philosophers/political analysts from the State and Federation because I honestly would like to see some binary discussion on the nature of their nations.
There's two problems, which I mentioned before; one, if I bring up a concept like "patriotic militant capitalists," or "ultra-nationalist democrats," or what have you, there IS a real-world author who has likely already covered the topic. I could alter the ideas, or try to base mine off of those authors, but in the end I'm still chained to the real-world versions of those ideologies. I don't think I'm capable of a totally detached viewpoint on socio-political circumstances.
The second is, as I said, there's no forum for these discussions. Rich as they could be, there's no channel that wouldn't devolve, nor is there a way to avoid the pitfall of the IGS which always comes to some random voice from the uninspired black-flag community derailing the whole thread.
Hell, some open exchange of IC essays would be preferable to the space-waste that the IGS poses for any worthwhile, civil character debate.
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Like how a factory has machines, you don't want to be abusing those machines.
Yet 99.9% of factories do so because it's cheaper not to maintain their equipment and run to failure and replace whatever breaks, or the entire machine, or to use sub standard parts.
I'd assume given experience as an Engineer in heavy industry for the last 10 years, in a LOT of places, probably the majority of the empire, slave labour is not a pretty thing at all.
Why give them more than the bare essentials they need to survive?
Best example I can think of from history is the sugar cane plantation in the British and Dutch West Indies in the 1700s. They realized it was more profitable to simply work their slaves to death within a couple months, and simply rotate in new ones as the old batch died. So thats what they did.
You beat your slaves down. You crush them. You wear them out. It makes much more sense for a slave owner to lose a bit of profit than risk your life in a slave revolt. Besides, what you gain in treating your slaves well rarely is worth what you give up in production. Most slave populations routinely died out within a generation or two, either through integration into the overall population or simply dying off without replacing their numbers. Slave populations in history that survived for more than a few generations have been the exception, not the norm.
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It seems as if the thread has evolved into a new and interesting debate. Surely this is a good thing.
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Best example I can think of from history is the sugar cane plantation in the British and Dutch West Indies in the 1700s. They realized it was more profitable to simply work their slaves to death within a couple months, and simply rotate in new ones as the old batch died. So thats what they did.
I wonder about the economic differences between capturing slaves and raising them. It feels like capturing slaves is (relatively) quick and cheap, and the "product" is therefore consumable. If you have to grow them yourself it rather changes the investment, and therefore the required return on investment.
(You can set up stable systems for this, but at some point it seems to become more effective to turn your slaves into private contractors who carry their own risk and raising/training investments.)
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Best example I can think of from history is the sugar cane plantation in the British and Dutch West Indies in the 1700s. They realized it was more profitable to simply work their slaves to death within a couple months, and simply rotate in new ones as the old batch died. So thats what they did.
I wonder about the economic differences between capturing slaves and raising them. It feels like capturing slaves is (relatively) quick and cheap, and the "product" is therefore consumable. If you have to grow them yourself it rather changes the investment, and therefore the required return on investment.
(You can set up stable systems for this, but at some point it seems to become more effective to turn your slaves into private contractors who carry their own risk and raising/training investments.)
American slavery largely developed along the economic line that it was more profitable to keep the slaves alive and in good health. While the Europeans bought directly from Africa or engaged in capturing slaves, the Americans tended to buy slaves that had already been "seasoned" in the West Indies. This necessarily drove up the cost to purchase slaves on the American market because the traders had already significantly invested in the slaves.
The US Constitution also provided that importation of foreign slaves would cease in 1808, so American planters had another incentive beginning at the end of the 18th century to put more thought into the care of their current stock. Lincoln's position on the matter by 1860 was that containing institutionalized slavery to the states where it was already legal would necessarily choke the practice out gradually. By that point, of course, we had at least three generations of slaves born and raised in the United States (1808-1860), and I can only imagine that the economic investment in "homegrown" slaves was substantial, given that the [false] perception of Lincoln as an abolitionist turned out to be the straw that broke the camel's back in the secession crisis.
What the hell am I rambling about?
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(http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HUYSeEHABdU/Tsp32KaK51I/AAAAAAAAC4M/o2vt188Q1ng/s1600/green-stuff.jpg)