No, he can't. if he undocks, I can kill him. I can lose sec and take gate guns in low, or get CONCORDed, but if you are undocked, you ARE risking PvP. Similarly, if you share a corp with other people, you are consenting to the fact that you may get stolen from.
Well, IRL if you live, you can be killed, if you possess something, your possessions can be stolen. By your reasoning, someone who has possessions is thus consenting to 'the fact that he may get stolen from' and as well to 'the fact that he may get killed'.
I don't think it works that way: One rarely does
consent to facts. Facts are
accepted. Acceptance and consent are two pairs of shoes, though. Furthermore that you accept the possibility that someone might steal from you doesn't imply in any way that you have to or do accept that someone steals from you, much less that you give your consent to this.
So, if one is in EVE in a corporation with people, one does accept the fact that one may get stolen from, but one doesn't (usually) consent to it. Usually corporations make clear that they don't want corp thieves in their corps and thus that they don't give consent to corp thievery. And it is exactly for the reason that the game allows for corp thievery that there is an implied
out of game 'contract' in the corp that this including that those joining the corp don't do thievery. Because there are no instances which would be able to enforce this 'contract' it is based on trust, that is OO
G trust, mostly.
I think that is true for most corporations. I also think that most corp thieves are aware of this and use this to their advantage in one way or another, simply because OO
G interaction strikes closer to the players emotions and thus will be building trust much faster. Purely IG or IC interaction is more abstract and thus tends to need more time to build the trust levels required to get access to the juicy bits one wants to steal.
I don't think that corporations in EVE work on this implied 'contract' of cooperation because they intend to use it as a 'shield' against corp thievery, for the reason alone that a 'contract' merely founded on trust is the worst security measure one can possibly have. Rather it is a choice in building your game environment. Exactly because EVE is a sand box which allows for a wide range of activities, players choose certain elements of said sand box which will make up
their game. Managing a corporation usually involves enough elements that they don't want to worry overly much with corp thievery shenanigans. Also, most people want a friendly and relaxed atmosphere in corp, that isn't dominated by suspicion and distrust.
Therefore most corporations entail a contract that does, on an
out of game level, exclude those elements: They accept the possibility of corp theft, but do not consent to it.
If one goes out to steal from a corp one usually is going to commit an action that can't be described as purely
in character or
in game, but usually it entails
out of game elements as well and thus will yield out of game consequences. If one can't accept those out of game consequences, but want to do the thievery thing in game, then one should go steal from a corp that doesn't have such a contract, that decided they want to engage in the spy/counterespionage/thievery/counter-thievery game. I hear the Goons have an entire devision for that.
If one is in there because one enjoys the emotional fallout that oftentimes commences out of game (and isn't even seeing it as 'backhanded compliment if it so happens) and is thus
deliberately targeting corporations that have an OOG 'contract' of cooperation, then... well, I'd say people who are like that lack an appreciation for sportsmanship OOG.
Author
Topic: The OOC/IC Divide, Corporate Security, and the Spy Metagame (Read 8361 times)