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[Pieter Tuulinen]

It's always been my impression that the Federation is not racist but is, instead CULTURALLY IMPERIALISTIC. Midular was spreading Minmatar culture within the Federation. The Brutor who has been held pending conviction is a Minmatar from outside the Federation, I think.

The Federation has always been interested and deeply concerned with exporting it's culture outside of it's borders and integrating disparate cultures within it's borders. Isn't that what the Cal/Gal war was about?

[Havohej]

I just think it's about fucking time for the last archtypical good guy of New Eden to wear the bad guy hat with a healthy dose of ugliness beneath the surface.   

o7o7 m8m8

[Morwen Lagann]

I just think it's about fucking time for the last archtypical good guy of New Eden to wear the bad guy hat with a healthy dose of ugliness beneath the surface.   

o7o7 m8m8

Protip: Colelie was a few months ago.

[Havohej]

And at Colelie, the Minmatarts were the bad guy.   And not for the first time.  I have never seen the Federation portrayed in such an ugly light by CCP.

Protip: protips are SO 2007, Morlag :p

[Lyn Farel]

Most of the time it has rather been more like crass incompetents.

[Vincent Pryce]

And at Colelie, the Minmatarts were the bad guy.   And not for the first time.  I have never seen the Federation portrayed in such an ugly light by CCP.

Protip: protips are SO 2007, Morlag :p

I think burning people alive on tv with a chemical fire that activates by crowd noise and calling it justice is pretty bad light. The Black Eagles hasn't been a very good guy move either. Granted, the first example is pretty much around 2008 so it's been a while.

[Havohej]

I think I missed the whole black eagles thing.  And admittedly I forgot all about the immolation.  That was pretty awesome.  My bad FedRP bloc, your faction HAS been evil before. 

[Etienne Saissore]

The core issue I think is that Federation is not so well fleshed out as a work of speculative fiction. We know some things about the government and politics, and after that it's anything goes with all varieties or just like real life or just like US.

It's easier to defend Amarr slavery, State eugenics or tribal favoritism because they're more clearly framed as products of imagination, and their RL counterparts are more distant from the world of an average player from the western sphere.

Generally speaking, I like it that it's CCP which brings hot topic issues to discussion. People like to argue about popular talking points, but when players have tried to take this role and to bring them up in character, it seems they've been experiencing problems with getting their claims accepted, and also carrying a load of personal risk.

The Colelie/Broteau arc has been sort of alright so far but it's still like playing with fire, all the participants from the Fed side are taking a risk of getting perceived and labeled as racists, in and out of character, regardless of their intentions, and if it happens, they have no other option than to biomass or abandon their toon/toons and go do something else.

This is not so much of an issue with the flashy executions, or special operatives, they're news items whose personal, everyday life component is not so pronounced, and at least I wouldn't mind seeing more related content in the future. Every faction needs some rotten cabbage, but it should be accompanied with a bowlful of mashed sci-fi.

[Vincent Pryce]

Minmatar immigration at all time high!

[Seriphyn]

The core issue I think is that Federation is not so well fleshed out as a work of speculative fiction. We know some things about the government and politics, and after that it's anything goes with all varieties or just like real life or just like US.

It's easier to defend Amarr slavery, State eugenics or tribal favoritism because they're more clearly framed as products of imagination, and their RL counterparts are more distant from the world of an average player from the western sphere.

I really don't know why CCP shy away from going along with "high-tech democracy" and really utilizing sci-fi tropes to far remove the Gallente democracy from our versions of it IRL. Instead we're getting a storyline that you could put IRL and not see the difference.

Hell, I dunno, maybe they could make the Fed some Greco-Roman style elitist democracy with Citizens separate from everyone else...or Citizens are some transhumanist bodymodders that anyone can become (perhaps if they can even afford it), and they all make decisions by some giant interstellar e-legislature, and the natural humans sort of live on with it under some enlightened oligarchy.

[Vikarion]

I really don't know why CCP shy away from going along with "high-tech democracy" and really utilizing sci-fi tropes to far remove the Gallente democracy from our versions of it IRL. Instead we're getting a storyline that you could put IRL and not see the difference.

Hell, I dunno, maybe they could make the Fed some Greco-Roman style elitist democracy with Citizens separate from everyone else...or Citizens are some transhumanist bodymodders that anyone can become (perhaps if they can even afford it), and they all make decisions by some giant interstellar e-legislature, and the natural humans sort of live on with it under some enlightened oligarchy.

Well, I imagine it might be that they're looking for something somewhat more familiar, recognizable, and relatively familiar to your average player.

Personally, as someone who advocated that CCP actually consider using some real-life examples of the problems with democracy to rub a little realistic grit and grime into the faction, I'm wholly in favor of what they are doing. It's also nice to see the "wholly holy and good" (IMO, of course) get three-dimensionalized.

Nobody gets to have a perfect world. Not even the Gallente.

[orange]

I really don't know why CCP shy away from going along with "high-tech democracy" and really utilizing sci-fi tropes to far remove the Gallente democracy from our versions of it IRL. Instead we're getting a storyline that you could put IRL and not see the difference.

Hell, I dunno, maybe they could make the Fed some Greco-Roman style elitist democracy with Citizens separate from everyone else...or Citizens are some transhumanist bodymodders that anyone can become (perhaps if they can even afford it), and they all make decisions by some giant interstellar e-legislature, and the natural humans sort of live on with it under some enlightened oligarchy.

I am sorry, how does what you described separate it from real life at all?

Plenty of people draw parallels between the current state of the Republic of the United States and the late Roman Republic.  And it is not that hard to consider the idea of a unnaturally extended oligarchy taking control of a government and preventing naturals from breaking into their ranks.  It would be like an African oligarchy getting western health care and living twice as long as their average citizen.

One of the utilities of science fiction (and fiction in general) is to explore real life issues outside the context of real life.  My best example of this is an episode of Battlestar Galactica (new version) in which the issue is abortion rights.

[spoiler]A young woman is pregnant and is not ready to be a mother.  Her parents are very conservative and they are on a ship from a conservative colony and she can not get an abortion there.  She "flees" to the Galactica and goes to the ship's doctor.  This creates all kinds of drama!  The family and her ship demands the daughter be returned and that no abortion carried out.  It spirals into a political issue, are abortions legal in the fleet?

Eventually the Council of Twelve and the President declare it illegal to have an abortion!  The reasoning is sound, every human life is important when you only have ~10,000 people.  The Galactica's doctor performs the procedure anyway, based on his beliefs (and he is essentially to valuable to punish for the "new" crime).[/spoiler]

I think if CCP wants to explore what it means to have an influx of immigrants into a democracy and how that transforms the democracy, more power to them.  The challenge is to make it seem plausible and not forced.

[Etienne Saissore]

Well, I imagine it might be that they're looking for something somewhat more familiar, recognizable, and relatively familiar to your average player.

It's not working. Most people come to EVE looking for sci-fi (or scamming, heists, ganks etc.)

Personally, as someone who advocated that CCP actually consider using some real-life examples of the problems with democracy to rub a little realistic grit and grime into the faction, I'm wholly in favor of what they are doing. It's also nice to see the "wholly holy and good" (IMO, of course) get three-dimensionalized.

Nobody gets to have a perfect world. Not even the Gallente.

I don't understand where do you get this idea. If you took a look at the lore, you would notice there is already quite a bit of grey shades. Nevertheless, I'm right there with you that more grit and grime wouldn't hurt at all, but it should remain in the realm of speculative fiction, just like for the other factions.

If someone asks you what do you do in EVE, everyone should be able tell about it without embarrassment. For the other factions, you can cook up an answer based on the noble houses, theocracy, freedom fighting, tribalism, megacorps, meritocracy etc. It works.

For the Gallente, can you really say you're advocating democracy, progressive policies, social democracy, or anti-immigrant punditry without sounding dubious and creating confusion? Does it sound fun? Sure, if you read all the relevant news items and chronicles, the story you can parse together makes it clear that all of these are subtly different from their real world equivalents but it doesn't really help with this issue.

There are sci-fi titles like Deux Ex, Blade Runner, Akira, GITS, Cowboy Bebop etc which are roughly as close to real life as the Federation is and have social commentary and all that stuff, but that's not the first thing that comes to mind, as it shouldn't be.

[Seriphyn]

One of the utilities of science fiction (and fiction in general) is to explore real life issues outside the context of real life.

Except there's nothing really science fiction about Gallente democracy, nor is this whole immigrant issue. In fact, all we hear IRL is about immigrants. We escape to a scifi universe and hear the exact same thing.

[Lyn Farel]

I really don't know why CCP shy away from going along with "high-tech democracy" and really utilizing sci-fi tropes to far remove the Gallente democracy from our versions of it IRL. Instead we're getting a storyline that you could put IRL and not see the difference.

Hell, I dunno, maybe they could make the Fed some Greco-Roman style elitist democracy with Citizens separate from everyone else...or Citizens are some transhumanist bodymodders that anyone can become (perhaps if they can even afford it), and they all make decisions by some giant interstellar e-legislature, and the natural humans sort of live on with it under some enlightened oligarchy.

Well, I imagine it might be that they're looking for something somewhat more familiar, recognizable, and relatively familiar to your average player.

Personally, as someone who advocated that CCP actually consider using some real-life examples of the problems with democracy to rub a little realistic grit and grime into the faction, I'm wholly in favor of what they are doing. It's also nice to see the "wholly holy and good" (IMO, of course) get three-dimensionalized.

Nobody gets to have a perfect world. Not even the Gallente.

I think both are cool. It's good to have some RL inspired stuff, democracy issues and stuff like that, but sometimes I would also like to hear more about Alpha cities, egonics, and pure techno punk related stuff. Not that it has always to be the feds for that, period, but still...

When I read about the gallente demographics, I see a lot of material that is rarely used in news, like Gamma/Omega cities, local laws, or even better (never heard of anywhere else than in the demographic article), gallente rural areas.

So yes, I agree with Seri and Etienne, we could read most of their articles out of their context and not even be aware it's about a SF world... :/


In Deus Ex HR they introduce the new technology of human augmentation and H+, and they explore the political/social context around that. In Deus Ex 1 they introduce the internet globalization and the drastic change of geopolitics, and explore the context around that.

In Blade Runner they introduce the concept of androids looking and acting like humans do, and how and why they are hunted down, and the ethical issues arising from that.

That kind of stuff. It often looks like when it's about the 4 empires, it's about RL like politics, and when it's about mysteries like Jove/Sleeper/Drones, we finally get to hear about technology and science fiction... At least the Amarr have their sacred flesh issue with cloning...