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[orange]

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.

Nothing science fiction about the 388 star system Federation founded on democratic principles?

Nothing science fiction about the large immigrant population being from a group of humans with whom the Gallente first made contact while the group was largely slaves to another interstellar human civilization, with whom there has been zero contact for over 15,000 years?

CCP has down played just how alien the Gallente, Minmatar, and Amarr should be from each other.  It is longer than humans have been conducting agriculture.  It does not even need to be racism, it is a fundamental lack of comprehending the other sentient's thought processes.

Would it be more science fiction if the Minmatar were not human?  How would that change the story?

[Shiori]

I find it almost comforting to see EVE's far-future, alien societies struggle with the same day-to-day problems we do. Familiar, banal, and apparently inherent and ineradicable evils fit a dystopian setting quite well.

So, in answer to the title question: no. There's nothing sudden about it..

[Vic Van Meter]

Really, I think the entire reason this came up in the Gallente Federation instead of anywhere else is simple: it doesn't anywhere else and it's a great piece of ammunition for racists outside the Federation.

Let's face it, most of the characters on the IGS are really looking for reasons to dislike each other; EVE is a pretty distopian game that definitely plays up the petty grievances people have with each other into full-blown wars.  That's what draws people to the endgame.  Minmatar get shit every time any single one of them is violent, Caldari get shit every single time one of them is authoritarian, and the Amarr get shit every single time their human rights record is brought into question.  It's just fuel for the fire.

So that's why this one singular court case is probably big news, because it is a negative case that strikes at the heart of what is said to be great about Gallente society.  One issue suddenly brought out the racist, anti-immigrant minority in Federation space and now, you're all racists.  Nevermind that segregation is rife everywhere else, the Gallente claim to be a free society so every little bit of story that seems to disprove that is going to get a lot of play.  It's understandable.  If somebody kills people in self defense, but there's questions about whether they were overzealous and crossed into murder, that's not noteworthy.  It's noteworthy if THE ENTIRE GALLENTE FEDERATION IS A LIE!

Constantin didn't take the bait, but that's exactly the kinds of things rulers play to people in other countries, showing them why life there is so great where they live compared to everywhere else.  "The UK is free?  Look at the BNP!  Obviously, it's just as racist as Saudi Arabia!"  So having Matari talking shit about the Gallente Federation is totally understandable and reasonable.  It's supposed to feel frustrating, because pretty much everyone knows it's essentially a scam.  The Federation is probably more free than anywhere else in the cluster.  Even if it's not perfect, it's a damn sight better than their next-nearest competitors.  But their characters might be buying into it because, frankly, they're racists brought up in a racist society.  It's comforting to see the light of the Federation take a hit so that they can revel in the schadenfreude.

I wouldn't take it personally.  Just like we Amarr are going to have people playing the slavery button every time anything remotely positive is said about their propensity for moral living, the Federation gets to deal with every single instance of racial and cultural dissonance as if it's emblematic of the Federation.  Just ignore the static and go on.

[Ayallah]

EvE is a pvp game.  RP is no different. 

Welcome to it.  Knowledge, a fast wit, good typing skills, and vocabulary are you weapons now.  Overheat everything and train thick skin to V. 

Cause let me tell you mate, it is the one with the stakes.

It is hard to burn someone out by pewing, easer with ganking.  Better with protracted wars, gate camps and hellcamps.

But IC drama?  maaaaaaaaate

[Vieve]

CCP has down played just how alien the Gallente, Minmatar, and Amarr should be from each other. It is longer than humans have been conducting agriculture. It does not even need to be racism, it is a fundamental lack of comprehending the other sentient's thought processes.

Yes, one hundred thousand times yes.  Even if the original settlers had come from fundamentally identical mindsets (and there's no reason to assume that, especially given that the original Amarr were part of a religious sect, if I'm remembering right), they would have diverged over time, thanks to the complete destruction of their settlements and the loss of contact with the rest of the universe.

[Vic Van Meter]

CCP has down played just how alien the Gallente, Minmatar, and Amarr should be from each other. It is longer than humans have been conducting agriculture. It does not even need to be racism, it is a fundamental lack of comprehending the other sentient's thought processes.

Yes, one hundred thousand times yes.  Even if the original settlers had come from fundamentally identical mindsets (and there's no reason to assume that, especially given that the original Amarr were part of a religious sect, if I'm remembering right), they would have diverged over time, thanks to the complete destruction of their settlements and the loss of contact with the rest of the universe.

I think it might be important not how distant the cultures were from each other, but how long they have been in contact.  Does anyone have a decent timeline?  Some cultures are more resistant to cultural blending than others, but it doesn't usually take very long before any two cultures who are in contact with one another to start assimilating bits and pieces.  We might not completely understand each others' cultures sometimes as any better than caricature, but it only took the Internet a few decades to sort of erase all but the most distant cultures we'd probably see as alien.

I'm kind of surprised that, given how many Matari are living in the Amarr and Gallente Empires, as well as the fact that all empires seem to be cross-pollinating shared industrial projects, that the empires aren't closer together than they are.  I mean, there's an even more ubiquitous network of computer systems in the EVE world.  You'd think there would at least be goths by now or whatever trans-nationalist movements there would be.  I know I have more in common with metalheads in Tehran than I do with my next-door neighbor.

[Etienne Saissore]

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.

Nothing science fiction about the 388 star system Federation founded on democratic principles?

Nothing science fiction about the large immigrant population being from a group of humans with whom the Gallente first made contact while the group was largely slaves to another interstellar human civilization, with whom there has been zero contact for over 15,000 years?

CCP has down played just how alien the Gallente, Minmatar, and Amarr should be from each other.  It is longer than humans have been conducting agriculture.  It does not even need to be racism, it is a fundamental lack of comprehending the other sentient's thought processes.

Would it be more science fiction if the Minmatar were not human?  How would that change the story?

I totally agree, there should be some wild divergence, but all those large numbers don't really seem to have that much influence on how the Federation is portrayed in the chronicles and news items, it's pretty much a generic western country.

Exploring societal issues with cybernetic augs, rogue AIs, aliens etc is a common theme in speculative fiction, and the whole point is to explore how would it affect the story. Bringing real life arguments directly in the game is possible only in the Federal context, but like Ayallah says, if I understood her correctly, only gives ammo for metagaming tactics.

[Lyn Farel]

Would it be more science fiction if the Minmatar were not human?  How would that change the story?

Like in District 9 ?

A lot.

CCP has down played just how alien the Gallente, Minmatar, and Amarr should be from each other. It is longer than humans have been conducting agriculture. It does not even need to be racism, it is a fundamental lack of comprehending the other sentient's thought processes.

Yes, one hundred thousand times yes.  Even if the original settlers had come from fundamentally identical mindsets (and there's no reason to assume that, especially given that the original Amarr were part of a religious sect, if I'm remembering right), they would have diverged over time, thanks to the complete destruction of their settlements and the loss of contact with the rest of the universe.

I think it might be important not how distant the cultures were from each other, but how long they have been in contact.  Does anyone have a decent timeline?  Some cultures are more resistant to cultural blending than others, but it doesn't usually take very long before any two cultures who are in contact with one another to start assimilating bits and pieces.  We might not completely understand each others' cultures sometimes as any better than caricature, but it only took the Internet a few decades to sort of erase all but the most distant cultures we'd probably see as alien.

I'm kind of surprised that, given how many Matari are living in the Amarr and Gallente Empires, as well as the fact that all empires seem to be cross-pollinating shared industrial projects, that the empires aren't closer together than they are.  I mean, there's an even more ubiquitous network of computer systems in the EVE world.  You'd think there would at least be goths by now or whatever trans-nationalist movements there would be.  I know I have more in common with metalheads in Tehran than I do with my next-door neighbor.

Considering what is hinted at or said in PF, it depends of the empire in question.

For the Amarr and the Caldari, which are completely hermetic and closed, I hardly see them very different than DPRK is IRL on that side. There is still trading happening between them and the others, and the Amarr/Gallente for example have been completely closed to each other at the beginning, and when trade agreements finally happened, they were less so... But the Amarr Empire still remains almost completely closed, like the Caldari. Thus I don't expect them to have radically changed their culture (which is different from their mindset, that can change over decades or years according to the political landscape around, cf Vak'Atioth, or just evolving internally as everyone does).

Concerning the Gallente and Minmatar, it's the exact opposite. The very essence of the Federation is to phagocyte every culture it comes into contact with, which means in both ways : it is the very definition of the Federal enforced multi culti, integrating a culture into the whole and making it change in the process, like it is the case on the internet culture. Even if they have been isolated for centuries, considering their eagerness to absorb every culture into their own, I expect them to be a perfect mirror of the blending of every culture of New Eden, with a gallente, intaki and minmatar dominance. As for the Minmatar, they are a young state that was created after all culture met each other, so... The Republic is probably exempt from that, very gallente in essence btw. What is more alien to everyone in the Minmatar is their traditions themselves, they are progressively rediscovering.

[Seriphyn]

Yeah, the 388 solar systems doesn't make a difference, because like all the factions,  the Fed is written from a nebulous, topdown fashion which sounds like a planetary country. Why would individuals on -completely separate planets- care about the same issues?

This was going to be the first of my PF vlogs incidentally, that CCP should really anchor their lore around a collection of highly detailed planets and explore their relationship, rather than these mythical "Gallente" and "Minmatar" which hover above as homogenizing forces. From Star Wars to Mass Effect, what makes these settings so compelling are their planets. I would say EVE has too -many- planets that as a result nobody knows what they're like, or at least they're supposed to be pretty similar to one another, enough that we could call two planets lightyears apart Caldari.

Rather than hundreds of planets per faction, each should have less than ten, highly detailed with artwork and massive loredumps. Then anchor the story around THESE worlds, their relationship with one another, and how they cooperate as a common unit against the other factions

[Lyn Farel]

Welp, yeah...

Edit : sometimes imagining when CCP might read those forums, they surely cringe a lot "OMG THAT BITTER ROLEPLAY PLACE IS TOXIC"

[Ollie]

Would it be more science fiction if the Minmatar were not human?  How would that change the story?

Like in District 9 ?

A lot.

Traders could make a killing moving cat food from Jita to working-class factory planets in the Federation for one.

[Seriphyn]

Interesting...Mark726 JUST said right now that "The stories we're getting now aren't necessarily hard sci-fi. They could be taking place in any univerese; it's human politics, human drama".

YOU READING THESE FORUMS, MARK!?

[Morwen Lagann]

He does - hasn't posted in a while though.

[orange]

Would it be more science fiction if the Minmatar were not human?  How would that change the story?

Like in District 9 ?

A lot.

District 9 itself was inspired by historical human events.

Exploring societal issues with cybernetic augs, rogue AIs, aliens etc is a common theme in speculative fiction, and the whole point is to explore how would it affect the story. Bringing real life arguments directly in the game is possible only in the Federal context, but like Ayallah says, if I understood her correctly, only gives ammo for metagaming tactics.

The societal questions revolving Cybernetic augs are real.   Between Oscar Pistorius's engineered lower legs to societal reactions to Google Glass, I think any story dealing with cybernetic augmentation can be set in 2015, if not 2012.  Is that science fiction?

Rogue AIs while more complex than tracking/advertising algorithms, but if we started to delve into the story about Google's or Amazon's tracking algorithms and its impact on a person or society and then how a single computer virus transformed a particular users experience, it could be set in 2013.  It may not be a rogue AI following what appears to be its own agenda, but the idea of software when presented with false, incomplete, or overly complete data could have many of the same results.

I think real life arguments can be brought in through the other 4 core factions as well.  Each faction can be an exploration of various aspects of western society taken to some extreme.

[Lyn Farel]

Would it be more science fiction if the Minmatar were not human?  How would that change the story?

Like in District 9 ?

A lot.

District 9 itself was inspired by historical human events.

District 9 was also containing a lot of SciFy elements (the ship(s), the mutating agent, the guns, etc). It was maybe not huge, but it was there.

Not saying that without any SF elements it's not scify though. But we are in Eve...