Recently Helicity Boson wrote an impressive rant about carebears. His rant triggered various reactions, but one by Black Claw was quite well done, IMO. I commented on Black Claw’s post, and upon reflection I thought I’d pull part of that comment into a post of my own here.
I’m neither a carebear nor a pirate. I have 2 toons, one of which dabbles in industry and trading, mostly to generate isk for my main, whose is a PVP character, but hasn’t done any piracy. So I sit on the outside looking in on this whole pirate vs carebear thing. Both are valid roles in the game, yet there are those on each side that show unreasonable intolerance of the other. I see some on each side pointing fingers at each other, and getting all bent out of shape by the actions of the other.
I find the whole carebear vs pirate thing reflective of our planet in some ways. There are those (not all) on each side that can’t/won’t accept the other. There are parallels out there – political intolerance, religious intolerance, cultural intolerance that happen because some have the view “you don’t do it my way, so I hate you”. This is in Helicity’s post too: on one hand he says “I don’t understand these people, I can’t understand why someone would mine all day, I need to know.”, but this is after he’s said things like “I mean I really, really hate the carebear.” and “He is diligent, he is productive, he is fucking boring as shit.” He admits he doesn’t understand the carebear, but he’s passing judgment on them anyway.
Helicity wrote “The carebear does not play the game I do, …”. So true, but this is not wrong. The carebear doesn’t play EVE the same as the pirate, but the game is designed to support both styles of play, and others as well. Both styles of play, and the others, are what give Eve it’s depth and complexity, and a lot of it’s entertainment value. Both sides enjoy playing the game the way they do, and that’s good. But some just can’t understand the other side’s point of view. Well deal with it. It’s a game – accept that there are other ways to play than your favorite, so if you can’t fathom how the guy on the other side could possibly enjoy what he’s doing in the game, just accept that he does and move on.
Some on the piracy side use the argument that its all just pixels on the screen. I don’t subscribe to that argument. Carebear players spend time and energy arranging those pixels, so it’s to be expected that they won’t be happy when their work is undone by an uninvited guest. Some venting ought to be expected. Only the most masochistic would say “hey thanks, thanks, that was fun” when ganked. I’ve been caught is gate camps where the numbers are so high that there’s no chance to get out – and I don’t enjoy that at all, however it’s part of EVE, so I deal with it. It’s natural for anyone with an ounce of competitive instinct to dislike losing a ship, but it’s part of playing the game, so we deal with it (or should), but we should also understand when someone might get upset at the outcome.
So to both sides I say “get over it”. To the carebear who got ganked, deal with it – it’s part of the game. To the pirate who doesn’t like the name calling, or other smack talk from their victim, you deal with it too. And if you do subscribe to the argument that it’s just pixels on a screen, remember that all that smack talk in local/evemail/chat is just pixels on a screen too.
