Tag Archives: eve online

TheMittani.com is a news site that deserves your consideration.

The Mittani is a polarizing figure in the gaming industry and for good reason.

On one hand, he’s historically the most visible player in the EVE Online community who stood as a Council of Stellar Management chairman and helped to revolutionize the relationship that is possible between engaged customers and game development companies. On the other, he’s the stark visage of a griefing villain who leads the largest coalition of EVE Online players whose primary goals include raining on outsiders’ parades and perpetuating a vocabulary that could be described as slur-filled and early-2000s-era politically incorrect.

One moment he can suggest to a crowded room that they could encourage a down-on-his-luck player to commit suicide and the next he can spearhead a massive donation drive for a key alliance diplomat killed in the Benghazi embassy mob attack. Controversial and legendary at the same time.

Lending his persona to brand a niche game journalism blog doesn’t seem like a bright idea, but that’s exactly what he did just over a year ago. Regardless, TheMittani.com is the fastest growing and probably the most popular EVE Online information source available to the public.

In a scene where intelligence is a meta that is both controlled and valuable, private forums and messaging services continue to become simpler to implement, and subversion is a legitimate tactic, a public news site shouldn’t have as much gravitas as TMC controls.

Screen Shot 2013-09-06 at 8.50.41 AMIn the past year, the news organization has broken milestone after milestone that other news sites in the gaming genre could only wish to achieve. It attracts quality writing talent even though it only compensates its staff with a game-based currency. It’s one of the only organizations that filed for press credentials to E3 for its first time when it was less than a year old and received access. It was able to enter into a Twitch partnership program with one of the lowest average viewerships per game on the service. It doesn’t offer premium access and it hasn’t Kickstarted itself because the operation is self-sufficient. Even though it owes its namesake to an EVE Online personality, it covers five other online titles as well as the ever-more-relevant commercial space race and notable science fiction novels.

If you needed an example of how an esports news site could succeed, here it is. And it doesn’t claim to be anything more than a gaming news site. It doesn’t even touch the term esports.

I would love to contribute to a place like that. Sure the comment section can be toxic and spin to its own meta most of the time, but to be included in a group of folks like that would be a dream come true in a way. I’ve worked with dedicated news folks in a genuine setting and I’m still jealous of the participants in an experiment turned authority like TMC.

I’ve never applied to become a writer there, but I’m strongly considering it because I want to help grow something like TMC. But finding something to contribute is the challenge. I want to bring more general news to the site. Perhaps I can start there.

Here’s what I learned from CheckPoint S3E5.

  • Graham is trying to make EVE sound cool. This should be interesting.
  • More Canada jokes!
  • Vivendi is going to attempt to strong-arm ActiBlizzvisionard into helping them out financially by using its newly-found power to force the company to take loans to sure up their own financial problems. It helps to understand the situation that Vivendi is a publisher and the entire industry has shifted from the publisher-developer model to a self-publisher model thanks to venues like Steam. They’re a bit more desperate than we thought if they’re employing tactics like these to get paid.
  • World of Warcraft getting an in-game store? It’s about time. World of Warcraft becoming pay-to-win ON TOP OF A SUBSCRIPTION? It’s about time. Maybe Blizzard will lose enough hardcore players that it’ll seriously reevaluate all of its bad decisions its made since Diablo 3 lost features in its beta.
  • Real reporting bit: an ingenious way to tool a game for children by making the controller larger to recreate how a child might hold the PS4 controller. The first Xbox controller burn aside, I was wondering what I was looking at when I saw pictures of the controller pop up around the internets.
  • Kathleen actually wraps up the entire Pandemic Legion supercarrier whelp within about a minute and fifteen seconds. And does a great job at it. The quip about feeling like a war correspondent doesn’t seem entirely like a joke. I wonder if she’s ever tried to sit down and play the game…
  • Graham reporting on the FFX remake makes me upset that I don’t own a Vita. If I get a PS4, I might as well pick up a Vita too, but until then… I’ll stick with my PS2 copy of the game, thankyouverymuch.
  • BRB, making an ‘assnbutts’ feat. Kath-dog remix.
  • If Battleship isn’t an AR game of immense proportions, fuck Google Glass.

Positive rep never felt so good.

After identifying myself as a badpilot and badposter in a forum community, I have found myself getting a piece of advice that I think I’ll take to heart everywhere that I post:

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The EVE Online meta is arguably the best metagame that exists in the realm of online gaming. Where StarCraft 2 and similar games have a meta based on preference and then strategy/tactics compared to EVE’s meta is largely based on politics/reputation and then results measured by financial efficiency.

I’d like to explore this more and am getting my thoughts together to try to analyze what goes on in the scene as far as what the public eye can glimpse. A lot of posturing goes on behind the scenes on forums, IRC and Jabber servers; these need the right access to get into. While some access might be corporation membership, others might be out of a need for diplomatic symbiosis. It’ll be interesting to see how much access I can get in the course of my research, but I’m hopeful.