"What is a metagame?" Gianturco asks. "The purpose of the talk: description of the hidden aspects of EVE gameplay. Analyze EVE's metagame for application in other environments. Convince attending devs to create more games with vibrant espionage gameplay." The example of a metagame is, as Gianturco says, if you were i a tournament, telling someone that you slept with his wife, had him punch you, and therefore forfeit his space in the tournament. Gianturco's goal is to convey what the "key" is to having a "vibrant espionage metagame."
Gianturco goes into the disaster that afflicted the GoonSwarm alliance which was a result of not paying the necessary bills. Also GoonSwarm's chief financial officer (who ran off with their money) is named "Rapetrain." This is all that matters.
The birth of espionage in MMOs: the "Dark Ages: lootable PK MUDs - DartMUD and camera code and breeze code on MUSHs." Camera code allowed people to spy on people who weren't actually present and then use that information to mock them. After that it evolved into the early PvP of MMOs like Ultima Online, Everquest, and Shadowbane. Ultima Online, as Gianturco said, is the "granddaddy" of all PvP which allowed you to kill person after person and take their stuff. Everquest eased the ruthlessness a bit, but brought about the idea of "corpse camping.
Going forth, Gianturco cites: EVE Online, Global Agenda, and Darkfall as the three MMOs which feature solid "espionage." Gianturco's point in contrasting these three games is how completely different they are and how varied their settings are. Gianturco says the benefits of an espionage metagame are: "Free media coverage [which are] a dramatic recruiting tool. Players can use cunning as an in-game skill [and] espionage is the ultimate in [user-generated content]." There are "very few arenas in gaming where you can actually use the fact that you're a manipulative ass" as a benefit and marketable skill as a character/player quality. Allowing for player-based espionage can also ease the burden of a lack of high-end content.
The "hazards of an espionage metagame" are: "impact of espionage is completely unpredictable, outside of Dev control," it "offends sense of 'fair play'," and "customers dislike losing or being cheated." "One of the unfortunate things about being a human is that everyone loves winning and no one likes losing."
"Three key attributes of an espionage metagame are: player-created factions, significant consequences and risk of loss, supportive mechanics & dev environment." Gianturco draws a specific difference between developer guilds/alliances in games like World of Warcraft, but there is always that strict, forced segregation (Horde versus Alliance is cited, amongst other games).
One important key in player-create faction is that "Espionage requires a personal commitment which is a meaingless without player engagement in a conflict, most MMOs force players into fixed factions, limting the level of player engagement." People identify much more strongly with their faction because it's something that player chose and these hard ties enhance the sense of competition and comaraderie. The involvement in factions "the more personal the struggle, the more intense the espionage gameplay becomes." Gianturco cites "the Great War" in EVE Online as the pinnacle example where EVE's "Band of Brothers" assaulted a system of newbies called GoonSwarm for over two weeks.
The second important key is that of "consequences and risk of loss, espionage cannot exist in an arena where nothing is risked." Gianturco cites the loss of durability if you wipe in a raid in World of Warcraft, however if you lose a titan in EVE Online you lose the equivalent of $4,000 USD in in-game currency. Gianturco then goes into convertible currency and real-money trading, whose existence raises the stakes in the game. "Earn a living by selling isk" in EVE is a viable possibility. There are people who are rich in EVE Online who have spent over $100,000 in real-world currency on in-game currency.
The third key is "supportive mechanics and dev environment; must provide opportunity for espionage gameplay in the client itself. Must have 'clean' dev environment with rigorous policing against corruption, and laissez-faire attitude toward fates of players." As an example of the "'clean' dev environment" Gianturco cites that CCP has an internal affairs department to handle the metagame in EVE Online.
Two additional factors that Gianturco does not believe are complete necessary are: "shardless environments which is not ar equirement for espionage, increases the risk of less and player engagement, and 'nowhere to run, nowhere to hide'." And while that is not required it is important to "avoid player segregation" for the reasons of "MMOs with most vibrant espionage lack a level-based system, EVE, UO, Darkfall." "[Leveling] reduces the relevant population or player factions. New players can contribute immediately in non-level-based games, helping factions grow."
Gianturco says "now we're going to actually get to the spy-craft" and someone in the audience giggles like an excited little girl. I love it.
The first component of gameplay is "intelligence gathering" where "agents gather information to remove or create an element of surprise." Gianturco talks about a secret agent who is hired by various factions in EVE Online to completely subvert people and gather information for his clients. The importance of intelligence-gathering in EVE Online can completely change any situation; when it succeeds, people can destroy other people's large, titan ships due to information about that player's titan to people who used it against him. Intelligence gathering "allows 'pure meta' gameplay, entirely separate from game client. [And] vibrant external metagame has several benefits: reduces game load [and] increases player involvement." Gianturco takes this further by raising the "sticky issue of hacking:" there is the "classic divide [between] human vs. signals intelligence." There is also "player agents vs forum hackers" and "competitive espionage in the alliance tournament."
The next component: sabotage. Sabotage i "dramatic, slash-and-burn events," "theft" which involves "stealing corporation/alliance assets." This theft can be used to retrieve assets from formerly-owned territory; Gianturco cites a situation where their agents used jump freighters to ferry cargo to-and-fro from a system "over eighty times." There is also "strategic sabotage [which is] altering the course of a war." Finally, there is "diplomatic sabotage" showing a slide with the text from one of their faction's players with his infamous line: "YOUR ALLIANCE IS A PIECE OF SHIT." The given example is that of a player taking money from people who didn't want to be branded as "evil metagamers" and taking the public position as the scapegoat for taking a large portion of their assets.
Gianturco talks about the "Band of Brothers disband story." During the "Great War" there was a period of stagnation that had been going on for two and a half years. One member of Band of Brothers was going to send an "unknown alt" into the worlds to see what the other side of the system was like. He took an invitation into GoonSwarm with a fake recruitment used to let the BoB man think he was legitimately recruited. GoonSwarm took all of his stuff and said "haha, you've been scammed." The Band of Brothers member, Hargoth, came back to GoonSwarm and was, actually, a fan fo GoonSwarm and was willing to defect and use his position as a director of Band of Brothers to essentially screw them over. Gianturco talks about a hectic series of meetings used to plan a way to smash-and-grab Band of Brothers using the information from Hargoth (the Band of Brothers defector). Gianturco talks about a eureka moment where he realized that he had an executive character in Band of Brothers and, therefore, could disband the entire alliance and kick everyone out of the alliance, take their name, and make for the biggest scam in EVE Online at the time.
Gianturco summarizes his story as the paramount example of "counterintelligence." He calls it "spy versus spy type stuff." "Spyhunting vs witch-hunting" is "when at risk, agents will always try to provoke a witch-hunt. Without technical knowledge, spyhunting is just torches and pitchforks." Inciting a witch-hunt is used to divert attention from the spy to the less intelligent, less informed loudmouths. Counterintelligence is the "bleeding edge of the metagame." Gianturco talks about an active private investigator who works as a counterintelligence agent for GoonSwarm. It actually entails computer forensics: "collecting IP addresses and geolocation," "timestamps: forums and teamspeak," "signature bugs," and "honeypots." "If you find yourself in a war against a bunch of people who are Finnish suddenly it becomes quite obvious" when your enemies are trying to subvert you, because you just look through your forum IPs for anyone from Finland. Gianturco talks about feeling bad for any legitimate member of GoonSwarm from Finland because, well, it's persecution. Gianturco talks about the "signature bug" of using an image to gather information about forum users; the "mittens signature" collecting the IP addresses of anyone who used it/loaded it. He then talks about the IP addresses of everyone in a given corporation through timestamped posts and using this information in any war against another corporation (essentially giving the faction an entire member list of the corporation).
Gianturco wraps up the counterintelligence section with the phrase "Honeypots are hilarious." He talks about the most recent use of honeypots who had a spy in GoonSwarm; GoonSwarm started "lying their asses off" in a specific public forum and spending a lot of money in a specific tower in a backwater system. Eventually, a fleet started attacking his tower and GoonSwarm sent a fleet themselves to engage them. Gianturco said, in the channel, that he was going to "send his titans in" which was an indication to any enemies that their fleet needed to escape and send in ships which could capture the titans. By this point, Gianturco said he had captured enough timestamps and sussed out who the spy was (a guy anmed "CaptainMutiny" who "surprisingly didn't start out as a spy"). Once this all happened, the enemy fleet revealed that "hey, you got the wrong guy; you got the wrong director-level agent" which told Gianturco and GoonSwarm that, essentially, they had a director-level agent and to keep spyhunting.
The talk wraps up with Gianturco talking about the role of fraud in EVE Online. The most amusing example is that of a person who ran a bank in the game where people "deposited" over 600 billion in ISK and then ran away with all the money. This is particularly absurd because each player in EVE has a "Wallet" which is a completely safe, completely unique, infinite storage place for currency.
My favorite reveal in the entire talk is that Gianturco rarely actually plays EVE but, rather, actually works the forums and various communication media more than anything else.
