In our modern technological age, a single mistake in judgement can be the difference be a fun Saturday evening and a complete disaster. Today in EVE Online, the world’s leading Internet Spaceship Game, such a mistake happened and it happened to a group known for taking pride in their bad decisions: Goonswarm.
Initially formed as a small corporation for members of the Something Awful form it has exploded into a kind of counter-cultural revolution. A EVE historian who wishes to remain anonymous sums it up succinctly:
“Whereas all the previous space badasses were getting their rocks off pretending to be space pirates with menacing bios, Goons were rolling through systems in blobs and shitting up local with nigh on impenetrable memes. Not threatening, not pretending, just being trolls. It was, quite literally, a game-changer.”
This has been their greatest strength. While everyone else spends a great deal of time in serious contemplation of the games events, Goons continue to post cat pictures, make crude jokes, and somehow emerge on top. Their celebration of the absurdity of internet culture has allowed them to amass a huge following and Goonswarm Federation is now one of the largest political alliances in EVE. Despite their power they have remained as silly as ever, taking any setbacks with a shrug and a laugh. Today, however, even they might buckle under the strain.
Saturday evening a leading member of Goonswarm, Dabigredboat, accidentally warped his titan – a ship that costs literally thousands of real dollars in in-game resources to make – into an enemy fleet rather than opening a jump-bridge for Goons to swarm through. The situation quickly escalated, with “Boat” as he is known calling in the full force of Goonswarm onto the fight. Unfortunately for them, Goonswarm has plenty of enemies. Using this mistake to their advantage, the battle turned into a 3-on-1 slaughter, with Pandemic Legion, Black Legion, and HBC joining the fray. In the end, Goonswarm lost many supercapital ships and four titans. With such a pronounced loss caused by such a silly mistake we have to wonder how Goonswarm will respond.
Some people are guessing this is the beginning of a new great war in EVE, but Goons are saying that is the last thing they want. An anonymous member of goons explained that “a sov war that is protracted would become super boring, and everyone involved would quit in droves.” There is nothing hilarious about being bored. If Goons number one goal is to have fun it is likely they would avoid anything like a protracted campaign at all costs.
But what do the fun guys of EVE do when they are faced with such a crushing defeat? Who knows, but given what they have come up with in the past I imagine the response will be hilarious.
Screenshot credits: reddit.com/r/eve, Ardinius, miguidotcom
