Icarus

I've never been a Goon hater unlike some others in the community, and indeed on occasion I've complimented them on the blog on the successful empire they have created and maintained. So with that disclaimer in mind, let's talk about the Kickstarter for the Fountain War Book being promoted by The Mittani Media.

If you've been living under a rock, the concept is that the book will be a fictionalized retelling of the war between the Cluster Fuck Coalition (aka CFC, retroactively rebranded as The Imperium for the book) and Test Alliance Please Ignore-led coalition (was it named HERO? I can't recall) back in 2013. By fictionalized, I mean that they will take all the stories and facts from as many sources as they can, including from both sides of the conflict, and massaging it into a novel-like retelling, including smoothing out rough edges like coalitions called "Cluster Fuck" and players called "Big D1ck B00bies" (not a real character as far as I know). The result is something like this excerpt:

 It was coming apart now. All of it… The plan… The months of careful preparation… The whole %&*#ing thing…
Captain Darius Yaaah lowered his body into the pod, feeling the warmth of the semi-liquid amniotic gel enfold his limbs and torso. He gave a final encouraging nod to his bridge crew as the door of the armored capsule swung down to enclose him.
The interior of the pod was dark, but there was no need for lighting here. He wouldn’t be using his eyes to see.
With a series of muffled whines, the manipulator arms of the pod brought the slender interface cables into position, aligning platinum connector ends with matching jacks at the supraclavicular nerve bundle and five other key points in his cervical and thoracic spine.

They are aiming for $150,000 of which 60% is to pay the author Jeff Edwards who is an actual award winning novelist who writes military fiction. Overall, its a very ambitious project.

My opinion on it is a solid "blah". I'd be far more interested in an actual historical retelling from all sides about the war rather than something that turns it into a story. For me EVE is a simulation we all participate in and contribute stories to and the rough edges are what makes EVE real; this fictionalization makes it less real for me, I find it really jarring to read because my mind is always trying to hook it back into the real events. Pure EVE fiction, like the Chronicles and Empyrean Age and Templar One (not Burning Life) I have enjoyed immensely because they are divorced from the simulation we exist in.

I understand the reasoning they may have used in deciding to go with fictionalized writing as it opens up the project to a larger audience that could be turned off by a pure recounting that only EVE players could follow with any success over a whole book. Outside of my rather unimportant opinion, I'd still be happy enough if the project succeeded for the exposure it could give the game. Unfortunately, it still seems like the kickstarter is doomed to fail having only pledged $31 thousand of the desired 150K with 23 days to go. All the prediction websites that analyze these things predict it will not make it.

This seems a little surprising given a smaller kickstarter for A History of the Great Empires of EVE Online last year asked for $12500 and got over $90K in pledges, one would have thought something with the media push of TheMittani.com and all the endorsements from CCP and others with a recognized author could have made a solid push for their goal, but something happened along the way.

I speculate that the big albatross around the neck of this campaign has to be the absolute tone-deafness of it all.

As I said at the beginning, I'm not a Goon hater but if I was just even a little bit, this kickstarter would set all my flags a-fluttering. Think of it with this narrative: the winner of the war, the side who started the war for all intents and purposes to simply bring low a competing organization, is now promoting a book to glorify their victory at the same time they can whitewash any unpleasantness or missteps under the guise of "fictionalizing" the story so it makes a good read.

On top of all that, continuing the "Grrr Goons" narrative, the target goal of $150 seems like a blatant money grab, overcharging in the kick starter to make EVE players foot the bill of producing what feels like a victory-lap propaganda piece.

From that perspective, again one I do not share, it is not surprising to see the kickstarter struggling.

All that being said, I think the project is too ambitious. The goal is so high because 60%, i.e. $90,000, is needed for an advance for the author. While I appreciate getting a well known and successful author to write your story can be seen as a victory, in this case it has only contributed to the failure. I think they might have been better served trying to find an author for $40,000 who is perhaps not as well know but capable of turning the history into a story, and putting the kickstarter at a more modest $100,000 price tag. Maybe it would not have helped but right now it seems the famous and more expensive author is not helping either.

In the end, I still hope against all odds the project succeeds in some form or another.