EVE Online at Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMOG Gamers to the Next Level!

Phase Four: Change in Pilot Identification

A change in pilot identification is the primary method people use to escape helplessness in a failure cascade. Identification is how a pilot views and describes himself in the context of the game. When a pilot begins the game, he is alone in Empire and friendless, so his identification is only with himself, adrift as an individual and concerned only with his own interests. In time, he will find and join a corporation, and become integrated into that corporation's social milieu. If asked "Who are you?", many pilots at this stage would say "I am Pilotname, a member of Blah corporation," much like how people who live on the East Coast of the US identify themselves with their professions (I hate that). Should the corporation join an alliance with a strong identity, the pilot may come to label himself as a member of the alliance, particularly if there are frequent alliance events (fleets, battles, mining ops) where members from different corporations can interact and bond. 

There is a natural tension between the interests of a corporation's CEO and the alliance leadership. An alliance's resistance to adversity is directly linked to its ability to retain pilot identification, so it is in the interests of the alliance to convince its membership that they are members of an alliance first and foremost. But the power of CEOs comes from their leadership of a corporation and the obedience of the membership to them, not to the alliance. Even in an alliance with extremely strong identification, member corporations will often have corp-only activities to retain a unique identity. Most alliances are run by a lose oligarchy of the CEOs, but some corporations - usually those with the strongest military - have more influence than others. These leader corporations tend to be the ones pushing weaker corps towards ever-increasing identification with the alliance, while maintaining a separate corporate identity. This tension becomes exacerbated in a time of war as the stronger corporations call upon the weaker to shoulder the burdens of the conflict. In a cascade, the push-pull of corporate vs alliance identification explodes as CEOs and pilots begin to stop thinking of themselves as members of an alliance and begin to look out for their own corporate or individual interests.

A shift in identification happens because it is one of the only easy escapes from a state of helplessness, besides quitting the game entirely. A pilot who identifies himself with a helpless alliance in the midst of a cascade experiences helplessness himself, and to get out of it all he has to do is change the way he thinks about himself. Rather than being a member of a failing alliance, he thinks of himself as a member of a perfectly effective corporation in an alliance full of failures. In one moment of rationalization, he absolves himself of the helplessness and reassures himself of his superiority over everyone else not in his corporation.

As more pilots are knocked into a state of helplessness by sustained adversity, more shift their identification away from the alliance. Pressure on the CEO grows from this disaffected membership to get out of the ugly situation and abandon the alliance; that pressure is exacerbated by the tension between CEOs at the leadership level. Collapse becomes inevitable as personal animosity grows and corporations begin quietly evacuating their assets unbeknownst to the rest of the alliance. This is the phase where open infighting within the alliance becomes common, as corporations blame each other (or their allies, another popular scapegoat) for the alliance's failures. For example, when announcing their loss of the Great War, Band of Brothers claimed that they had been a 'sacrificial lamb' for their allies.