The Amazing Life of Sean Smith, the Masterful Eve Gamer Slain in Libya

http://kotaku.com/the-extraordinary-mischievous-too-short-life-of-sean-481060252

by danso • 13 years ago

121 31 13 years ago

jeffgreco• 13 years ago

Really good piece. This is probably the most lauded a Something Awful member will ever be (other than perhaps Jon Stewart).

GuiA• 13 years ago

I have never played EVE Online, but I absolutely adore the stories it enables its players to tell, and the human interactions that result.

On that front, I think that EVE Online is the only true "MMORPG"– i.e. one where the players directly affect the economy, the wars, the alliances, the supply and demand, and so on.

I'm disappointed that we don't see more games taking from EVE, but confident that that's where the future of online entertainment is headed.

sliverstorm• 13 years ago

I'm disappointed that we don't see more games taking from EVE

Well, it doesn't surprise me. A "true MMORPG" as you are picturing it is a strong natural monopoly. Nobody wants to live a second life in five different games, and the more people you have the more sophisticated the economics etc become.

pyre2• 13 years ago

Not everyone wants to play EVE. There could be plenty of people that would be interested in some fantasy mash-up of WoW and Ultima Online, for example.

mynameishere2• 13 years ago

I'm honestly disturbed that one of the United States' greatest foreign policy disasters may be remembered because some guy involved was an accomplished gamer.

I really miss the GWB days. Had this happened on his watch, people wouldn't be talking about Eve or WoW or whatever the fuck.

JeremyBanks• 13 years ago

People in general aren't. The gaming and tech communities, which were closer to him, are. Did something similar in that respect happen during Bush's watch?

knowtheory• 13 years ago

Wait, how is this one of the US's greatest foreign policy disasters? It was definitely a significant loss for the U.S. diplomatic corps, and one of only a handful of times where an ambassador has been killed, but despite that, Chris Stevens's death did not materially change the facts on the ground in Libya, or in the arabic speaking world in general.

In terms of geopolitics, as tragic as the attack in Benghazi was, it hasn't amounted to much. If nothing else, the drone wars in Yemen, Afghanistan and Pakistan are considerably more consequential.

pstuart• 13 years ago

> I really miss the GWB days

Are you trolling? because "the United States'greatest foreign policy disasters" under GWB far surpassed what happened in Libya. This is being used as political hammer by the GOP, so it's hard to take at face value.

mynameishere2• 13 years ago

The Bush administration's foreign policy mistakes are still continuously condemned by the press. Many, many years later.

gadders• 13 years ago

And the US Government is still lying and trying to cover up what happened...

crusso• 13 years ago

I expect the administration to be covering up embarrassing information. That's par for the course.

What I'm constantly amazed at is how the media ignores the issue.

On 9/11/2001, George Bush hesitated a few minutes while events were unfolding and he was in front of a class of school children. The press explored every second of the event and Bush was lambasted for just sitting there. Fair enough.

On 9/11/2012, (from what little we know) Obama got one briefing in the early evening on what was happening, gave no orders to mobilize support for those under attack (which was apparently critical), went to bed and didn't check on status until the next morning.

If George Bush had been that lax in handling something, Michael Moore would have had a movie that featured it as a key failing, ABC, NBC, and CNN would be all over it as a major political failing - with story after story and maybe a couple of specials.

When the press basically becomes a mouthpiece for a particular administration or party, we're all in big trouble. The potential iceberg under the water becomes larger and larger.

biot• 13 years ago

There's something accidentally poignant about "the fund that raised $127,001 for Sean's family". It's as if they were trying to send the money to 127.0.0.1, looping him back in the game.

nicholassmith• 13 years ago

There's every chance a Goon saw what the fund was on and made sure it went to a special number. A final tribute as it were.

danohuiginn• 13 years ago

It's sad that the State Department had this brilliant strategist on their payroll, but left him doing IT rather than tapping his skills as a diplomat.

6d0debc071• 13 years ago

Yeah, it sucks. Fairly typical workforce neglect really. Assuming that he'd have been up for it - maybe he just enjoyed his job.

chris_wot• 13 years ago

There's a big difference between doing this sort of thing in a game and in real life.

GhotiFish• 13 years ago

I like EVE in some respects, but this game is built specifically, and only, for oldplayers. Everything added is for old players, if you want to do anything interesting you'll need to buy at least a year of subscriptions and religiously log on to train your character.

The way eve metes out rewards is just completely hostile to some people, (ie. me).

EVE online: "Boy I sure wish I was able to do that, that sure looks like fun"

i recommend not playing.

MSM2• 13 years ago

As someone who starting in January, I would disagree with this.

The most HN relevant things that are awesome about EVE are how open the devs are with data. The developers have released their databases (Items, ships, stations, etc) which I have made some extremely handy apps with. The market is a ton of fun to play with an also has pretty easy to use APIs (Eve-Central). A lot of the files can be read extremely easily, and there is apparently talk of making market orders updateable via API in the future (This could mean full or partial automated trading).

With my ~4 month old character I've explored low-sec, played in worm holes, gotten into PvP fia FW, etc. There isn't much I haven't been able to do and I currently have more ISK (~2B) than I can really lose with the ships that I'm currently flying.

hellerbarde2• 13 years ago

I was thinking about getting into EVE. I'd be interested in a few things: How often do you log in? Daily? Weekly? How long are your sessions on average? Hours? Did you have friends to help you along?

Thanks :)

gknoy• 13 years ago

Exactly. One thing that Sean's story makes really clear is that EVE is only about playing a video game on the surface. Rather, it's about power and politics on a grand scale, if you want to play that way. Vile Rat often played, according to the article, just by chatting with other players. You don't need in-game training or money or skills to do that.

On a similar vein, almost everything in EVE is about money. If you have enough, you can fly wherever you want, and the only thing at risk is your time (which you might not value always) and the ship -- which you have insured, and which you already expect to use and therefore have a replacement ready. Gevlon at the Greedy Goblin did a series of posts on playing EVE, and how one can amass quite a bit of resources in-game simply by playing markets intelligently.

If playing PvP-style things is your bag (it's not mine), then EVE can be very rewarding (I hear) even if you've only been playing a couple of weeks. Just as in real life, there's always someone with more experience or skill than you, but you shouldn't let that be the excuse you use to prevent you from trying.

The Amazing Life of Sean Smith, the Masterful Eve Gamer Slain in Libya

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