Interviewer: [0:09] Matt, I thought we would start out by having you talk a little bit about your background in general, where you are from, where you were born, where you grew up, what you do for a living, et cetera. Matt: [0:25] Howard: I was born in Columbus, Ohio, then lived in Marion basically all my life. Interviewer: [0:29] Brutal. Matt: [0:32] And then raised mostly by my grandmother because my mom and dad worked. She lived right next door to us, so I'd go over there. And she was a school teacher, so she started me out reading a lot, Aesop's Fables, the more classic stories you read to kids. Interviewer: [0:58] What level school did she teach? Matt: [1:00] Grade school, maybe, some middle school. That really got me off starting reading. I started reading like full novels, adult novels in third grade. I started off reading, and it's still one of my favorite books in the world, Sphere by Michael Crichton. Interviewer: [1:29] OK. Do you tend to go in that direction, even at thrillers like... Matt: [1:37] I'd gotten away actually from just reading novels. I think the Internet has give me a form of 80s where the sort of linear story is almost too long to really get into that or I just haven't sat down and found a good one for awhile. Interviewer: [2:07] Right. We'll get into that in a second, a little more specifically, but currently, I guess, you find yourself at a crossroads. Matt: [2:18] Yeah, yeah, just got done flunking out of college. I'll be OK with that mainly because it was when you have the career counselor at the college and two of your therapists say, too, because I changed therapists not because I'm that messed up. The two of them say, wait, why are you still doing that? You don't know what you're doing. Maybe, you should take a break. Interviewer: [2:47] And you get that authority, that word from above, and suddenly you're like, I'm at peace. This is an option. Matt: [2:55] Most of the parents were like, no, you can't stop. You've got to keep going to school. You've got to keep going to school. It's like, well, what if the university says I can't go back to school. Interviewer: [3:02] But you have a game plan, right? Matt: [3:03] Yeah, I have a game plan because I'm going to set myself up to move out West, probably to Tahoe, maybe, Colorado and just do ski stuff, either start off being an EMT or get my EMT stuff together as a paramedic, start out as a ski patrol and basically turn into a professional ski bum. Interviewer: [3:31] So, again, you probably had a life long relationship with Mary in Ohio, one of the dots in the Rust Belt community. And you're going to eventually end up in Tahoe as a ski bum. Matt: [3:45] Probably the same sort of relationship that the Turners have. Interviewer: [3:53] How so? Matt: [3:54] Abusive. Interviewer: [laughs] [3:56] Ike and Tina, OK. Matt: [3:58] Yeah. Interviewer: [4:01] You touched on it a little bit, but I do want to get into basically your evolution as a reader and a writer, traditional literacy. At an early age you were into Michael Crichton. Later on, you get onto... Matt: [4:14] A little like your Tom Clancy, Clive Cussler, able to occasionally I'd pick up. And then, since I always had a real burning interest in science and I still do, the ski bum thing might only last for a few years. And then, I'll say, I know what I want to do and go back to college. [4:35] My grandmother was a nurse and worked, too. And so, she had a bunch of nursing texts lying around, dated but still I'd start reading through those. I'd look through things in the dictionary. I'd read the Encyclopedia of Science, old Popular Mechanics sort of things. Interviewer: [5:09] Exploded diagram kind of books, how things work. Matt: [5:12] I don't really think I kept one of those, but I'd also read real, more things that you would think of somebody out of high school reading some more hard core scientific reading. My high school had a Scientific American subscription. Interviewer: [5:38] So, partly because of your grandmother pushing you and partly because of just the accident of what was around the house, partly because of your own interest that you were cultivating at the time, you ended up being an ambitious reader. Matt: [5:58] Yeah. Interviewer: [6:00] And probably a little bit of a eccentric reader. Matt: [6:02] Yeah, because I'd read things that you'd never really think of a kid actually enjoying at my age. Interviewer: [6:06] Right. Matt: [6:08] That gave me a sort of fierce kind of intelligence going through grade school and stuff even though I'd actually stink at the academic part of it. But I'd still know things. Even the teacher, sometimes I'd get scolded for interrupting the teacher and saying, no, I didn't know the sun does this or actually instead of what the text book would say. Interviewer: [6:44] You were a little Galileo in your classroom, [laughs] a little Copernicus. So, that's the reading side of it. Did you do a lot of writing alongside of that? Matt: [6:57] I tried writing. Fiction is hard. Fiction is really hard although writing successful fiction may be not so much, i.e. Troy Lee. I'd start stories. I'd never really finish them because, I guess to a certain extent maybe I picked up a bit too much from Tom Clancy. But they'd be long, very descriptive, kind of dense sort of things, but very, very deep sort of thought into backgrounds that would work, that I was creating. Interviewer: [7:45] And you get satisfaction less out of crafting the story and more about just thinking about that world and how it went together and the kind of interrelations of characters and the science of technology aspect. Matt: [8:01] Just the background of it whereas the actual what they're doing is almost secondary to the world that they're existing in. Interviewer: [8:07] Did you ever delve into any low brow stuff, like comics, or Mad Magazine or... Matt: [8:12] Not really. I always had sort of going for more technical stuff. I was never really exposed to the lower brow stuff. Interviewer: [8:34] It's a debated taste. Matt: [8:39] Yeah. And until after, during the later part of high school and afterwards, then I kind of got into Japanese comics and some stuff. Just the very, just mainly the ones with the art totally ridiculous, the ones that kind of more reflect a Western comic but just in the more Japanese style. Interviewer: [9:04] Grown up, serious. Matt: [9:06] Yeah. Interviewer: [9:07] Not the ones that the teeny-boppers read. Matt: [9:09] Explosions! Interviewer: [laughs] [9:10] Matt: [9:11] None of that bleach stuff, not really ever into ... more just in there just like ... or actually probably more the sort of Western sort of, I think more often now it would be a Western version of Japanese ... Interviewer: [9:34] Adaptation or something. All right! We'll get into the topic of gaming and your activities as a gamer in a little bit but for now I'd like to get some insight into, any kind of work or hobby background that you have and the kind of skills or crafts or practices that you developed while doing it. What kind of jobs have you held in the past? What kind of hobbies you do aside from gaming? Matt: [10:01] Well, I do ... as far as hobbies, you know, hobbies really didn't take much reading. My hobbies were basically kind of learning more sort of thing. Hobby was kind of reading and messing around with things, like I would say, "OK. I want to test the coils, they're cool. They shoot lighting bolts and stuff!" Interviewer: [laughs] [10:31] Matt: [10:32] Think about what it would do if you put one of those things next to an ant hill! And so I'd read about that and read the more technical stuff and be able to understand, OK. This equals this as far as going from the symbology of, OK, this means a transistor and a resistor and this little line here means where the wire's going and all that stuff. Interviewer: [10:59] So, no formal training in circuit design or any kind of electrical engineering but you're kind of like ... Matt: [11:04] Yeah. Interviewer: [11:05] ... kind of self taught, experimental. Matt: [11:07] Much to my poor mother's ... Interviewer: [laughs] [11:10] To her dismay! Matt: [sighs] [11:12] The amount of times that I've, could have set the house on fire yet didn't ... Interviewer: [11:21] I'm sure she appreciates that! [laughs] . So there's ... Matt: [11:25] You can see the carbon tracks that I made when I realized that, hey! Carbon burns and you can make carbon by taking your 9,000 volt transformer and going bzzz! Interviewer: [laughs] [11:38] That seems like a connection to your reading taste. You're into science and technology kind of stuff and it seems to really ... I know also you're not just the bookworm, the shy retiring type. You also are at least somewhat active, right? You're into skiing ... Matt: [11:59] Yeah. Interviewer: [11:59] ... and I also know that you happen to be in biking, bicycling that is. Matt: [12:02] Yeah. Interviewer: [12:05] Are those things that you do a lot of or ...? Matt: [12:08] Oh, well! Skiing, yeah. Skiing is an addiction. You look outside and think about me, you can imagine all that snow is cocaine. Interviewer: [laughs] [12:23] Matt: [12:27] And you kind of get high! It's basically what it is to me. I get fatter in the summer and then thinner in the winter, the opposite of a lot of people because I can't stand the heat and love the snow. Interviewer: [12:41] Yeah. And is the biking you think something that is co-equal to skiing? Matt: [12:44] Oh, absolutely not! Interviewer: [12:45] OK. Matt: [12:46] It's, mainly my parents were like, "He's got to get out of the house!" Interviewer: [laughs] [12:51] Matt: [12:52] During the summer, other than that ... I used to be kind of active outside, I'd go around and just kind of keep to myself, never really ... I was always shy as a kid and I kind of broke through that by just giving up on being shy, basically. Interviewer: [13:10] You just made a concerted effort to ... Matt: [13:11] No, I basically just after a while, I just said, "F-it! I can break the ice really well if I can just go out and kind of act kind of off kilter and loony and just put my sort of weird sort of cookie nature out front and just let them sort of deal with it." Interviewer: [13:30] So up until you made that decision to become more outgoing, a lot of your activities, whether it's reading ... Matt: [13:38] Solitary. Interviewer: [13:39] It was solitary, it weren't kind of social. Matt: [13:41] And so, yeah, I'd go outside and do things. Again, all that times, amazing that I didn't set something important on fire. Interviewer: [13:50] Right, at least unintentionally. Matt: [13:52] Yeah. Interviewer: [13:55] Talk to me a little bit, you're a gamer of sorts currently and I want us to get up to that moment. But I'd like you start a little earlier. Matt: [14:04] I was just going to go there. Interviewer: [14:06] OK! [laughs] Matt: [14:07] OK. So, about sixth grade, maybe between sixth, seventh grade, my mom got her first computer. Before that I was always into computers, always liked them and so we finally get one. At that point is just kind of, for some of the other things I was doing, it was kind of over it. Because that was just, especially with the Internet, there was this nexus of just stuff. And for somebody who had ADD all their life, the ability to go from, you know, just go bing, bing, bing, bing! And from one thing to another really, really appealed to me. [14:46] And not only that, from my science thirst, that was amazing because there's all this information out on the Internet. And that time, I don't even know if there was Wikipedia. When I was in sixth grade I don't think YouTube even existed at that point. And I was on 56K. Interviewer: [15:09] Right. [laughs] Matt: [15:10] Where, as you know ... Interviewer: [15:11] Dialing in. Matt: [15:12] Talking to somebody like you and you remember wow, 56K was fast at one point. Interviewer: [laughs] [15:16] Matt: [15:18] And so, that kind of put me on a path to kind of get away from almost, to constantly sort of reading novels and stuff to more just kind of picking through and getting what exactly am I interested in. I want to read about this sort of thing and so I could go there and read about that. [15:45] And then I could read about such and such and then also, since I was connected to the Internet, that's when I start really gaming. Interviewer: [15:58] OK. Matt: [15:59] Started off with MechWarrior 4. Interviewer: [16:01] Oh, yes. Matt: [16:02] Because it came with the computer! Interviewer: [laughs] [16:04] Matt: [16:05] Got into my first online gaming community, [inaudible 16:07] Avengers on there. And that started sort of a long career of doing gaming sort of stuff, although I wouldn't really consider myself that hardcore of a gamer. Interviewer: [16:28] Right. Matt: [16:29] I don't really say, "Oh, I need this graphics card right now because they give you three extra FPS's and stuff!" I get bored sometimes of playing those six degrees of Wikipedia where you go through and you go blue link, blue link, blue link, blue link, blue link! And you end up, you go from Mark Twain to Big Bang Cosmology within about an hour. Interviewer: [16:54] Do you like exploring the serendipity of hypertext? [laughs] Matt: [16:59] Oh, yeah! Not intentionally just, you know, there's this interesting thing, this interesting thing or you're reading through something but then it references something you don't ordinarily know. So then you go and you learn about that. A very disjointed way of getting an education but it does get you kind of learned pretty quickly about a lot of things. Interviewer: [17:24] OK. So, early on you got into, what was the name of the online game? Matt: [17:29] MechWarrior. Interviewer: [17:31] The one after that you mentioned. Matt: [17:32] Did I mention one after that? Interviewer: [17:33] I thought you did. Matt: [17:34] Did I? No, what I got into that I remember after that is more towards I was also playing like, Microsoft Combat Simulator, but the games I was playing didn't really have a big online community. Interviewer: [17:53] OK. But this was in the early days, not. Matt: [17:56] Yeah. This wasn't like not really that you'd have people meeting up a lot in big conventions of people playing a certain game or gaming conventions. This was kind of, you know, these were just the people that you played with and you would have a certain rapport with them but it wasn't, you wouldn't know them as much as, say, like you do with people let's say in Goons forum and stuff. Interviewer: [18:20] I know just from talking to you outside of this interview you like Meta things a lot. Matt: [18:28] Meta is amazing. Interviewer: [18:29] Do you find yourself, especially in those early days, reacting not only to the content, not only to the stuff out there on the World Wide Web and not only the games you were playing, but also to the platform itself and the underlying machinery. Did you find yourself kind of thinking, "How do these computers work?" Matt: [18:49] Yeah, a bit. I, truthfully, I've never really gotten into comp-sci all that much. I went through, later in high school, last few years of high school I went to a tech high school for electronics. Never really, I still need people to describe, like, video card stuff to me and, "Wait how do I know this is compatible with this, I don't know anything about my motherboard oh-my-god help me?" [19:15] Like, I can figure out more of the software stuff a lot easier because that's more intuitive to me because it's easier to see your cause and effect there, but just the hardware stuff, it's just like ... don't like it. But as far as like game lore, like, what's behind the game, yeah I got into that a lot. Not too heavily but I always found that interesting, but I never really go into the more meta aspect of gaming. [19:49] My tastes have changed sort of. I mean, I still love "Mech Warrior." It came out for free and I downloaded that and now I'm playing that again off and on. But now after like, you know, then now let's see I had, I started playing, let's see, "Final Fantasy" online and that was, I also had, and there's also "Everquest" and stuff. Never really got heavily into those. One I did get heavily into was "World of Warcraft" when that came out, and I was horrible at that game. I never liked the grind, I always hated the grind, but I just loved going out there and doing hilarious things. That's when I think, my love for Meta started coming out 'cuz I was in this guild called The Reckoning Crew, which is basically a--this is a recording--theme. You'll figure it out. [20:54] A bunch of newbies get together and they just horde and then they just go and raid alliance cities and stuff and just do PDP stuff. And that I found was really fun. I never even got up to 60 on WOW. I got, like I still have Motar, that Torin Shaman, he's still lingering around 58 somewhere. Interviewer: [21:18] But that wasn't ever your goal. You just wanted to go in there and disrupt the game and not play by the rules. Matt: [21:27] Yeah, once I was able to make Noggin Fogger it was over. Just go run around as a skeleton or something like that. And, you know, always having much more fun when there was like, the seasonal events happening. I could go and get drunk and buy snowballs and annoy people and dance around. Interviewer: [21:44] Things that you could do in the game but because of the social conventions of the game space you probably shouldn't. Matt: [21:54] Well, I mean, everybody else is doing it, but that was just a distraction from the game set or what I loved about the game, what I loved doing in the game. And then, somewhere in there I discovered somethingawful.com which when you kind of go back in the history of the Internet and Internet communities if there's around early ... what do we call this? What was the last decade called, the early ... ? Interviewer: [22:27] The aughts maybe? Or the noughts? Matt: [22:30] The early 2000s--does that work?--early in the new millennium we, you'd look at somethingawful and you'd say, well that's where kind of like the mean started coming from, from somethingawful. That's where the first, sort of, Internet trouble makers came from and it was, that was and still is sort of a nexus of where sort of like the more Meta gaming comes from. Because it's always and, you know, as Darius Johnson said it, "We don't want to destroy THE game, we wanted to destroy YOUR game." Interviewer: [laughter] [23:12] That's an important distinction. So this led quite naturally into your current game, "EVE Online." Matt: [23:21] "EVE Online:" My off and on again Ike and Tina sort of relationship with it. The low risk MMOs sort of like your older "World of Warcraft" and stuff where you can PVP without any real consequences. That is really kind of, I can't really play those anymore. I've got to play a game where there's something at stake where it's more tactical, more sort of cerebral where you've go to not only how you make the person lose their stuff and how do you keep from losing your stuff. Interviewer: [24:05] So, for the audience at home, could you give us a brief thumbnail of "EVE online?" Matt: [24:12] OK, "EVE Online" is a pretty open-ended sandbox MMO that is placed in a distant galaxy that humans kind of blundered into through a wormhole, the wormhole goes shut, and then all their civilizations collapse because they're cut off from the Milky Way. Then they rebuild technology and stuff on their own. There's with you die in a ship you lose the ship you lose the stuff in the ship and some of it's either destroyed of some of it's dropped and whoever killed you and is still around can come by and grab your stuff. You know, lying, spying is encouraged by the developers. It's like, they say it's part of the game. You can lie through your teeth and get somebody's stuff and if they give it to you they're down that stuff and you're a bit richer. And, really it's like the, it's almost become the mock U.N. at some school where everybody has, you know, real WMDs. [25:39] And just the META that's come through that and the rhetoric that you get through that through the propaganda because you not, you know, you do things with a lot of other people. It is massively multiplayer. You have battles of up to 1,000 or more people. Those are somewhat rare, the massive one or two thousand people engagements but they do happen. Interviewer: [26:06] And so the goal is to acquire territory; to acquire material positions, money. Matt: [26:14] And to have just out-and-out have fun, and that usually is accomplished by ruining somebody's day which is, I think, the height of comedy. Interviewer: [laughter] When bad things happen to others. [laughter] [26:25] Matt: [26:29] Aw, when you did it! Even when bad thing happen to us and we're just like, "Oh, that's awesome!" Interviewer: [26:36] So in Eve Online, at least until fairly recently, you were part of an alliance called, the alliance is called Goon Fleet? Matt: [26:45] The alliance was Goon Swarm. Interviewer: [26:47] Goon Swarm. A corporation. Matt: [26:49] The corporation was Goon Fleet. Goon Fleet is only open to members of Somethingawful.com or people that have been sponsored in. And Goon Swarm was a collection of, basically the big juggernaut of the corporation because there were two different levels of player groups. [27:10] There is a corporation, which is your basic sort of guild thing and then there's an alliance which is multiple corporations banded together. Goon Swarm, well, Goon Fleet has been one of the biggest corporations in the game mainly because it had all the people from Something Awful coming in and they go to that one, you know, they'd come into Goon Fleet. [27:35] And then we had massive newbie drives where we would get people to come from somethingawful.com and started playing Eva online. And then Goon Swarm is basically like minded corporations, corporations we call "pubbies", a very us versus them mentality. Where the people who we can stand, the pubbies that don't annoy the hell out of us, basically are allowed to join the alliance and add to our numbers and generally just have fun destroying stuff with us. Interviewer: [28:17] And in the trade mark of the Goons is basically what you've mentioned before, going in and being a somewhat disruptive force in the game. Doing ... Matt: [28:27] Going through and basically just dongs waving in the wind, drinking and flipping over furniture in a pubbies front yard. And that's always been what we love doing, is hard damage to soft targets, that's what we've loved doing. We're always kind of crapped on in the game by the Old Guard, that sort of e-honor sort of people who didn't like a bunch of really mutilating retards just coming in and acting the part. [29:08] So they came up with a, let's see, they're, should I go into Smoskey? I'll tell you about Smoskey. Smoskey was developed, it was a really helpful player in Eve Online, he developed the first kill board where you take the kill mail from, the Royal kill mail from Eve Online, you paste it into there to post your kill ... for others to see. [29:42] Well, Smoskey got drunk one night and decided it was a good idea to ride his bike on the autobahn! And so, at one point there was this truck and Smoskey and truck met in a very violent fashion. So Smoskey died. And naturally Goons being the sort of people that we are, that is people who are bound for hell, our CEO and First Name Last Name I believe. [30:23] I think Remedial got into a holler, an industrial ship which is basically space truck. And named it Truck and then first name, last name got into a shuttle and named it Smoskey's Bike. And at this point they had created people in the gathering and they created Smoskey Memorial Station, so Remedial, First Name Last Name were outside of Smoskey Memorial Station, bouncing into each other! Interviewer: [laughs] [30:57] A memorial of questionable taste. But it illustrates the kind of mindset. Matt: [31:03] Yes, I don't think that was the excuse for Band of Brothers attacking us and camping us in. I think that was ... I think, I forget who it was that had made a forum signature and then, that I think was their rationale. But it was thinly veiled, it was an excuse because they just didn't like us and they also saw soft targets and we were because we're horrible at the game. Interviewer: [laughs] [31:42] And thus begins the sagas! You can read about it on multiple web forums out there! Matt: [31:49] Yeah. Interviewer: [31:50] Moving on, you mentioned earlier how you don't consider yourself a hardcore gamer, you don't buy into that kind of jock mentality about, "What graphics card do I need?" and that kind of stuff. Matt: [31:59] I kind of do but I don't care. Interviewer: [32:02] Right, right, right! You don't, it's not ... Matt: [32:05] I'm not the type of person that will spike the controller off the ground, it's going, "Uh!" Interviewer: [32:10] {laughs] Matt: [32:11] I'm just like, [sighs] . Interviewer: [32:13] What kind of gamer are you then? Matt: [32:14] I am ... it's weird because I'll have the hardcore moments, especially with Eve where it's like, you'll sit at the screen for hours on end waiting for something to happen, waiting for that opportunity because it's very tactical. Also like ... I will spend hours and hours and hours playing a video game. But I am not what you consider a power gamer, I guess. [32:45] I don't like the grind, I'm not the type of person that will get online and grind out a character in the highest level within a week. Interviewer: [32:52] You're not going to get Gold Farming. Matt: [32:53] No. Interviewer: [laughs] [32:54] Matt: [32:56] Not like that, I'll rather buy the in-game money and on Eve Online you're allowed to do that. You buy time cards and somebody buys a time card but they're hard ass so they don't have to pay real money. So you exchange real bucks for space bucks and then you take your moon money and you lose it in the most hilarious way. Interviewer: [33:15] And that's in-game sabotage, right? Not to get too deeply into that story but why don't you ... Matt: [inaudible 33:25] [33:22] perhaps? Interviewer: [33:26] The ... Matt: [33:28] Or ... Interviewer: [33:29] I was thinking about the cartoons. Matt: [33:31] Oh, the cartoon incident! OK. So, fast forward coming from Band of Brothers picking on us, the big elite Old Guard picking on the little newbies and didn't know what the hell they were doing in the game. We meet up with some Russians and some French because all the English speakers we've kind of ticked off. [33:52] And we band with them, fast forward a couple of years, Remedial steals the Titan fund by him, we make a name for ourselves in meta gaming, a lot of meta gaming. A lot of working with propaganda, a lot of wordsmithing, a lot of ... spying, getting ... doing actual, having our own little intelligence agency within the Swarm. [34:25] And then we had a cultural victory where a member of Band of Brothers, who was a director and had power over their executor corp, which is basically the corp who controls who's in the alliance, the head corp of the alliance. He said, well, he sort of tried to get a character into Goon Fleet to spy on us. And so, they were going to just recruitment scam us and we just basically say, "Yeah, you can join us! You just have to put down a deposit first." And then you say, "OK You got the deposit, we got all of your ships in our freighter. Bye!" Interviewer: [laughs] [35:10] Matt: [35:14] Well, anyways, he was being recruitment scammed but he still liked the people who were recruitment scamming him so much, he enjoyed the culture so much that he disbanded Band of Brothers. And then there was this massive surge of Goons in our allies, into Delve and we took it. And then we owned Delve for awhile and then Cartoon our CEO, well, what happened is, there is this new expansion that changed the way that you own space, and so you had to have money in this certain tab of your wallet, and all that stuff, and so we lost all of our space 'cuz we had money in the wrong tab. [35:51] And then Band of Brothers basically, their new incarnation, had moved in there and were basically poison ready to invade us and they didn't know that was going to happen but it happened right as they were in the right place at the right time, so they come in and they grab all our stuff as we're flailing about ineptly, and then Cartoon, who was on vacation at the time comes back and then he's like, "Oh my God, this is hilarious. I was going to do this anyways." Disbands the alliance, steals the name, goes off and then we have footage of him just getting our backup cab fleet, taking the capital ships and just un-docking them and self-destructing all of them. [36:33] So there's a screen-shot of him with like a 100 capital shipwrecks on the undock at some station somewhere. And so we lost everything. Everything! We were the premier alliance in the game. We had delved the richest, basically the richest space in the game, it was brokenly gut space for collecting resources. Then we had like, it was the hardest space and the hardest to attack because we had dropped so many stations there, it was the hardest to attack, and we lost all that, our cap fleet, our wealth, all that gone and we moved back to syndicate which is where we started when Band of Brothers first attacked us. And so now we have to rebuild from that. But yet, we find that hilarious. Interviewer: [laughter] [37:23] Because that's just the nature of the mindset. Matt: [37:26] Pardon the French, but this is the proper term for it, "Going fuck Goons," is a time-honored tradition within the community it appears, as long as you create the proper amount of hilarious drama on your way out. Interviewer: [37:42] This gets into the connections between how you see the kinds of activities and practices and skills that you've cultivated as a gamer, in conjunction with these other things we've talked about. You know, you're interest in reading and writing and your other attendant hobbies. So I was wondering if you could talk about that a little bit. Matt: [38:02] Well, most of it, from what I've learned is kind of from "Eve Online" and being around Goons and stuff and seeing that amount of Meta gaming. Its more from, again you have to go back to how there's such interesting personalities in the game that you know like the Mitani who basically from behind the scenes manipulates a lot of the goings on in the game, and then GuGutzman who is, basically, analogous to the biggest CIA spook in the game. He is a, he just trawls for information. He lives for the meta game in there. [38:56] And also the propaganda; there is the eye of terror which was a jump bridge, basically a fast space high way to get from point A to point B. There was a little corps, Pet Corporation, you know, dominant corporations and then there's basically your, it's more, think of like the Soviet Eastern Block countries. [39:24] And so we basically were had a line of systems under our control to be able to build this little space highway, and leading up to the space highway being completed we launched this massive propaganda campaign saying that, "We are coming." This mass of people's coming, there's nothing you can do about it, and when we get here you're done. You might as well just pack your stuff and get out. If you run, we're not going to chase you. Just go back to Empire, you can keep your stuff. If not, you're losing everything. [40:00] And it worked! That, and black ops, which is another thing where basically the special operations going in and then instead of having big fleet battles, there is just like two, three or four of them just sitting around occasionally ganking somebody, you know, going in for the easy kills, you know shutting down their industry and their money making things for the average member, and that shut them down and then our propaganda campaign scared the hell out of them. And then also we, our spying, our four, basically us taking what's on their forums and then leaking it out saying, "Look how pathetic these people are." Interviewer: [laughter] [40:42] So, all of this, like, black-ops, the propaganda and stuff, it seems like it has an almost direct connection to, say your interest in a writer like Michael Crighton I guess. Matt: [40:53] Yeah, and also, the rhetoric of it, you know, you can probably tie that in with like Orwell and stuff. Interviewer: [41:02] He's someone you read? Matt: [41:06] Yeah, 1984 scares the crap out of me, and also a lot of, like, Thomas Barnett. That, you can see the rhetoric of that and how geopolitics functions in the real world. You could see, 'cuz now it's power blocks in "EVE" and that's evolved since the beginning of the game and you can see, you know, some of the rhetoric that people use. The spying, the double-speak, the sort of mix of sort of bluffing and whatnot in strategy. You can see a direct correlation of that in, like, sort of real life almost. [41:52] As far as, you know, that's kind of also helped me out, I mean, in other games. I'll take some of what I've learned from the Meta gaming and apply it to other games. I haven't found a real, I'd say, use for what I've done in games. I'm not big enough of a bastard to really use the Meta gaming to one-up people, and I keep the mayhem and all that in the game. Interviewer: [42:30] Well let me ask you this and this is, and it looks like we have about three minutes left, but you mentioned earlier about like making a more concerted effort to be more sociable and better socialize? So obviously "Eve Online" is very social kind of space. Do you see that as kind of like the natural extension of how you became more sociable, or do you find that it affects how you are sociable with people in real life? Matt: [42:54] I definitely take the humor of Goons which is very ironically horrible. It's basically making the most horrible thing you can, taking that and making it funny. And I'm probably going to get my face punched in one of these days by using that style of humor, but I enjoy it and I, it's given me a very dark sort of humor doing that. And it's given me also a taste for geopolitics and I'm watching, looking at that and understanding that better because it's almost like when, you know, then our leadership comes out and says exactly how we dismantled these people it kind of pulls the curtain back on how that probably goes through in real life but you never get to hear about it unless you do a, you know, a freedom of information act, enough. Interviewer: [43:58] So you get a sense of how these things might likely play out in real life even though the access to information is a little, I don't know, hard to come by. Matt: [44:06] Yeah. Although I could be totally wrong and I could just be a deluded drooling idiot just all talking about Internet spaceships. Interviewer: [44:18] Well on that note, that upbeat note, I think we will call this one done. Matt: [44:22] OK. Interviewer: [44:23] So...