I was a bit drunk on Friday the 13th of January and figured that it might be safer to stay in the house and play Eve instead of risk getting killed by a freak accident.  The night was not going too well, first of all I gave up on salvaging for a bit and started looking for anomalies. After finding one of those I warped in with ‘Slaughterhouse’.  There were about 6 cruisers in the pocket, they kind of took me by surprise and before you could say “jack rabbit”! Slaughterhouse was gone. “Feck!”

This was quite a big loss in terms of my history in eve.  After all slaughterhouse was the ship that enabled me to start my career properly, it gave me that platform to build from and I would not be where I was now without that ship.  The truth however is, that when I got the insurance payment I thought “Is that all?”  It is very odd how new found riches change your perception. Anyway, I was pondering what to do when I saw the following post in local:

Captain K “Are you new to EVE? XXXXX is currently looking for new players to join our ranks. Receive training and guidance from our experienced members in addition to ships and equipment. Contact me for more info!”

So I did.  Now I am not going to go into the details of the conversation.  I was actually quite enticed by Captain K. This corporation had members from EU and US and so would be active a lot of the time.  They had around 18 pilots online at any one time which to me sounded great.  They would even have liked to have a salvager/explorer like myself on board.  It was the recruitment eve mail that threw me.  They wanted my full access API key at all times.

The reasons given for this was that they wanted to protect against spies because they were forming an alliance.  There was something about this that annoyed me so I sat back and thought about it. First, I was a bit worried that this person was a hacker and might steal all my ISKies which would have made me cry.  I mean CCP say to be careful with it so I assume I ought to be. The second thing was that I was hoping to develop a career as a ‘freelancer’ it seemed to go against that ‘free’ bit.

Anyway, setting aside the first bit, because the truth is I cannot see how the full access API would be such a big deal in terms of security.  The two of us vigorously discussed this and I tend to agree with Captain K that the threat was minimal.  I even asked people on #tweetfleet what they thought, friendly as always and helpful to the last. One reply was:

@TomsAvr  “@moriarity33 Well that depends if you have something to hide.. ;)”

So basically this full access API is like an in game CCTV camera.  You know what I mean?  If your North American you probably don’t.  In the UK we have cameras everywhere, they are on most high streets, on the London Underground, on all buses.  They are there to catch people out doing naughty things like shop lifting and pissing in shop windows when they are drunk.

The first thing was that by making an issue of trust the corporation was almost making trust impossible to build.  From the first step they had said we don’t trust you so give us your full access API.  So the onus was on me to trust them from the outset. But how could I trust them?  There are a few issues here though that goes some way to clarifying the situation.

1) trust is a process that demands commitment from both sides, but it always has an order – first there is a person who has to trust then the person who that person is trusting, the trustee, has to show a reciprocated benefit. In this situation it was very clear I had to trust them then they would have to show to me the benefits of my trust and eventually trust me back.  By making me give them the full access API they were forcing me to trust them first.

2) the situation has to be well defined when it comes to trust and in this respect it was not clear at all what I was getting into.  I have to be clear Captain K was an excellent communicator and I do think that this was a good sign, but the problem for me was just what this situation was going to be and if it fitted the direction I wanted to go in Eve.  The whole starting an alliance thing just made it even more complicated.

3) You cannot demand trust, the thing about it is it has to be offered and accepted and I was going to have to offer my trust.  In this way then as a stranger to this corporation I was going to have to overcome that strangeness in order to be able to get into a trust worthy relationship.  In other words.

4) Trust has to be earned.

So I had to become less of a stranger and establish a pattern of a relationship and build trust to join this corporation.  Did I want to submit or give up a small bit of my freedom as a stranger to join what looked like a good corporation?  In the end I did not apply to join.  But the whole thing has really made me think, isn’t joining a corporation against the whole freelance thing anyway?  What the hell do I mean by freelancer? What if anything am I doing to move that forward?

It occurred to me as well that no matter how much I try to avoid it at some point I am going to have to be able help others develop trust in me, otherwise living in eve is going to be a lonely experience.  So it doesn’t matter if I am going to be freelance or not I cannot avoid the politics of trust and risk.