Group commitment

I was talking to someone I know who used to play EVE, mostly in low sec with some high sec activity on alts. I mentioned how I had to add all my alts APIs to the GSF auth page. He thought I was nuts to do that and that I shouldn't even have mentioned them in recruitment.

Maybe. My main has had virtually no interaction with any of my alts. The few he has had, such as buying something from a contract, are just a sprinkling among the many other interactions he's had with characters that I don't play. So I probably could have "gotten away with it" by not mentioning them and never using them in connection with a GSF activity. No neutral scout, no neutral hauler, or warp-in, or bumper, or buying things in Jita on the trader and shipping them down.

But here's the thing. Forget about min-maxing whether or not I'm better off with them hidden or known. Look at the big picture.

GSF (and CFC) are comprised of thousands of people and the assets, reputations, and processes they and their predecessors have created. To each individual, tremendous value is imparted by being in the group. That value tends to increase when one's own alignment is to the group, and diminish when one structures one's behavior towards selfishness.

Once I had learned enough about GSF to want to join, my focus shifted to considering how to do the things I enjoy - flying in fleets and gangs, making ISK, scouting, ganking - in the ways that are most effective, useful, and in alignment with the alliance. Rather than even considering micro-optimizations such as revealing my alts, I'm trying to put the limited energy I have to give to EVE entirely in the direction my group needs to it do.

This other perspective seems to me like being on a rowing crew, or tug-of-war team, or anything of that sort, and trying to figure out what's the least amount of pulling you can get away with doing. Not only will everyone soon sort out what kind of teammate you are, but if you care about the overall result, you're hurting yourself along with everyone on the team who thought they could count on you.

It's tempting to think this is a difference between low-sec and null-sec, in that the demands of null reward the kind of group play that I am describing, and perhaps low is more tolerant of inefficient groups. But when I read about the energy a lot of people put into their low sec corps, I think it tells the same story. Sugar Kyle had nothing to gain from her efforts in low, and Chance Ravinne had nothing to gain with all his hard work making videos of himself as a newbie. Both of them focused on what they could give to the subset of EVE they could reach, and in return they are space-famous, influential, and have access to things in EVE that you can't buy with ISK or money. In the end, it's not even selfish to act selfishly, it's just short-sighted.