“As we continue to clear the battlefield—killing everything but the most difficult to track of frigates—word comes in of… something odd in EVE. It seems that TEST Alliance plans to make a charge—a last stand—to come back in against overwhelming force and make a statement. In EVE, this is not done. You do not fight when there is no hope.”
–Vily, CFC Fleet Commander
THE BATTLE OF 6VDT-H was the largest battle in the history of EVE Online, and led directly to the collapse of one of the largest player organizations in the history of the game. TEST Alliance would subsequently lose its holdings in the Fountain region, lose funding to support such a large group of players and quickly fall apart.
It was to be the culmination of the ClusterFuck Coalition’s Odyssey campaign: the wrenching poverty that The Mittani sought to avoid would now be TEST’s to endure. However, TEST’s performance in the battle would become the stuff of legend, and it helped establish the alliance as an institution in the EVE community that rose again in later years. This is the story of the doomed last charge of TEST Alliance Please Ignore.
DOOMED
On the day of the battle, July 28, 2013, the two goliaths began rumbling to life. Both TEST and the CFC started pushing pilots to get online and to organize into fleets. The number of participants in the battle would eventually grow to more than 4000 players, surpassing the Battle of Uemon as the largest battle in the history of online video gaming up to that point.
The logistics necessary to pull off a battle on this scale are staggering. First of all, you can’t just snap together an army of thousands in minutes or hours. In order to get 2000 players to show up for a battle you have to build a message that will echo throughout the digital universe. Many players will beg off due to work, obligations, or personal disinterest. To achieve 2000 pilots, then, you’d better get your message out to tens of thousands of pilots. Building that kind of a message takes time, craft, and a platform (its not a coincidence that both of the core groups doing battle were backed by social networks larger than themselves.) To get that many people out to the battle requires a story that clearly defines the purpose of the battle, what would be gained in victory, what would be lost in defeat, and what constitutes victory or defeat. All players need to understand these things in order to achieve a critical mass that moves the popular body. A fleet like this is an entire community of people given singular animus within a virtual environment, and the story must express the dire importance of the community coming together to take action.
This is why major battles tend to happen over either clearly important strategic infrastructure or symbolic community hubs. To rally the average EVE player, who only logs in every few days the stakes must be abundantly clear and historically compelling. But EVE is a complex and interconnected social system, and so when an alliance attempts to rile up its members and get them excited to participate in a war, they will also—ironically—end up exciting their enemies and driving up their enemy’s participation.
The stakes of a battle need not be victory or defeat in order to rally the players. TEST leadership could no longer promise victories, so Ingen Kerr and BoodaBooda promised instead only that the battle would write TEST into history. And though they have mocked the phrase for more than a decade, there’s nothing EVE Online players love more than being able to say, “I was there.” To get this message out, TEST Alliance—of course—used Reddit, the social network from which the organization had sprung. Having the front page of the r/eve subreddit covered in talk of war and of a great last stand also made it easier for the CFC to gather an armada of its own (though they publicly derided it at every opportunity the CFC’s pilots read r/eve too. Strictly for the memes, of course.)
All of this to say, both sides could hear each other’s war drums, and the number of people attracted by the commotion was historic. ClusterFuck Coalition Fleet Commander Vily later said that on the day of the battle, before a single call-to-arms had been posted, more than 2300 pilots were already in the CFC staging base waiting to be given orders.
Two-thousand three hundred. The CFC forces alone were more than 10 times the number of ships that fought for both sides in the climactic opening battle of the Great Northern War in 2004. And the battle hadn’t even started yet.
Conservatively we could probably say that 25% of the ships were alts, meaning a fleet of 2300 pilots is probably around 1600 individuals. The coordination it takes to move a group of 1600 people is not to be underestimated. It takes clear messaging, and an ironclad grasp of gameplay mechanics. A fleet commander coordinating this many people needs to understand that everything is going to take ten times longer than it should take because 1600 humans are a clumsy bunch. Some of them won’t even hear the Fleet Commander when an order is issued. Maybe that pilot was in the bathroom, or talking to someone else, or playing a different game in another window. Fleet commanders have to be realistic and simplistic in their expectations, and patient while they wait for their orders to be completed by 1600 mammals who have no herding instinct. The maddening, menial reality of trying to accomplish simple tasks with hundreds or thousands of people like this is probably also a big part of why some EVE Online Fleet Commanders have been known to descend into screaming rage fits.
But not Lazarus Telraven—one of the CFC’s lead fleet commanders—who was no stranger to high-stress gaming. He was an esports champion in a first-person shooter called War Rock, a free-to-play South Korean game in the style of Counter-Strike. When time dilation slowed EVE down, Laz would turn to his second monitor and play World of Warcraft 3v3 arena matches to pass the time between volleys.
Patience was especially necessary because the CFC’s 2300 ships were more than enough by themselves to bring the server to a full 10% time dilation. That meant time was moving at 1/10 it’s usual speed but only within this one star system. And even then it didn’t clear up lag completely, it just helped a lot. Combined with additional latency things could move very slowly on the battlefield, often leaving players with hours of downtime between major fleet movements. Keeping people focused and attentive throughout a battle that was sure to take all day was one of the trickier parts of commanding a fleet of video gamers.
“Moving such a mass of forces is an extremely unique aspect of EVE Online; moving a single 256-man fleet can be a challenge at times, and moving eight of them at once is even more so,” wrote Vily in his retrospective. “Time dilation usually kicks in any time you see 300 or more pilots moving as a group, so moving 1000+ makes it a certainty. As such, the CFC formed almost two hours in advance of the reinforced timer exiting invulnerable mode. It is not fun, but it is absolutely necessary if you plan to achieve system control first, giving you a significant tactical advantage.”
Vily and the CFC sky command carved that 2300 into smaller, more easily controlled fleets. Their main damage would come from 7 full fleets of Baltec Megathrons of 256 ships each (the max fleet size) led by Fleet Commanders Vily, Mister Vee, Lazarus Telraven, Reagalan, Cor Six, Intergalaktor, and Ironwulf. Two fleets of bombers were formed under Kcolor and DaBigRedBoat. A fleet led by the player David Cedarbridge was dedicated to electronic warfare (warp scrambling, mana draining, that sort of thing.) Imperian—who had years before led the Northern Coalition’s defense against the Drone Region Federation—led a group of ArmorHACs, adapted from Pandemic Legion’s original killer blueprint, in what Vily called a “shark hunter role.” Meanwhile, Fleet Commander Theadj commanded a wing of carriers and dreadnoughts, waiting in an adjacent system for the signal to move in. Everyone had a job to do.
“Our job was to scan down disconnected players–preferably command ships and boosters–and kill the enemy ones to ensure they did not rejoin the fight after reconnecting,” wrote Trii Seo who self-identified as a “cloaky bugger.”
The full CFC skycommand team took control of nearly a dozen different fleets with different jobs to do in the taking of 6VDT-H.
As the first fleet in the system, the CFC had its choice as to how it wanted to set up its fleet in preparation for the battle. The CFC Sky Command was getting reports that TEST had formed more than 1500 pilots, a historic fleet unto itself but well short of the CFC’s 2300. With CFC holding numerical superiority, the fleet commanders reasoned TEST might use bomber fleets to try to kill masses of CFC ships and level the odds. To pre-emptively counter against this possibility, the CFC ordered all seven of its Baltec Megathron fleets—1600+ players—to orbit the main station at a distance of 80 km and spread themselves as thinly as possible.
The result was a spherical cloud of ships encircling the tall outpost which looked like a skyscraper above the blue atmosphere of its moon.
In two hours, the reinforcement timer would elapse, and the station would be conquerable. A pilot for the CFC named Wilhelm Arcturus remembered the day in a detailed retrospective:
“Sunday morning I rose late. The [operation] was set to begin at 11:30am local time for me, so I rolled out of bed a little after 9am and jumped in the shower. After getting dressed and having the “breakfast of champions” (cold pizza and a coke) I got myself logged into my computer and into the various comms channels with well over 90 minutes left before the form up time. I was greeted by calls to stock food around my desk, to say farewell to my family for the day, and to get online and in a ship and undocked ASAP to avoid the rush.
When I got in-game in 4-EP there were already 1,300 people in the system and that number was growing quickly, even as early bomber fleets assembled and jumped out. I got slowly undocked and joined the mass of Megathrons at the staging POS where we attempted to form a conga line. It was still nearly 45 minutes before the official operation start time when, faced with 2,000 pilots in the staging system and time dilation [moving at 10% speed,] the decision was made to form fleets. […]
One by one the fleets were bridged out through the tidi. We went by the numbers, so the sixth fleet went last while command was attempting to form up additional fleets for people still waiting. Fortunately for us, getting to 6VDT-H involved a single bridge from 4-EP. […]
We moved to the station where one of the recurring pictures of the battle was [seven] fleets orbiting the station. The view was compared to ants swarming. I preferred to think of it as bees around a potential new hive.”
–Wilhelm Arcturus, CFC Pilot
In their thousands, the Megathrons silently proceeded in slow, time-dilated automatic orbits, waiting to see if TEST would be brave enough to show up and fight for its spiritual home.
As the CFC pilots got into position around TEST’s former headquarters its fleet commanders prepared themselves for what they believed could be a long day of battle.
“Most of our pilots took advantage of this time to get lunch, say goodbye to their families, and prepare for the worst while expecting the best. At the same time, N3ST [editor: a common portmanteau of TEST and N3] forces slowly went through the process of moving their forces into a position to engage. This can be arduous, and it was obvious that they were playing against the clock to organize themselves properly to arrive in time to contest the system.
At approximately 5 minutes left of the station timer, hostile cynosural fields were spotted in-system and the enemy [N3ST] forces took Titan bridges into system. It’s hard to describe the sense of anticipation one feels when preparing for something of this grand scale, and certainly the pulse of myself and many other of the fleet commanders rose. The fight was coming; it was happening.”
Vily, lead CFC Fleet Commander
July 28, 2013
The N3ST mega-fleet arrived in 6VDT-H amid seven thunderous spirals of pink electricity. The electric spirals were the sparks of cynosural fields channeled by Titans in nearby systems that teleported the N3ST pilots into the system by the hundreds. Each fleet was led by a Damnation-class logistics ship flown by the fleet commander that was armored and buffed in every way possible. N3ST was doing everything it could to keep its chain of command from falling apart once the melee began. It took about 20 minutes for the full force of N3ST’s fleet to arrive in the system.
Once inside 6VDT-H, the battle between the two fleets began before N3ST got much of a chance to prepare; DaBigRedBoat’s bombing fleet was already slowly streaking across the sky at 10% speed on a direct course for the center of the N3ST fleet.
TEST Fleet Commanders had plenty of time to think about their next choice. DaBigRedBoat’s bombers creeped closer in ever slower motion as lag—on top of time dilation—began to set in. TEST Military Director Ingen Kerr had two choices: 1) absorb the brunt of the bombing and lose hundreds of ships, but hold position, or 2) warp the fleet out of DaBigRedBoat’s path and toward the only available location: the Outpost swarming with 1600 CFC megathrons.
Ingen Kerr chose the latter, and his ships warped by the hundreds toward the outpost where the battle would finally truly commence. Through crushing lag, the N3ST Prophecy fleets launched their drone bays and assigned control of them to the lead fleet commander, allowing that one single person to direct exactly where the N3ST fleet’s damage would come down with perfect precision.
“The first fleet to land was a segment of the [N3ST] electronic warfare group avoiding the bomb run, but it would be followed in such close succession by Prophecy and [ArmorHAC] groups that it could have hardly been more than a minute between warp-ins,” wrote Vily. “Now we were truly engaged. Fire was exchanged, and the massive groups of railguns carried by the Megathron fleets spun into action.”
CFC pilot Wilhelm Arcturus offered their recollection: “TEST landed on us and the fleets were intermixed in that odd way that happens in very large fights. At times I found myself flying between a pair of [NCdot] Dominixes or through a cloud of TEST logistics [ships.] A Nulli Secunda logistics Bantam [a small repair ship] appeared to orbit me at one point.”
Vily noted that the very first of his Megathron salvos targeted N3ST Fleet Commanders, a tactic he himself seemed to think was underhanded and yet unavoidably necessary since N3ST would certainly try to do the same to the CFC; and they did. Leaders of both sides gave orders to target the other fleet’s leaders.
In a short time it became obvious that the N3ST fleet was having trouble breaking through the heavy armor of the CFC command ships, which heroically faced down the near-simultaneous fire of a thousand N3ST drones. The CFC’s 1500 megathrons were having no such problems. One-by-one they carved through TEST’s most critical ships and command structure. As the ships burst, CFC pilots were ordered not to target the escape pods so TEST would have to fly the pods back home manually through the aching slow of time dilation.
“Meanwhile, we shot,” wrote Arcturus in their retrospective. “Targets were called and we struggled to get our guns to fire on them. […] I had to change my overview a number of times. First I had to exclude [escape] capsules, which began to litter the field, and which we were told not to shoot. Let them walk home was the plan.”
Hours went by as the laser-crossed tangle of ships destroyed each other near the massive starbase. Warp disruption bubbles created a hazy blue hue to the battlefield, coursing with layers upon layers of electricity. By the end of the first few hours, hundreds of ships had been erased by the sheer weight of firepower in effect. As ships were blown off the grid, the servers began to catch up and the lag cleared, allowing the fleets to operate somewhat normally, albeit at 10% speed.
“Merely being in 10% tidi felt liberating,” wrote Arcturus. “Simple things, like your guns activating on the first try or targets actually locking in the time indicated were like a breath of fresh air. Running at one tenth normal speed is a doddle, if only the client will actually respond to your actions.”
While the average pilot calmly orbited the outpost, the hardest job fell to CFC tech administrator Solo Drakban, who had to keep clear communication lines up between 2300 people. The CFC’s historic fleet would be next to worthless if the Mumble server went down.
“Solo Drakban was no doubt fretting over the comms infrastructure,” one pilot wrote. “In the past, big operations like this have brought down our voice comms, requiring the server to be re-provisioned to accommodate the load, a process which requires every pilot to go change their Mumble configuration. Since, at the best of times, maybe 4 out of 5 people actually hear (but not necessarily comprehend) instructions coming over comms, that sort of thing becomes a major undertaking on its own.
“So we were told to just stay quiet and use voice comms as little as possible, lest we bring the whole house down,” he continued. “This actually worked, at least on our channel, which was surprising. Goons and allies are a talkative bunch and, when left with little to do, will begin to chat or argue about whatever happens to come up. With the warning in place, for long stretches it was like being in the “no chatter” channel, where you can only hear the fleet command personnel speaking.”
Those unusually quiet command channels were relatively calm while orders were going out to thousands of pilots about who to destroy next. The historic CFC Baltec Megathron fleet sent thousands of railgun blasts toward whichever unfortunate target was designated next, and even N3ST’s heavily-armored command ships evaporated in moments, as did its command structure.
Vily’s report suggests that the N3ST ArmorHAC fleet lost multiple fleet commanders to combined CFC Megathron strikes, and the rest of the fleet was rendered utterly ineffectual for two whole hours as the fleet attempted to get back online and operating under a coherent command structure.
But the most devastating impact was had by the bombing fleets run by Kcolor and DaBigRedBoat. More than 25% of the 2900 ships that would be destroyed in this battle were killed by their bombs. Their fleets of specially outfitted bombers swooped in to exploit tightly-packed groups of uncoordinated N3ST ships which, deprived of effective leadership, had no chance to react in the crushing lag and time dilation. Some of these bombing runs destroyed up to 70 N3ST players at once. The bombs were not without collateral damage, however—an additional 15-20 of the CFC’s own ships were usually caught in the bomb blasts as well. Unfortunate, sure, but a small price to pay for the havok the bombers wreaked on the enemy.
Meanwhile, the CFC ArmorHAC fleet under Imperian maneuvered toward the only stargate TEST could use to exit the system, destroying retreating fleet remnants and deserters.
THE AUDIENCE
All the while, several unaffiliated pilots sat on the outer reaches of the system in cloaked ships, passing video of the engagement to the wider community through Twitch streams. In addition to the more than 4000 players in the battle, another 10,000 watched live on Twitch. Streamers Mad Ani and Daopa led the effort to get word out to the rest of the world about the largest battle in gaming history. The CFC’s news service “Mittani Media” also operated its own stream and issued updates about the battle in progress.
For the 10,000 who were watching, the battle was an incomprehensible mess. The screen often seemed frozen in time while streamers valiantly tried to explain that the tangle of brackets and tiny ships scarcely moving on-screen were actually two fleets from opposing factions within the game world. One side were the Redditors of TEST Alliance, and their allies N3/PL. The other side were the Goons of Something Awful—a necessary simplification. They explained that the fate of the Fountain region and its valuable crop of moon mining operations lay in the balance. They explained that what was happening here was something of a tragedy. That a long time ago these two communities were friends who had a falling out over politics and ambition. Few knew at the time that TEST’s former leader Montolio had coveted exactly such a battle, and his provocations may have played a critical role in eventually causing it.
That 10,000 people stuck around for the stream was remarkable given that none of the actual action described in this chapter was discernible from that vantage point. Mostly, the stream operators tried like hell to keep a live video feed operational, because often their EVE client would crash trying to perform actions as simple as adjusting the camera to give the audience a better view. The 8-10 hours of work these streamers put in to get these images out to the world created a rare window into this crucial event inside an often hopelessly opaque universe. For one of the first times in EVE, the average person could get a look at major events happening as they unfolded. Even if it looked kinda boring from this vantage point.
“The actual battle was horrible,” wrote a commenter on an EVE website article about the battle at 6VDT-H. “I actually managed to clean the house in between when I deployed drones, and when they shot something.”
Another pilot at the battle named Jonathan Stripes wrote: “It got to the point, after 3 hours, that my EVE client’s clock was no longer running, and I got this error, stating that the server was not even receiving commands from my computer any more. Many laughs were had on coalition comms about the errors, and the FC just saying “fuck it, if you can target it, shoot it” made for one of the most fun gaming experiences I have ever had. For this fight, in which more than 4000 pilots were in system at the same time, CCP set the system up on Jita’s dedicated supercomputer.”
However, the server began to catch up as more and more TEST pilots were cleared from the field, and the remnants of the fleet at last beat a retreat toward the star gate that led to safety in Delve.
THE LAST CHARGE OF TEST
As TEST reached the escape stargate it encountered Imperian’s “shark hunter” ArmorHAC fleet, and began losing ships immediately. TEST command began to realize that the price for extracting from this system would be grueling and difficult. It would take hours, and Imperian was likely to take as many as 30% of them down before all of the fleets managed to get out of 6VDT-H. With plenty of time to talk it over in 10% time dilation, TEST command decided how TEST would end it’s final battle.
“As we continued to clear the battlefield, killing everything but the most difficult to track frigates, word came in of something odd,” wrote the CFC’s Vily in his retrospective.
Ingen Kerr considered TEST’s actual goals for the battle, and remembered that he had not actually come here to win, but to give this great adventure with TEST the finale it deserved. He ordered the fleet to stop, and told his fleet commanders to turn about. He told them to charge into the CFC formation, and target the most expensive dreadnought they could lock.
“It seemed that TEST Alliance planned to make a charge—a last stand—to come back in against overwhelming force and make a statement,” Vily wrote. “In EVE, this is never done; you do not fight when there is no hope. You retreat and save your ships for another day, another chance. But in they came.”
The final charge wasn’t about turning the battle around and saving 6VDT-H or Fountain. It was about saving TEST Alliance itself from succumbing to the same God-Save-The-Ships ethos that had dissolved so many groups before it.
And so TEST mounted a final charge—not to win 6VDT-H—but to save its collective soul. Hundreds upon hundreds of TEST ships streamed toward the outpost at full speed back into the unbroken CFC defense. “Full speed,” however, was 25% what it usually was, and the CFC had several minutes to discuss how to perfectly dismantle the incoming TEST remnants. The TEST ships turned from red to grey by the dozens on the overviews of CFC pilots as they were coolly picked apart by CFC fleet commanders who couldn’t help but feel a pang of respect for the unprecedented sacrifice. Every single one of TEST’s ships would be executed in just a few minutes even as their many lasers converged on the hull of a single CFC dreadnought. They managed to destroy their symbolic target just moments before the last of their fleet was cleared from the field. The bubble of Megathrons now slowly orbited in silence beside a great sea of debris.
Today the explosive final charge at 6VDT-H is remembered as the climax of the Fountain War, a way for TEST to go out on its own terms. It was a statement, as loud and as clear as the 27 Doomsdays that marked the end of the Great War; a declaration that TEST would not allow its identity or decisions to be dictated by an outside force. If sacrificing the entire fleet to kill just one final Goon was stupid, then let history carve that stupidity into stone and call it the legacy of TEST Alliance Please Ignore.
TEST leader BoodaBooda gathered the remnants of the alliance as they logged out of the battle, and delivered a speech to hundreds of pilots on Mumble.
“Today we fought in 6VDT. We didn’t fight to save the station, we didn’t fight to win an ISK war, and we didn’t fight to turn the war around.[…] We fought because TEST stands together in the face of certain, guaranteed death. I wanted to give Fountain one HELL of a sendoff, and it’s incredibly appropriate that it took place in our home system of 2+ years.
This war has taught us many things—We’ve learned what we can do at our best, and we’ve learned what we need to do to properly support our FCs, leadership, and membership.
We made an absolutely fantastic showing today. We fielded more members than any single alliance has ever seen—we even had twice what [Goons] alone brought—and we set a record for the largest fight EVE has ever seen by a few hundred pilots, maybe even a thousand. […]
So with all that said, we’ve been losing a defensive war for about two weeks now. As soon as our big strong capfleet-toting allies had to run home, the CFC pulled out all the stops, and TEST was unable to keep up on our own. They practically rolled through Fountain unopposed.
This isn’t the fault of our members. It isn’t our FCs’ faults, or our [Military Director’s] fault, or [logistics,] or recon, or our corp[oration] CEOs… This war has been an immense team effort, and one of the most significant things we’ve learned is that our team needs some improvement before we can function together well enough to pull off a large scale war like this. […]
We need time to do the work we should’ve done 3 months ago. 3 years ago. We have to clean up our leadership groups and structure in order to handle something as significant as a full-on coalition-level war—or something as simple as record-breaking activity numbers.
The CFC will almost definitely attack Delve, either in a continuation of their full-scale invasion, or with prodding tests. It will give us an opportunity to put some strain on a rebuilt leadership structure and see how we function. I will be constantly reevaluating our position the entire time, but for now that’s the plan. […]
I can only hope that you don’t feel I’ve thrown away your donations to the alliance. Ultimately, the sov is here so we have something to fight about, and I felt it best to spend our cash in the bloodiest, largest, most amazing fight the EVE community or even the video game community at-large has ever seen.
So fellow TESTies, follow me back to Delve, and let’s set out on a journey to make TEST the alliance this community deserves.”
–BoodaBooda, Executor, Test Alliance Please Ignore
July 29, 2013
“The war was over, and the CFC flags rose above the smoke of 6VDT-H,” wrote CFC pilot Trii Seo. “What once was a hostile ground [was now] a bustling hive of regrouping and celebrating CFC forces. It’s hard to describe the feeling exactly–months of warmongering and smacktalk, and the smacktalker was running towards [Delve,] tail between his legs. If I could stick a flag out of the window of my Nidhoggur [carrier] as I flew, I would totally have done that. Played Chariots of Fire maybe.”
Within days of TEST’s retreat into Delve, BoodaBooda got word that the CFC would not be stopping with Fountain, and that attacks on Delve were being planned for the next few days. The situation for TEST rapidly deteriorated. With the situation as it was, he soon stepped down.
“I’ll admit that constant betrayal, daily ultimatums from corp leaderships, and utter lack of motivation across the board sapped out any energy I had left for TEST,” he wrote in a goodbye letter announcing his resignation. “Ultimately, I stepped down because I’m exhausted with leading, with politics, with diplomacy, and with relying on people I cannot trust to stay and cannot trust to do the right thing.
“So I did something that I don’t think I’ve ever done in EVE,” he wrote. “I did something that I stopped doing in my personal life many years ago. I quit.”
The difference in BoodaBooda’s tone from the beginning of the war is stark. One of the most tragic parts of EVE that people rarely talk about is that not every player gets to “win EVE” and go out on their own terms. If it’s possible to win EVE it’s also possible to lose it. Both, it seems, depend on what condition EVE leaves your spirit in.
THE GREAT PURGENING
BoodaBooda’s departure only lasted about six months until he returned in an attempt to help TEST grapple with the next era in its history. Now he wanted to finally fulfill his vision for TEST, and start again from the ground up. On August 10, 2013, he and the TEST team went to the member roster and removed anybody who hadn’t logged in since before the war. They streamed the whole thing live in what turned into a sort of celebration that renewed the pact with the community. They called it the “Great Purgening.”
“It’s time to finally start the next leg of our adventure through EVE, with a largely cleaned-out alliance rebuilding around us as we rebuild ourselves in kind,” he wrote. “Let’s see what this game still has to offer. But more importantly, let’s tackle it together.”
