Andrew Groen

I always been fascinated by EVE and its so charming it makes me want to be part of it.

This book is to be read as a journalistic piece on the history of EVE: Online rather than a purely history book. The reason is, being non fiction (while ironically happening in a virtual world and setting), I didn’t find the writing itself very engaging and it has a lot of repetitions and off writing structure at times. Considering everything involved I bet it was tough to put it all together, but having all this in mind might give the casual or non-EVE player more sentiment to accept this for what it is: a research of the social environment of EVE. Mainly Corporate War: Combat and Betrayal. Divide and Conquer.

Imagine Game of Thrones, or better yet, War of The Roses and The Hundred Year War on a galactic level.

The author doesn’t go much in depth, or at least, not as much as I was expecting. The information is always biased towards the player or faction he interviewed, so being neutral is hard. All he can do is gather enough information on both sides to create a narrative. There are some good transcripts from historical sources like forums, audio and video, some which can still be found online.

These sources help create the context and give a pretty good idea how serious the political and economic spectrum of the game is. However, what the reader gets is mostly about: this guy convinced A corporation to attack B and B allied with C and D. Then A found E and F and raided each other before taking territory. But B had a spy network that put to use and made D betray C than eventually allied with A and F didn’t like, so F went to B. Substitute these capital letters with Corporation and Alliance names and throw in ships, stations and Systems names. Or, substitute them with Medieval factions and fiefs.
You get the idea.

Yet, I still managed to get myself so immersed in this I couldn’t put it down.
EVE Online is without a doubt a virtual copy of a real life ecosystem. Maybe with a few doses of roids, but the emotion the players feel is raw and true.
Bear with me here: EVE is underrated. Why many people stay away from it is completely understandable, but I find it underestimated as a research subject. Gaming in general should be professionally researched, but maybe due to the volatility and private nature of its users, its hard to do so. But humans do not simply do things, and some people on the marketing and development departments seem to be getting some important info on that. Just one example, there seems to be strong connection between Big Five traits and player behaviour and choice. This game would be the perfect guinea pig to understand gamers, at least, a certain breed of them perhaps.

There’s always the dismissive characterization of a “mere” construction worker or plumber leading and rallying thousands of people to spend real life hours and skip sleep over a space battle. But what if this “mere worker”, in real life, actually has traits going on for him?
Humans either have the liberty to act how they really are or find the means to act how they’d like to be. Which is which for each of these persons remains a mystery for the most part. Their paying job may be “low status” yet their social status be high enough to be reflected in the game.
In some cases, that are not in this book, the real person seems clearly drawn to this type of thing to the point it feels like home.
Real life spy is a Corp spy.
Real life manager is Corp manager.
Real life businessman is Corp businessman.
But rarely seems to be a Real life CEO a Corp CEO.
Others simply learn real life skills in the game thanks to the sense of responsibility it provides.

These are themes that I’d like to read about in gaming but are not in this book, of course.

Andrew Growen is focused on the Great War. A War that shaped the in-game universe and made real life media print a lot. Created controversy so big and still managed to bring thousands of players more to be part of battles the servers couldn’t handle.
To the average person, the achievements of these individuals are meaningless and worthless. In the virtual world, they are immortalized legends.

Real family and friends were made.
Betrayed.
Avenged.
Reinstituted.
Bonds still last. Wounds still hurt.

Conclusion

ADDENDUM: Ebooks don’t have maps that might help the reader understand the scale much better, but I found the descriptions suffice it enough, if you’re fine with picturing yourself where the North and South is and what can come in-between.

EVE: Online is fascinating.

For most is just another game, but I find it a gaming experience where the line between entertainment and real life is very thin. Its a hub for almost perfect emulation of human behaviour. An alternate platform to learn, rise in the social hierarchy and even get rich. All these may very likely transpire to real life, to the disappointment of the “games are evil” crowd.

Empires of EVE: A History of the Great Wars of EVE Online is probably the closest we get to understand that picture. As I said, doesn’t go much in depth. Its mostly about who fought who and where, with in game propaganda and occasional real life words from those involved. You can go much more on a personal sense in articles around the web. Regardless, Andrew does a good job putting history together and telling it to both the fans and the curious.… (plus d'informations)

Great read not only for Eve-online players but everyone interested in social experiments. For those unaware – eve online is the largest continuous online multiplayer sandbox universe, where tens of thousands can be present at any moment, creating a unique environment for business (both ingame and real) and social organization.
While, unlike the real world, there are a lot of people, who enter the game specifically to hurt other people, in other aspects it is a way more dynamic version of how politics, and power blocs, and leaders and propaganda work. Therefore, I guess social science students should take a look as well.
… (plus d'informations)