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Internet Spaceships Are Serious Business: An EVE Online Reader
EVE Online is a socially complex, science-fiction-themed universe simulation and massively multiplayer online game (MMOG) first released in 2003. Notorious for its colossal battles and ruthless player culture, it has hundreds of thousands of players today. In this fascinating book, scholars, players, and EVE’s developer (CCP Games) examine the intricate world of EVEOnline--providing authentic accounts of lived experience within a game with more than a decade of history and millions of “real” dollars behind it.
Internet Spaceships Are Serious Business features contributions from outstanding EVE Online players, such as The Mittani, an infamous member of the game’s community, as well as academics from around the globe. They cover a wide range of subjects: the game’s technicalities and its difficulty; its projection of humanity’s future in space; the configuration of its unique, single-server game world; the global nature of warfare in its “nullsec” territory (and how EVE players have formed a global concept of time); stereotypes of Russian players; espionage play; in-game memorials to Vile Rat (aka U.S. State Department official Sean Smith, murdered in the 2012 Benghazi attack); its gendered playing experience; and CCP Games’ relationship with players; and its history and legacy.
Internet Spaceships Are Serious Business is a must for EVE Online players interested in a broad perspective on their all-consuming game. It is also accessible to scholars, game designers seeking to understand and replicate the successful aspects unique to EVE Online, and even those who have never played this notoriously complex game.
Contributors: William Sims Bainbridge, National Science Foundation; Chribba; Jedrzej Czarnota; Kjartan Pierre Emilsson; Dan Erdman; Rebecca Fraimow; Martin R. Gibbs, U of Melbourne; Catherine Goodfellow; Kathryn Gronsbell; Keith Harrison; Kristin MacDonough; Mantou (Zhang Yuzhou); Oskar Milik; The Mittani (Alexander Gianturco); Joji Mori; Richard Page; Christopher Paul, Seattle U; Erica Titkemeyer, U of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Nick Webber, Birmingham City U.
- GenresNonfiction
258 pages, Kindle Edition
Published March 23, 2016
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186 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
October 13, 2022
It is a fair attempt at approaching the EVE phenomenon from a more academic standpoint.
Some essays are better than others, and the most useful are certainly the ones which actually portraits the player base of the game. There's a lot of fluff and attempts at connecting EVE history to real world history that I find forced or even questionable but can make for a more interesting read sometimes.
I respect the game for the sociological phenomenon it is but I also found in first person why it was not for me. EVE's player base consists almost entirely of older males, 32 years old on average, working in technical disciplines such as IT, engineering, medicine, law and armed forces, so it pretty much explains why only a few invest their time and money in it, also attracted by its complexity, but also explains why it is one big circlejerk of elitism.
It seems the CCP tried to attract more of the average player to it by going free-to-play but ended up shooting itself in the foot with its new business model of microtransactions. Due to how much influence and power the big players of EVE have in the game's development, I would not be surprised if corruption and/or conformity contributed to stagnation. There may be "new content" but experienced people already solved the game, and the room for ambition of old is no longer there unless some new player thinks it can be part of something big like older players had years ago. On the other hand said players are at complete disadvantage because they can't compete with the establishment that took root in both the game corpos and CCP, not to speak it's also twice expensive to play.
I also think this book fails at presenting EVE to the average gamer and can even sound sumptuous. Personally liked it because I'm into social sciences.
Some essays are better than others, and the most useful are certainly the ones which actually portraits the player base of the game. There's a lot of fluff and attempts at connecting EVE history to real world history that I find forced or even questionable but can make for a more interesting read sometimes.
I respect the game for the sociological phenomenon it is but I also found in first person why it was not for me. EVE's player base consists almost entirely of older males, 32 years old on average, working in technical disciplines such as IT, engineering, medicine, law and armed forces, so it pretty much explains why only a few invest their time and money in it, also attracted by its complexity, but also explains why it is one big circlejerk of elitism.
It seems the CCP tried to attract more of the average player to it by going free-to-play but ended up shooting itself in the foot with its new business model of microtransactions. Due to how much influence and power the big players of EVE have in the game's development, I would not be surprised if corruption and/or conformity contributed to stagnation. There may be "new content" but experienced people already solved the game, and the room for ambition of old is no longer there unless some new player thinks it can be part of something big like older players had years ago. On the other hand said players are at complete disadvantage because they can't compete with the establishment that took root in both the game corpos and CCP, not to speak it's also twice expensive to play.
I also think this book fails at presenting EVE to the average gamer and can even sound sumptuous. Personally liked it because I'm into social sciences.
April 30, 2016
A well done, if not perfect, collection of academic and semi-academic pieces on the game EVE Online. It explores history, conservation, government, society, and culture through a fascinating lens. Very much recommended if you're interested in video game history and design, or are a denizen of New Eden with a broader mentality then just shooting lasers.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews