#2: “Eve Online”: on multiplayer, economy, and messy problems

The vast space systems of Eve Online may be imaginary – but the players, the risks, the money and the drama are very real.

About the game

You are a capsuleer – one of humanity’s lucky few, evolved and engineered so that your consciousness gets “rebooted” each time your body dies in space. This comes in handy, as a) you’re in space and b) you’re about to die an awful lot.

Eve Online gives you an enormous, visually stunning open world of interconnected star systems, and lets you choose your own way of exploring it. It’s a massively multiplayer online game, played in real-time around the world. This means that thousands of other Eve players are also trying to get ahead in this vast universe.

Some general rules apply: star systems are controlled by empires, factions, or corporations; money, resources, connections and firepower will all increase your chances of survival; and no matter how big or successful you think you are, there’s always a bigger fish out there.

But apart from these basic facts – think Darwin, Hobbes and Adam Smith, but in space – the rest is up to you. This universe needs soldiers and explorers, it needs manufacturers, miners, hackers, brokers, researchers, hauliers, business folks… any of these roles can be yours, and it doesn’t take long to shift from one to the other.

About what it taught me

I don’t usually do well in multiplayer games. Eve Online is a bit kinder on me, as it doesn’t take a teenagers’ reflexes to play it. But I still learned to adjust to the presence of other folks – mostly men – in the game space around me.

You die a lot in Eve Online – and although you get resurrected in your home base with minimal fuss, your ship, equipment and cargo are most often lost. This can happen because a non-player character proved to be a worthy opponent, but most frequently, it’s because you were considered a worthy/fun kill by another player.

This meant that Eve Online was my crash-course in levels of risk tolerance. I remember playing it in lockdowns of varying intensity, and again in “normal” circumstances, and thinking: would I be OK if I felt threatened like this in the real world? Is this suspense enjoyable, or is it only OK because it’s simulated?

On another level, Eve is teaching me a lot about the value of your user base. After all these years, I’m still playing Eve Online for free. This means I’m locked out of the best ships, the most useful upgrades, and the lucrative contracts. Do I hate it? Not at all – there’s a lot of fun to be had in the shallow end of this universe. There are thousands of players who do the same – and yet, Eve Online is a highly profitable franchise.

Not just me?

Eve Online is a really attractive microcosm for study and research. It’s a widely accepted fact that massively multiplayer online games have an impact on your wellbeing (would be good to see more robust research there). People who design or take part in such games acquire plenty of important social skills, and these patterns of social interaction are worth studying – especially as the rest of the post-pandemic world catches up with the gamers.

As for the interplay between the real world and Eve Online – since it can cost to play, and it can cost a lot to play really well, it follows that risk and investment are factors which Eve players consider on a daily basis, both in the game world and in real life.

Finally – it’s fascinating to see that online multiplayer communities can be used to have an impact on the real world. Eve Online was used to help Covid researchers – that’s the feel-good story; I’m sure your brain can fill in several darker ways to mobilize other similar communities.

What it will cost you

Eve Online is free to play, with premium tiers holding all the really good stuff. You’ll need a reasonably good Windows PC or Mac, and an internet connection.

Book pairing

Any sci-fi saga of your choice. The Expanse series by James S. A. Corey would be a decent bet, as it tries to capture the science and the politics beyond the guns and the swashbuckling.

Music pairing

Eve Online’s soundtrack is good enough to use as a productivity playlist, and deserves a mention. If that’s not your thing, Bear McCreary’s score for the reimagined “Battlestar Galactica” might be a more energetic option. But I think there’s plenty of chill, cosmic vibes to be had in Eve’s universe, too: for this kind of peaceful exploration, I think that “Floating Points”, Pharoah Sanders’ collab with the LSO, is a good background.

What else to play

Eve Online is not the only space multiplayer online game out there. “Elite: Dangerous” and “No Man’s Sky” are obvious recent alternatives. If you’re looking for multiplayer but with fewer spaceships, “World of Warcraft” or “League of Legends” are successful enough to guarantee a similarly-sized crowd.

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This post is part of “100 games, and what they taught me” – a series of short essays about the games I play and the things I learn from them.

(Photo by Nick Owuor (astro.nic.visuals) on Unsplash)