Space, by definition, is a void. When we inhabit a space such as New Eden, it is up to us to fill this void. This is EVE’s brilliance, to me. Strip away all game mechanics, skills, numbers, and menus, and the heart of our experiences in New Eden are about what it might be like to simply live in space. Because of this, in a sense, New Eden is a mirror of ourselves. We each look into the black, and we each see a different universe defined by our tastes, experiences, and greatest influences in science fiction.
I recently posed a question to my friends on twitter: “What sci-fi movie/show is closest to how you imagine your EVE universe, in terms of general way of life/environment?”
The answers, quite honestly, weren’t too surprising. Four out of the four capsuleers that responded said Firefly, to some degree. And that’s a damn good response, but also an easy one. Let me explain.
I will not deny the brilliance of Firefly, and anyone that reads my blog in the slightest will know my immense love for the show. But I think the main reason why this was such a quick answer is because Firefly embodies so many archetypes of science fiction canon in all varieties. There’s no question about how deep its influences run: Mal, the Han Solo-esque scavenger with a heart; the wit and humor of Douglas Adams; the exploration of a wild frontier of Star Trek; the token all-powerful empire suppressing a deep seeded rebellion of Star Wars; the psychological mind games of Phil K. Dick; the savage horror of Aliens (reavers)… The list could go on. My point is, one could also look into Firefly, and due to its brilliant variety, could find an entirely different thing than another viewer to love about the universe they live in. I would bet that each of the four that answered Firefly as the closest to how they imagine their world of New Eden, if pressed to elaborate on why, would actually have much different answers.
Here’s how I see New Eden, from the eyes of Rettic (and this is by no means whatsoever the “right” answer, just mine):
Daily life for someone outside of the extremities that define each race’s culture is probably very much like the themes of “everyday life” from Firefly. We enjoy the action but aren’t afraid to cut up when things get tough. We worry about our income, small jobs, and just generally getting by. In this sense, I’m in full agreement with my twitterean friends. EVE, after all, is about fun. And so was Firefly.
But as a little self-experiment, I found that more interesting stuff comes when you try to break down each race by their broader motifs:
The Gallente Federation is closest to Blade Runner. It’s foggy streets give refuge to derelict smatterings of capitalism run dry by free-wheeling liberalism. A world where each turn might bring you to a Jin-Mei fish sales cart ornate in gaudy neon lights, or by the foggy pink-lit windows of an Intaki-run whore house. It’s wealthy live in skyscrapers above the clouds, never seen by the common citizen, and their slums leave no ground surface of their planets untouched, eternally darkened by a canopy of smog.
The Amarr are closest to the Egyptians of Stargate, quick to power-feed on the enslaved to fulfill some greater, but blind, spiritual existence. They’re also thick with political corruption, backstabbing in the name of divinity, with hints of classicism more like the Houses of Dune. The sheer beauty of their golden architecture and massive monuments are meant to inspire religious empowerment, but more likely serve as a facade to hide the more horrific shades of red flowing behind stone walls.
The Caldari are somewhere between the stately order of Star Trek (probably more the NG era), and the lock-and-load militarism of Aliens’ marines. In terms of visuals, it feels like the cold, utilitarian, exposed-materials architecture of the ships in Aliens to perfection. Hard edges that say “it ain’t supposed to be pretty, but it gets the job done”. But I imagine their extreme capitalistic home-worlds are more like the clean vision of San Francisco in Star Trek. Everything is in order. Everything ready when you need it. But what none of those perfectly content citizens know are to what extremes their labor force in space are working to keep things that way.
And finally the Minmatar. This is junky-clunky space faring at it’s finest. Though not space-bound sci-fi necessarily, I think the raw, rusted look of their architecture, and the desperate-but-still-fighting story lends itself to a more post-apocalyptic reality, a la Mad Max. I mean, as far as they’re concerned, the Minmatar faced the apocalypse when they were enslaved by the Amarr. I would imagine, due to this, their planets would be poorly terraformed, leaving dusty deserts spanning all surfaces. Their gang infighting born from simply competing to survive with as little as possible. Their ships built from scraps and their weapons from natures most plentiful resources: fire and powder.
But again, Rettic is simply his own soul lost in a universe of extremes. He’s the resourcefulness and street-wit of Malcolm Reynolds, the cool inquisitiveness of Deckard, the sly spontaneity of Kirk, and the “guy that doesn’t draw attention to himself but is always there on the sidelines when you need him-ness” of Wedge Antilles. He’s all of these guys, and someone completely different at the same time.
What that “something different” is exactly? I don’t know. And neither does he. But when Rettic looks out into the black, he knows the answer is there. And he’s damn determined to find it.
I’d love to hear more takes on how you might see New Eden based on influences. What canon of sci-fi best fits your life in EVE?
There had been a lot of speculation and hype around what might be in store for us come the end of this year when CCP releases the next EVE expansion. Alas, our dreams of finally evolving into bipedal hominids were bursted into fireworks display of tears when it was recently announced that Ambulation would not be included…or maybe that was just me. The arguments for why it’s better that they focus on the frustrating sovereignty system are justified, for sure, but it’s always nice to get entirely new content, and for a moment there, it didn’t look like we were…until CCP released this gem of a statement.
COSMOS, a “fully functioning social network website coupled with EVE interactivity”, is being released in conjunction with the winter expansion. This is incredible news, and frankly, I’m surprised I’m not seeing greater buzz among EVE players about the announcement. This is not a slight gameplay tweak or a cosmetic nice-to-have. This is enormous. This is the kind of feature that, if done right, could not only change the EVE community as we know it, but set a new standard for MMO communities in general that I’ve seen as a long time coming. In case the impact of this announcement hasn’t quite hit home with you, I’m going to attempt to explain:
The Importance of COSMOS
Every MMO, at its core, is a community. Strip the graphics, grind, and even gameplay mechanics, and in the end we would be left with a fully self-sustaining culture. This is not to say that the game itself is not important, as it’s needed to give the culture a common love and bring them together in the first place. But the community is why we come back to EVE, and what keeps us here. Lets face it, if this was a solo game, not a single one of us would have given it the full trial.
That said, an MMO needs to give the culture a means to communicate and thrive. The de facto standard in accomplishing this, of course, has been to do it in-game. We get chat channels, guilds and corporations, alliances, mail systems, buddy systems, etc. Unfortunately, this in-game limitation has always left its players to form their own means of communication outside of the game—because its true that even when we aren’t logged in, we’re still looking for ways to live the culture of the game. So we make twitter profiles for our characters, hundreds of blogs spread across dozens of platforms, clunky corporation and alliance forums, IRC chat rooms, podcasts, and character email accounts. We are then left to our own devices to unify this smattering of content all over the web through portals, lists, referals—any way we can bring eachother together, we try, but the fact is none of us will ever read or perhaps see 95% of the EVE culture that exists outside of the game. We are diluted.
To me, it’s incredible that with the utter success of non-game-related online communities like facebook, it has taken this long for an MMO to realize that providing their players this means of communication outside of the game could strengthen their culture exponentially. Some third party platforms have attempted to tackle the problem, like AvatarsUnited or Gax (which recently announced its closing), but in the end it’s just another outlet for dilution when it has no real connection or integration to the game we love. The value of having an official place to house our culture outside of the game will ensure that, number one, because it’s connected to your already created game account (and not another damn social networking account to manage) it will be used. Two: it will potentially be able to integrate into the game’s mechanics in ways that is off-limits to third party API developers. And one that is not as minor as it sounds, three: we will be assured that it will look and feel like an extension of the game we know and love…and not a half-assed attempt at ripping it off. Official is good.
What We Know
So lets get down to the nitty gritty. What is COSMOS going to be exactly? Frankly, CCP didn’t offer us much of an answer, yet. They explained that while they will launch initially with a few limited features, they will be releasing more “bit by bit” in the future. Here are the features they said will be available at launch:
- Character, corp, and alliance profiles
- Mail system and contacts
They also added, which I assume is what CCP was alluding to in their mysterious response to the related question in the CSM Q&A, that a new “forums” system will be added in the future. I put “forums” in quotes because whether or not this will be a direct reskin of the current official forums or a new imagining of how the forums should operate entirely is still in question.
And that’s it for any specifics we know, according to CCP. The rest is left up to our imaginations for now, which is where the real beauty behind the idea of an official EVE social network really takes hold: its utter potential.
What It Could Be
Admittedly, if all we ever get are simple profiles, mails systems, and reskinned forums, then I’m drastically overhyping the importance of COSMOS (because WoW has had this, save the mail system, in the Armory for over a year now). But I have hope that CCP chose their words carefully when they described it as “fully functioning social network”, implying all that comes with modern internet community sites. With that assumption, if you still don’t buy the importance of what is coming to us this winter yet, lets look at what COSMOS could be in a year or two from now:
All features listed below, while possible, are complete speculation. Should your heart be broken if I tell you unicorns exist and you never get to ride one in your lifetime, you might want to stop reading now. If you believe in magic, join me for a ride on Falkor to see what the future might have in store:
- Introduction of advanced character profiles with built in blog/commenting systems, a la facebook.
- Networking features like tagging profiles (“salvaging, rifters, roleplayer” or “carebear, jita, casual”) that allow you to find other players with your interests, in your home system, etc.
- Corporation and Alliance profiles with built in forums, recruitment systems, charter terms, alleviating the struggle most Corps have with housing their own communities on the web (because so many Corp websites are so bad).
- Global, Corp, and Alliance calendar systems for organizing and inviting to events, ops, etc.
- Everything searchable, always.
- Non-corp groups for any general interest or purpose (pirating, traders, stealth bombers, men with women avatars), leading to possible user-generated forums on said topic.
- Official item databases, which would lead to…
- Built in ship fitters and skill planners, with means to save and share creations. (I’m sure plenty of people would still prefer EVEMon and the like out of habit, but this would be a good solution for those on Mac systems, for example, that are sorlely lacking in this department)
- New mapping system for monitoring sovereignty, Corp war progress, faction warfare.
- Posting/sharing in-game screenshots and videos for photo albums, like facebook, again.
- New ways to keep up with EVE news and happenings, through feeds, status updates, etc. News can spread faster and more accurately than ever before.
- Official live killboards.
- New ways to monitor economies, banking, markets.
- Means of importing outside blog feeds, twitter feeds, etc, to house all other external data in one location (a very standard feature in social media now).
- And of course, mobile apps that allow players to do all of the above.
And those are just off the top of my head. CCP, I’m sure, has lists much longer than this, that are integrating game features that we can’t anticipate. So just imagine if COSMOS did even half of what I listed above. It will be a monumental shift in how our community thrives and would make EVE the first MMO to offer such a rich out-of-game experience. No longer would we turn down a Corp of great people because their lack of web knowledge left them with a poor forum architecture or gaudy website. Everyone looks professional here, so we can base judgement solely on content. No more archaic (though much appreciated) lists of every EVE blogger in the ‘verse (everyone hear CK breathe a sigh of relief).
Incentive for CCP
This all sounds great for the community, but what’s in it for CCP? It seems like a titan-sized load of work, and like any efficient business, they need to know it will be beneficial in the long run. After all, such an elaborate out-of-game presence for the community sounds like it could even hurt the in-game experience, right? Not true.
Contrary to intuitiion, it’s not necessarily in CCP’s interest to keep its players logged in-game. Being a single-shard MMO means that stress on its servers is a real problem. With EVE enormous advertising presence lately, we can be sure that CCP is seeing growth in New Eden like they’ve never seen before. But a web-based network could (would) live on seperate server altogether, taking much needless stress from Tranquility.
Yes, CCP needs pilots in-game in order for everyone to have the most fulfilling experience, but players that would be doing these more administrative, networking, planning, or organizational tasks are only going to be docked in-game anyway, adding to the server load while providing little enjoyment for pilots in action. CCP could seperate the server workloads entirely, helping them control the expansion of their player base. And as far as CCP is truly concerned, as long as they’re getting subscription fees, they probably couldn’t care less whether we’re in-game or not.
It is also a possibility that in the distant future, CCP could provide features to COSMOS that only exist on COSMOS. Building new features in a website framework would be infinitely less resource intensive than screwing with their game architecture to introduce new functionality. This, I imagine, is the same reason why WoW’s armory only exists on the web. The amount of server-calls it would take to house a full item database in-game would only add to lag, and design would require them to do some major adjustments to the UI in order to introduce new windows and search forms.
And finally, it will be a major draw to new players. Facebook isn’t even a game, but people are addicted to it as much as any MMO in existence. People understand social networks now, and to hear that a game they have slight interest in has a fully fledging social community on the web as well, it won’t be hard to convince anyone that enjoys that aspect of online gaming. COSMOS can offer new, faster ways for people to find the right Corp for them, meet friends with common interests, and sustain their devotion to the community when they don’t have access to the game itself (yes, I’m talking about browsing at work).
In Sum
I’m sure, even after this enormous celebratory rant, there will be some that are still skeptics. Some will be convinced it will bring new problems, and draw people away from the game experience into unknown territory. But what is more in the spirit of science fiction than exploring the unknown? We all should be proud of the fact that CCP is taking a leap forward into a realm of social connectivity that even the more prolific MMO’s haven’t attempted yet. This may just set a new standard for online gaming, and as cheesy as it sounds, putting more attention into what truly draws us into New Eden time and time again—each other. I, for one, can go without walking on two legs for a good while longer, if it means we see the potential of COSMOS sooner.
