When Eve Bleeds

Last week my wife was sitting behind me while I was playing Eve. This is unusual enough in its own right, but we also had comms going at the time. We were discussing something or other when some of the guys started down a path talking about their wives and girlfriends. She put her hand up and we paused to listen.

This went on for about five minutes or so and we both had a nice laugh about it. My wife and I do not share many Eve moments, but that was a good one.

It started me thinking about other times that Eve has bled into my real life.

A few years ago one of my then employees wandered into my office to tell me some important news. It was a serious moment and she finally worked up to telling me she was pregnant. Suddenly, from out of my computer, came a series of horrible, racist, anti-homosexual language! I quickly muted the computer, but I was rather embarrassed to say the least. I had forgotten to turn off the Teamspeak from hours earlier. Something I'm sure many of us have done. The employee laughed and so did I. The timing was impeccable.

I was once in a meeting with a retail clothing chain. About half-way through the meeting we were interrupted by an associate who was having problems with a rather large shipment. Those around the table paused and started debating solutions to this problem. For about ten minutes I heard, in rather extreme detail, just how much of a pain in the ass this shipment of mittens was causing. Damn mittens, stupid mittens, I can't believe how hard it is to get mittens from China these days! On and on about mittens. As you can imagine, eventually I broke down and had to excuse myself from the meeting. True story.

Yesterday I was on a call with a company in London who will be providing some services for a client of ours. The bloke I was talking with sounded rather familiar to me. It bothered me all night and this morning when he called back I finally had my chance, "You don't happen to play Eve do you?", I asked. There was a pause. "Why yes, yes I do." Or rather, he did. I promised not to reveal who he was, or will be again, since I seem to have convinced him to return to Eve and give it another shot.

Eve has very little to do with real life of course, so it is rather unusual for it to leak in. But it does. Sometimes at the weirdest moments when you least expect it.


I'm sure you have some great stories about Eve sneaking its way into your life.




Comments

Unknown said…
A couple of my clients that bought tile in our store looked the gamer type, but I don't make a habit of asking what games they play. I have some professionalism. Well at least not right away :P. I get lots of WoW heads and usually I scoff at that, but I did run into a pretty solid EVE player and got to gaming with him.

My favorite memory of RL meets gaming was in 2007(ish). I was playing Lineage 2 and a guild member was telling everyone in ventrilo a joke. How do you maintain a happy marriage when your wife has epilepsy? Put a strobe light in the bedroom. The punch line wasn't finished when the mic picks up his wife cursing and slapping him senseless. Now, as bad or tasteless as the joke is, it was the capture or memory of his wife's reaction that made us laugh for hours. His wife didn't game, but from that point on, she was a part of our group, like it or not :D.
Rixx Javix said…
Wow. I once remember this guy on comms that we all thought had to be 12. One day he was ranting and raving about yet another lost ship when he dad yells at him to get off "the gd computer or else Randal!!" lol. We never heard from him again after that.
Hong WeiLoh said…
I actually got into EVE via "RL".

I bought "EVE: The Empyrean Age", and didn't bother to read the inside cover or acknowledgements. I didn't realize I'd bought a "game-book". The description on the back cover looked interesting, I picked it up, there ya go.

Was at Starbucks reading it a day or two later, and some random dude comes up to me, Random dude: "Hey man! You play EVE?!? AWESOME. I didn't think I'd ever meet anyone around here who plays EVE!"
Me: "_Plays_ EVE? Oh. What kinda game is it?"
Random: "It's an MMO. You can build ships, blow other people up, it's mostly about PvP."

That day when I got home, I looked it up and started my trial.
3 yrs and some change later, here I am still. :-D