It started as a challenge from T-Amber on the then Eve Creative Slack (which is now on Discord) to create an old-school version of Eve Online. I took that initial idea and ran with it. The Drifters were new to Eve back then and they made perfect bad guys for our hero (you!) to fight at home.
As things do here in the Eve community the idea of Drifter Wars was just too good to pass up and soon I was contacted by a gentleman named Igor Puschner who wanted to turn it into a real side-scrolling video game complete with 8-bit graphics. Well of course I said yes. And so began a month long journey into creating a library of 8-bit Eve elements, different levels, and a compelling, over-arching story arc for the game. Meanwhile I did my best to reach out to someone at CCP about the project. However this was during a time when CCP was seeing a lot of turnover, with many new people coming into the picture while many older staff members were leaving for other platforms. It was a time of change. I personally believe if such a project came along today we could figure out a way to make it work - but sadly back then it just didn't.
Within two days of launching the game we were asked nicely to take it down. Which we did. I really, really wish I had a self-contained version of this that I could save and play on my own computer from time to time - it really was a lot of fun to play. But sadly Igor didn't take the news well and essentially killed the game server. Which I can't blame him for, he did put a lot of work into it.
I'm going to be writing more of these posts in the future. It has occurred to me that while I remember these stories that many new readers and new players have probably never heard about them before. Time marches on and Eve history, the kind that doesn't make it into books or media coverage, still needs to be told and saved.
I once created a fake video game that turned into a real video game that existed and could be played for two days.
Not many people can say the same.