This Saturday, September 21st, will be my 16th Anniversary of playing Eve Online. On that date back in 2008 I downloaded the game knowing almost nothing about it - other than it was an internet spaceship game made by a company in Iceland. Based solely on that information I created a character named after the capital of Iceland - Reykjavik. Or, as I translated it into science-fiction, Rixx Javix. And a legend was born.
Although it would be a few years before anything legendary happened. I was a very, very busy professional back then. Business owner and managing forty-plus employees in my creative agency. Those first few years were spent mainly playing on weekends when possible, sneaking in on a lunch here and there, or a few precious hours in the evenings with my Son. I essentially followed him around Null for the first two years, tried to learn as much as I could, train my skills, and fall into several Alliance leadership roles. My real Eve career didn't get started until 2010 when I made the decision to start a blog called Eveoganda. My role as unofficial Minister of Propaganda for LFA/CVA down in Providence inspired the name. Eve + Propaganda = Eveoganda.
I had a lot to learn. I made a lot of mistakes back in those days. Mistakes mostly based on just pure ignorance. I freely admit to not always knowing what I was doing, or how things worked, or how CCP worked. So I set out to learn more and educate myself as best I could. I threw myself wholeheartedly into the community and supporting my fellow bloggers and content creators. I learned that CCP had no official way of working directly with the talented people in our community and I took it upon myself to try and change that. It wasn't easy. Back then, as soon as I'd make inroads and contacts with people at CCP they'd vanish, or leave, or be promoted into new roles. But as time moved on new communication tools and social media platforms helped make that process easier.
This effort culminated in 2014 when I was asked to help collaborate on the re-launch of the Eve Store. This effort just so happened to coincide with a professional change in my own life. And I had only recently started to focus on consulting and exploring my own creative efforts. Some of that effort resulted in a series of Eve art posters I had created. These posters started getting a lot of attention, both within and outside of the community. During the process of working on the store the idea evolved into CCP selling some of those posters themselves. And in early 2015 I found myself at my very first Fanfest with my posters on sale in the store there. I did a talk about my goals for Eve artists and creatives, sat in on a roundtable, and signed my posters in Harpa. Which remains a personal career highlight.
It worked. Eventually. More changes at CCP resulted in more misunderstandings, some of which I regret to this day. But determination and fortitude remain my strongest assets and eventually myself and other artists did indeed get the chance to officially work with the Eve IP. It took longer than it should have, but it was still a major victory. And those involved at CCP deserve a tremendous amount of credit for helping make it happen.
Inside of Eve I decided to finally stop following other people and, in early 2013, my Son and I founded Stay Frosty. The idea from the very beginning was simple - to create a drama-free Low Sec focused Pirate group that anyone could be a part of. It got off to a rocky start, there were a lot of forces that did not want us to succeed. But we stood strong and never gave up. I used this blog as a soap box and expressed my opinions, my propaganda, and my convictions. And over the years thousands of players have helped us shape and grow Stay Frosty and, eventually, A Band Apart alliance - into the premier independent Pirate group of Low Security space. Bar none.
There has been so much more over the years. The above is just the tip of the iceberg. I haven't even mentioned Warp Core Stabilizers, or Vagabond frills, or the Mittani, or any of a hundred other incidents or controversies over the last sixteen years. Those will be for other posts.
I can't believe it will be sixteen years already. It has flown by. A little too fast if you want to know the truth. I never would have imagined it back on that day in 2008. All the adventures, the friends, the travel, the drama, the suspense, the sheer amount of fun. Who could have known?
And it still feels like I'm just getting started.