New Eden Banter #1 | Eve Online Forever

My good friend CrazyKinux has jump started a new version of the Blog Banters over on his blog and this time he's calling them "New Eden Banters". This is a great idea and should help to keep the few of us still pounding out regular blog posts busy. For the first one of these the theme is simple:

This month's topic: EVE Online is now more than two decades old—older than some of its players. In a genre where most MMORPGs fade or shut down, EVE has kept evolving. What do you think is the secret behind its longevity? Why is EVE still here—and still feeling alive—when so many of its contemporaries have declined or disappeared?

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You can go read the other respondents posts, links at the bottom, but for this one I'm going to take a slightly different approach. Unusual I know. I've read the other posts that have been written so far and they are all very good and make excellent points about Eve Online and its history. All valid. The player driven story, the sandbox, the drama, the history, and the unique game play elements. There are more reasons why Eve Online has lasted 23 years than there are years. And, again, all of those are valid.

But lately I've been thinking along a slightly different angle. And today I'd like to share this with you. It is an early theory and not fully formed, but this banter came along - so I'll do my best to explain my thoughts.

The Radio Theory

In 1938 Orson Welles broadcast a version of H.G.Wells' 'War of the Worlds' and through a series of fake new reports and on-site reporting, created a panic based on nothing but sound. Radio plays were big business back in the day and people would gather around the radio to hear drama, adventure, comedy, and much more over the airwaves. Now, Eve is not a radio program. Obviously. But I think it shares a fundamental element with the best that radio offers that has helped it become so alive in the minds of its players. But before I get to that part, let's move forward a bit to a special Summer in Eve's history.

In 2011 CCP introduced an expansion called "Incarna" which rather famously unveiled a very basic form of character ambulation into Eve Online. For the first time ever you could walk your character around the docking bay, down a short hallway, and into your very own Captain's Quarters. This was the beginning of what was promised to be a new era of Walking in Stations. And, without going into an entire history lesson here, let's just say things did not go as planned. And soon, the entire thing was scrapped. Gone to the mists of time.

It is my opinion that ambulation would have killed Eve Online. Today I cringe whenever I see someone on Reddit beg CCP to bring back Walking in Stations. I cringe because we came very close that Summer to watching CCP shoot themselves in the foot and drag Eve Online into the uncanny valley of ambulation. Fortunately this did not happen and it should never happen. Ever. Why?

Because this is Eve's unique power - Eve is like a radio play.

I believe that Eve has been successful because it hits the same fundamental imagination buttons in our brains that great radio plays hit. Because we do not have avatars in Eve, because we aren't walking around and bumping into each other, because we are not given our imaginations on a silver plate - we are forced to create those moments in our own imaginations. And this jumping off point is what truly makes Eve come alive.

Our love of spaceships. Our stories. Our shared community. Our history. All of the other reasons that Eve has survived 23 years are all based on this one fundamental element - Eve gives us all room to imagine. To fill in the blanks. To create our own reality. To build our own stories. To fly among the stars and find our own destiny. And, almost as importantly, not be locked into janky 3d versions of ourselves created on technology that only gets worse and worse over the years.

This incredible bit of good luck is only possible because Eve was created so long ago and with such ancient technology that the original creators were forced to build it without characters. So they did the amazing thing of focusing on spaceships instead. And we owe everything that has come afterwards to this incredibly unique moment in time and the decisions those limitations forced upon them. Eve sprung forth at the perfect time and has been built into an incredible spaceship focused world like no other. There simply isn't anything else like it.

Who would even try such a thing now? You gotta have people in your game, characters, aliens, robots, whatever for gamers to attach to and live through. But not Eve Online. Nope. We don't have those. All we have is our own imaginations.

I've spent my imagination currency creating Rixx Javix into an almost two decade old character that feels as alive and real as I do... oh wait, he IS me. I can write endlessly about his adventures, his thoughts, his dreams, and his failures because of this imaginary connection between us. And a large part of that connection is the same that helped people bring radio to life. And beyond radio, into written language books.

I believe we are very fortunate that Eve Online doesn't have ambulation. And I think none of us realize just how fortunate we are. I think characters in Eve would have destroyed the game, turned it into just another cookie-cutter science fiction universe - and while it might still be puttering along somewhere - it never would have reached the longevity that our version has reached.

This is my opinion. I have no proof. But I do believe that if you are willing to consider it for a moment, you'll see that there is truth here. Eve allows us the room to live within its confines and by doing this for us, it has come to life in a unique way. A way that continues to fuel the community and the story of Eve Online for all of us. A shared journey fueled by our own imaginations.

Something to think about.

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