Social Gaming and EVE Online

Is EVE the game of the future? Will EVE fulfill its full potential as a sandbox sci-fi simulator? Can EVE attract more users from different genres to flesh out its legs game?

These are some big questions, and I honestly don't know the answers. With the recent release of Incarna, CCP has given EVE's players the beginning of a new world to explore, and soonTM players will be able to exit their captains quarters and explore the excitement and the depravities of life in a space station. But will this truly be a world players can buy into as a (more or less) true-to-life sci-fi simulator, or will it be a glorified chat box with fancy 3D avatars?

I fear that CCP is not working on making walking in stations any more than a glorified chat box. While it'll be unquestionably good looking and technically amazing, it seems like the station game may be quite lifeless. Instead of clicking on an agent in your UI to get a mission, you have the option to walk up to him or her in a station to get the mission. More immersive? Perhaps for some people, but for most of us that's just a waste of valuable time we could spend working on the mission instead of walking around a station. Besides, this is a sci-fi universe, and it's completely understandable that agents would prefer communication through an interface rather than in-person. It was already described in the EVE novel, The Burning Life. Sometimes agents set up simulations of themselves so they can take breaks. The interface solution is a very real part of the universe and makes physically walking up to agents at best pointless and redundant and at worst, immersion-breaking depending on how it's done.

So having the avatars to go talk to agents is pointless, perhaps the nightlife will be attractive to people. So you walk into a club on the station and see a bunch of people standing around…chatting. This station experience is seeming more and more like just a chatroom with 3D avatars. There is nothing to do here except stand around and talk. You skirt the edge of the room, looking for an exit and come upon a gaming table. Now this looks interesting! You join the table and play a round of 3D chess or holographic war-games. Now that's pretty neat! It's the first, and only sign that there might actually be something for you to DO in space stations. But in doing so, you've removed yourself from the social environment of the station and just gone into another simulator with another person or two.

So you walk out the door and head to the main area of the station. It's time to browse some shops. You stop at a central computer or access your data interface implant to view the merchandise and corporation offices available in the station, select the one you want to go to, and head in. You step onto the correct moving walkway and head in that direction, walking on path to get there even faster. Along the way you pass…nothing. Big empty spaces that are breathtaking, but empty. And you continue on to the empty offices and shops to see what's available.

Do you see the problem?

CCP has described an amazing environment with really neat customization and features, but to-date have mentioned very little that will involve players themselves in the social life on stations. It's easy to imagine space as being a place that can have vast distances where you're totally alone or nearly-so, places that are desolate and unpopulated. But a station environment means you have tens or hundreds of thousands of people confined in a place where they live out their entire lives. A place where it's vital to see life teeming around you--in shops, offices, places where people are just going about their business, and especially in the nightlife.

I don't know about your town, but in my town--and every one I've ever visited--the bars and nightclubs that are most popular are the ones with dancers and live music. These are places where you can really kick back and have a lot of fun while you drink, game, or join in on the dance floor. The interactive entertainment adds a lot to real life, and is absolutely essential to lending a real-life element to make stations more attractive for people to hang out.

Entertainment has already been mentioned tangentially in the EVE gameworld--what do you think Pleasure Hubs are? And before you come down hard on me about pod pilots not "debasing" themselves by participating in "low-class" activities like dancing, read The Empyrean Age. Military pod pilots participate in the night life by dancing. These are the elite of the elite getting down on the dance floor.

Performing music and dancing are two very open forms of entertainment for players and don't exclude the rest of the station's population like gaming tables do. Performance is inclusive, immersive, and adds a great deal of realism to the environment. I believe it is an absolutely necessary component to fully realize a sandbox sci-fi simulator and an excellent opportunity for EVE's developers to truly make this the game of the future.

It's a stated goal on the developers' part to make the game more accessible to the general population. This is why Incarna came about. This is why the tutorial has been reworked so many times. It's absolutely vital for CCP to follow through on this and include as many social elements as possible in the game. It makes the game more attractive to the average player while maintaining the high science fiction appeal of the simulation.

Additionally, EVE now has the opportunity to capitalize on social features like never before. Perhaps the most social sci-fi game ever created was Star Wars Galaxies. It was a failure of a game in many aspects, but its one shining point was allowing players unprecedented social access--part of why the game lasted as long as it did, despite having poor combat mechanics and going through multiple updates to those mechanics, hemorrhaging players all the way.

As Raph Koster posted in his blog recently, "(Star Wars Galaxies) gave us features that continue to amaze people who don’t realize what can be done: real economies complete with supply chains and wholesalers and shopkeepers, that amazing pet system, the moods and chat bubbles (anyone remember what chat in 3d MMOs looked like before SWG?), player cities, vehicles, spaceflight…And dancing. Which everyone made fun of. But as far as I am concerned, it may have been the biggest and best contribution, the one that spawned a jillion YouTube videos and may well be the lasting influence the game leaves behind, an imprint on all the games since: a brief moment where you can stop saving the world or killing rats and realize the real scope and potential of the medium." (my emphasis)

EVE already integrates much of what is available in SWG--real economies, supply chains, wholesalers, shopkeepers, player-owned facilities, and spaceflight. But it's missing what Koster describes as "perhaps the biggest and best contribution" to games--dancing. Entertainment. Obviously when we were just ships, we couldn't have that component, but now that we're avatars, there's a great opportunity out there for the taking. Especially now that SWG is shutting down in December.

There are already tens of thousands of former SWG players, many of them former Entertainers in SWG looking for a new MMO home, but none really exist at this time. There are games (Second Life) that have great social components, but nothing in the way of sci-fi simulation. There are games (EVE) with great sci-fi simulation, but little in the way of social components. In December there will be thousands more SWG players looking for a new home, and I hope EVE capitalizes on that by making the station game more appealing to people who are social gamers.

In the wake of SOE's announcement about SWG, a lot of players are wondering where they can go, because they just haven't found any games that appeal to them the way SWG does. I quote one of my good friends, and a highly influential player correspondent from SWG, "EVE isn't for me, it's already been suggested, but until it's more like SWG…it's not something I want to play. Also, you don't actually fly your own ship." This potential EVE player (and many more like her) is seeking a truly social experience in the sci-fi genre. (And also more individual control over her ship in EVE--something I'll go into in a different post). Her reaction isn't unusual. A lot of players just like her are looking for a new MMO, and there just isn't one out there. EVE comes the closest, but it fails to attract them because of its lack of a social component like a fully fleshed-out "ground" game including all the elements of the social human experience.

There are thousands of posts on the SWG forums mentioning EVE Online. That's a lot of interest if EVE capitalizes on it, but in order to do so EVE absolutely must capture some of the things people love about SWG.

Here are some quotes from SWG players:
"Sadly EVE Online would probably fit the bill (of a sandbox MMO--no elves or magic wands) the best. Some people love it, but most won't really care for it. It has some nice aspects like a real crafting system, and resource gathering system. But then it's severely severely lacking in other almost every other area that one comes to expect in an MMO."

"Eve Online is a good game to try."

"(SWG) survived this long, because other than EVE its the only other true sandbox game out there-- and even gimped and crippled as it was, it still was pretty good."

"Any ideas for alternative MMO's to play for now that aren't WoW or fantasy?"
"Uhm…Eve and I guess Eve. That's about it. "

"I'm playing EVE....it's not bad."

"Hopefully our server community will keep in touch and maybe play TOR together. Otherwise you can find me on EVE"

"I had a run in EQ2 and EVE. When I saw the crafting systems there, I was thinking 'This is it? Everyone makes the exact same items the exact same way? How lame is that!' Houseing, crafting, entertainer open terrain and so on…"

"EVE Online, with Incarna finally coming out letting you walk around your Quarters for now, and eventually parts of stations by the end of the year, will probably be the closest thing left to SWG besides to the emulator. Will be able to sit around and do nothing in bars"

"In terms of economy/crafting and socio-political sandbox with territory control EVE has always surpassed this game. But with the current lean to RMT CCP seem to be taking I would think twice before recommending it."

"Eve online has a great community, one server, and it is a vast sandbox like SWG was."

"I cannot recommend Eve at all right now."

"If it wasn't for the fact that due to EVE's depth (which is why it is the greatest 'player driven' sandbox out there) it takes an inordinate amount of time to actually 'get into', i'd say give the trial a go."

"I would stay clear of investing any time in EVE."

"eve online has some awesome ships but not for me right now."

"I didn't like EvE that much either, but i didn't play it very long before I decided it was a snooze grind."

As you can see, the SWG players have great interest in EVE Online, but also great trepidation. EVE is exactly the type of game they want to play, but it needs to have more of the components that SWG had for facilitating communities which in-turn foster long-term commitment to the game.

A huge aspect of attracting that customer base is including social tools like music and dancing in the immediate future. This aspect of community gaming is highly appealing to people who are looking for a "third place." A Third Place is a concept described in academic settings as a release for people from their First Place and Second Place. First Place being where a person lives and Second Place being where a person works. A Third Place is where people go to relax and get away from the other two--typically a bar, nightclub or coffee shop setting. In addition to providing a real life Third Place of the game itself, EVE can add a level of realism to the game by fostering an in-game Third Place environment inside the stations by encouraging an active social community. The social aspect adds a great deal to the idea of a sci-fi simulator.

Not only are social gaming aspects like player music and dancing attractive to traditional gamers, they reach out to a number of non-traditional gamers as well. The players who enjoyed the Entertainer professions in SWG were more diverse than perhaps any other game I've ever experienced. More than 50% of the people playing that aspect of the game were female. A large number of them were professional women looking for a relaxing break from real life. You also attract members of other non-traditional gamer groups such as GLBT gamers and older gamers. There were a staggering number of 55+ aged people playing Entertainers and otherwise facilitating communities in SWG. Social gaming aspects also attract groups of people you would otherwise never expect to play a game. In SWG I met a couple of individuals who suffered from agoraphobia, and the gaming environment was their only social release. Their therapists had actually "prescribed" the Entertainer class to them as a social outlet to allow them to interact with other people in a realistic environment without having the stress of leaving their homes. Social gaming aspects bring people into your game that you'd never expect.

CCP can learn a lot from SWG, and if they integrate some true social interactivity into the Incarna content, they'll no-doubt earn a lot from SWG too. EVE's stations can be more than glorified chatrooms. There are currently tens of thousands of gamers and potential gamers out there seeking a science fiction simulator that really approximates how life would be in an alternate universe, and EVE is incredibly close to realizing that for them. EVE is very close to becoming the MMO of the future. It's very close to becoming the ultimate sci-fi simulator. It has the potential to attract thousands of new long-term players and solidify the commitment of curent players. However, in order to do these things EVE's developers must recognize and act upon giving players a truly unique social experience in stations that will not only make walking-in-stations a desirable feature, but also encourage it to be a long-term commitment instead of a one-time novelty.