Reporting about Eve for outsiders

I like reading about games I do not play or intend to play, especially after action reports.
I think massively multiplayer online games (MMO) are under-reported to the general gaming public after the initial release. Reviews and articles about these games should deal not only with the gameplay features but also with the community of players: the added value of any game which gives it room to express itself. If two MMO with identical features were released, they would provide different experiences to their players depending on the state of their community.

Hence this article. Its purpose is to provide time-starved journalists or bloggers with a peek at the many sources of information they can rely upon when
- trying to decide if there are news about Eve Online fit to print and, if there are,
- writing the articles.



Eve Online is event-rich due to...
- its features and philosophy (sandbox approach in a single shard),
- its free expansions policy (regularly expanding its scope and depth) and
- the sheer size of its community (500,000+ accounts).



How it does concern non-Eve-playing readers:
Landscape-altering events happen every few months, be they developer-driven (introduction of new mechanics and objects, such as the wormholes), player-driven (space wars, financial news) or a mix of both (the Fanfest convention, player-versus-player tournaments). Newsworthiness is subjective but...

- the stories are exciting on their own
For example, 2009's most significant event in the world of New Eden, in my opinion, was the destruction of the Band of Brothers player alliance after one of its directors turned coat and joined their nemesis, the Goonswarm alliance. The ensuing invasion of "Fortress Delve" by a coalition of thousands of players and the end of this war made for an interesting epic to tell to outsiders, a story of conquest and revenge, loyalty and betrayal, cunning strategies and stupid moves. By 2014, Goons and their allies control half of the world and are set in a standoff with the N3 power bloc.

- science-fiction talks about us
Science-fiction as a genre allows the exploration of themes and philosophies by addressing the limits of the concepts which define our existence. When the virtual bank Ebank encountered dire straits due to the betrayal of one of its directors, a NY Times article did draw parallels with the real world's bailouts.
In his 2007 book Exodus to the Virtual World: How Online Fun Is Changing Reality, Edward Castronova postulates that gaming design is going to affect public policy to some degree in the future. Whether this prediction comes true or not, an environment like New Eden (the game setting) can provide a basis for stimulating reflexions about the real world.

List of sources
official - First of all, when trying to report about Eve Online, begin the tour with an obvious but mandatory look at the game's homepage and/or Facebook.
A few years back, the ebbs and flows of the "null sec wars" were summarized in very readable "CORPS" reports on the official forum. These reports were redacted by CCP and aimed to be objective. Unfortunately, they were published with as much regularity (that is, not that much) as the Quarterly Economic Newsletter, also compiled by CCP and which used to reveal some economic data to the playerbase.
For more in-depth information about new features and projects, take a look at the Dev Blogs. Those are used by the developers to communicate their plans and ideas to the players. They can get quite technical for the non players though, so I suggest turning to the players' media for information.

blogs and forums - For a start, EveNews24 and The Mittani, two competing information blogs, will help you get an idea of the current vibe in the community. They publish pieces about in-game events, interviews with developers and prominent players, investigations, etc. Useful to keep track of null sec politics and battles. EveNews24 is older while The Mittani is headed by the eponymous leader of the biggest power bloc in the game, who previously authored Sins of a Solar Spymaster, a series of 88 articles written for the general gaming public about Eve. Just remember to take everything with a grain of salt. Everybody is trying to sell something.
And how do you know they are lying? Easy, they are posting. For some "forum porn" or the latest dirt - or some archive-digged jewels, direct yourself to unofficial forums: The Chatsubo (roleplayers), Failheap Challenge -formerly known as Scrapheap Challenge- (griefers and gankers) and Kugutsumen (hackers and spies). Sadly, Chatsubo (and roleplay) peeked in 2007 and is now quite desert. Kugutsumen is no longer a place about Eve but they advertise Zulu Squad 'Eve Uncensored' forum. For archives also, take a look at the Eve Tribune, which published weekly rants for quite a long time back then. Massively, a professional MMO blog, keeps covering Eve news.
In gaming communities you frequently find organiser types who give a voice and a link to  many smaller voices. For a long time, CrazyKinux's Musing blog was the "Grand Blog Central" of Eve Online. CK (CrazyKinux) maintained the Blog Roll, a list of Eve-related blogs you might find useful to understand the range of activities available to the players in the game, from pirate or industrialist to "salvage thief" or explorer. CK stopped attending his site and other players (such as Bill Dullemond for the Blog Banter and Eve Bloggers, aka the Eve Online Portal) stepped up to assume blog-aggregating activities.

other languages - If you happen to be French-speaking: les forums sont JeuxVidéo.com (le moins intéressant), Mondes persistants, Jeux Online (les deux historiques) et Frugu (sans oublier le forum officiel en français).
If you speak other languages and would like to point me at the relevant sources, please feel free to comment.


video - The CCP Youtube channel is another place to go to. The videos they make display very little user interface and are generally short and to the point. CCP are very happy with the Butterfly Effect video they released and you can bet they will release other such videos, designed to explain the game to people who do not play it (and entice them into giving it a try).
Some player-made videos are remarkable. Take a look at Clear Skies, for example; old video but good reference.

twitter - If you want to get an instant feel of the community, try the Tweet Fleet and, of course, the tags #tweetfleet or #eveonline.

Edited 2011/02/19: Eve News24.
Edited 2011/06/23: Scrapheap Challenge is gone and replaced by Failheap Challenge
Edited 2014/10/17: general update, removed dead links (CK's, etc.) and put some new media in

Worlds of Darkness 7: communication

"Our tweets will blot out the sun
- We will chat in the dark"

Contemporary horror takes place in the future, because the future is now
The future World of Darkness (WoD) might well have a stronger cyberpunk flavor, if only because Earth 2009 is already a cyberpunk setting.
It also meets a design constraint in this game rooted in storytelling and roleplaying: communication and information need much more emphasis in a MMO than in a pen-and-paper game. If the game does not deliver communication and information tools on a level worthy of a cyberpunk-themed Matrix, the impracticality will hurt the community and the game, and the tools will be used all the same, only not through the game client and exclusively so -out of game communication will occur, there is no way around that.
The community is the added value and a fundamental feature of any MMO; you want to make sure that the players have all the means at their disposal to communicate between each other, to reach out to strangers and to feel connected to the community. The tools need to be able to cope with the numbers involved in any group gameplay the players want to take part in.

The Internet of Darkness: ubiquitous, safe
In Eve Online, every player can access multiple chat channels (local, corp, fleet, etc.) which, along with all other communication tools, can be deemed to be in-character. Instant communication throughout a whole star cluster does not seem out of place in a science-fiction setting featuring extremely advanced technology. But do we picture the vampires and werewolves of the 21st century communicating this way? We have to, as outlined above. The communication tools we use every day online are bound to be used more and more to help MMO players interact. This is one instance where function is all that matters.
The genre of the setting does not matter, in the end. World of Warcraft, a fantasy game, already offers chat and mail capabilities to the players. It does not break immersion (with genre in mind) too much, by integrating the mailing system into the game world (a post office service using physical mail boxes) and by dissociating the chat tool from the game world. WoD might use this method: 'wodmails', like evemails, would be part of the game world and considered to be encrypted emails, while chat would not and would not materialize in the game universe. On the other hand, it is possible that user interface designers manage to find a way to make chat channels look part of the game world in a plausible way. Mobile phones are ubiquitous nowadays, and their capabilities, which include discrete ear plugs and mics, can expand into the realms of face recognition and subvocalized conferencing.

You also cannot offer the possibility to hack into channels through in-game actions, besides social engineering. In-game instant messaging and emailing needs to be 100% safe and efficient, otherwise it will not be used for any serious business (as, of course, Internet vampires are to be regarded). Plotting will be so much easier than on the tabletop version when you had to physically move to the kitchen or the corridor to whisper secrets to your fellow conspirator without risking your other half-friends half-enemies learning about them.

Speaking? Over my dead keyboard!
The most basic communication takes place in the immediate surroundings of a character: let's say another character enters the street where mine lurks. I wish to greet him. Do I type a greeting or do I actually speak in my microphone? Software can alter any voice in real time (because, doh, the disturbance in the Force caused by all those baritone chicks) -"voice fonts" are announced for Incarna. Technology could also allow the characters to pronounce text typed by the players. But all this fancy stuff is probably not in the works, as it looks cool but not necessary. Plus it had better stay optional. If speaking becomes necessary to communicate, some people will have a hard time socializing: for example, disabled players, players who need to keep quiet to respect their non-gaming entourage and players with a strong accent (besides the wonderful French accent of course).

Vampire TV is on the way
In a typical World of Darkness roleplaying game, characters feel isolated. They can work with small group of like-minded individuals but stay mostly oblivious of the earth-shattering occult events taking place in the country next door. The very definition of 'occult' precludes any concept of 'public'. Isolation and fear are rampant. For most of the characters, there is no secret TV channel broadcasting news about the occult world. Now, I bet there will be one such outlet, albeit primarily player-supported, in the MMO. Eve Online has its TV, its radios, its podcasts. "Hidden media" will become an integral part of the user-generated half of World of Darkness, making it much more different from the tabletop version we experienced.
The upcoming delivery of the New Eden communication platform for Eve Online and DUST 514 will certainly give us a first taste of what could be in store for WoD.

The fourth power
Players communicate, but what about the peculiar relationship between supernatural denizens of the World of Darkness and the media? Their continuing existence depends upon their hidden societies being kept away from the spotlights. Getting some kind of control over media outlets seems like a good if risky way to ensure secrecy.
The game might provide us with mechanics to try and become the media mafia or buy its services, something that would allow the mastermind to bend the rules of aggression to his or her advantage (ignoring transgressions of the Masquerade for example), but could also backfire in a very bloody way (some creatures frown upon the media being toyed with; other creatures could infiltrate the media organization and plot against the mastermind). The equivalent of Eve Online's high sec wars, perhaps.
In any case, in the World of Darkness, you hide from the media or you make it your weapon, but you do not ignore its baleful eyes.

Reykjavik

Wednesday, 30th of September
The hotel where I am does actually sell access to Internet. In Iceland, in 2009. I got pretty disappointed about that. (Tap water was free.) Moreover, it's the kind of access where you can basically just surf the web and not do anything remotely exciting like, you know, plugging a cable to upload photos -I might edit this post later. [edited!]

That was the compulsory rant, now let us speak about the city itself. Cold, but not that much, sunny and full of interesting things. In no particular order:

The National Museum of Iceland. Entry is free on Wednesday. Where we learn that there were Vikings, then the Sterlung Age (time of strife), then the Old Covenant bringing the island under the domination of the king of Norway, then the plague, the execution of the last Catholic bishop, the Icelandic Bible, fishing, more bibles and more fishes, nowadays. Ok, I may have taken a few shortcuts, but the point is that the question I had when I entered (what happened between Egill Skallagrimsson and the Fanfest?) was answered by, basically: nothing but fishing and praying.

The Reykjavik Cathedral. I like churches and temples. Europe can be proud of what its builders managed to erect in the Middle Ages and ever since. I also like size in a church. I do not think it is gross: bigger is not necessarily better, but I believe it helps the mind leave the human world behind and reach at the sky. Saying I was disappointed by the Reykjavik Cathedral would be an understatement. Though its age is quite impressive, it looks smaller than any of the churches of the suburb where I was raised. The Ausurvöllur Square in front of the Cathedral is also quite small. Places of historical significance can sometimes fail to impress the hurried passersby.

The Hallgrimskirkja Church. I was looking forward to bask in the huge shadow of the church built between 1945 and 1986. Unfortunately, Reykjavik's iconic building was wrapped in scaffoldings. Inside, I was happy to discover a very impressive organ.

The Reykjavik Art Museum.
There were wall-sized paintings of frames from films by Lars von Trier and Fridrik Thor Fridriksson -the Chinese artists who draw the frames seem to have been forgotten in the process and that is a shame; even craftsmen deserve recognition; I enjoyed the interesting video installation that was part of the package.
On the ground floor, kind of hidden among shipping crates, there was a series of crude drawings by an artist named Yoshitomo Nara and one member of the graf collaborative. I actually enjoyed the installation, which reminded me of underground comics.
There were other parts in the Museum but I am pressed by time so there is my best memory of Reykjavik so far:

Einar Jónsson Sculpture Garden. This Einar Jónsson was a great Christian sculptor and I enjoyed his sculptures more than anything else in the city. I highly recommend anyone visiting Reykjavik to pay a visit to the garden which is located near Hallgrims Church. I came back to the garden and visited the museum on Sunday (bonus: entrance was free on this day). Here is a picture of one of my favorite sculptures, The Crucible. The message it conveys seduces and inspires me. In the background you can see the museum and even the top of Hallgrims Church.

Sunday, 4th of October: evening at the Blue Lagoon
Along with a few other French-speaking gamers, I spent my last evening in Iceland in the hot (40° Celsius) waters of the Blue Lagoon. I took no pictures but eery is the word which springs to my mind when I try to describe the experience. I remember seeing naked heads emerge from some milky pool, surrounded by clouds of vapor, powerful spotlights checking on people from time to time, the starry night above and the frozen volcanic desert a few meters away. You would have believed yourself in some science-fiction movie, in a soup of clones waiting to escape or be reborn. It was physically enjoyable and the lagoon proved to be a fun place to socialize. I definitely recommend giving it a try.

Icelandic food
I had two or three good meals in Reykjavik. One of them was a catfish plus chocolate cake for dinner on Friday in an Icelandic restaurant (I unfortunately do not remember the name). The other one I keep in mind was my Sunday lunch at Café Loki, in front of Hallgrims Church. The Icelandic meat soup was good and so was the combo flatbread plus some local ham if I remember correctly.
Later on Friday, I also had had some horrific experiences related to rotten shark, the typical Icelandic dish. Just know that when you see this, you need to run!

Who am I kidding? I enjoyed every bit of rotten shark, like a Darsh in The Face, thanks to the local Güll beer!